Blog

Speaking of projection…

Posted on by kay

 

 

Kudos to Netflix for producing a documentary called “Hitler and the Nazis, Evil on Trial,” and for running it now.

It’s the story of how a less-than-mediocre man with a gift for gab molded a dissatisfied and angst-filled Germany into the worst human catastrophe so far in history; a story of how easily social unease can be channeled into violence and racial hatred by a sociopath who’s obsessed with power and truly believes in his own infallibility.

Told from the point of view of William Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,  during the Nuremberg trials. He was a journalist in Germany during Hitler’s rise, barely got out with his life and his journals, and continued reporting on Hitler after he got back to the US.

 

 

Good Talk, indeed

Posted on by kay

 

 

There’s a wonderful new (2019) graphic novel out about race in America: Good Talk, A Memoir in Conversations, by Mira Jacob.

 

The author is an East Indian woman married to a white Jewish man, and the conversations started when their five year old son began to ask questions about growing up brown in America while Trump’s star was ascending. What DO you say to that beautiful little brown face looking up to you for guidance and protection?

 

This book will make you laugh, and it will make you cry.

 

 

 

Mistakes… always being made by those OTHER people…

Posted on by kay

 

Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Harcourt, Inc.

 

This is a fascinating and terrifying book. In it, two distinguished social psychologists use data and real world examples to illustrate how self-justification and its powerful engine, cognitive dissonance –what happens when two of our beliefs cannot possibly both be true– push us further and further from truth and reality.

 

It was published in 2007, so their examples use the administration of George Bush, Jr. rather than the administration of Donald Trump or Joe Biden, but it’s not hard to apply its principles to today.

 

Self-justification, the tendency to cling even more tightly to beliefs once they’re shown to be false, prejudice, blind spots, distortions in memory, bad science for money, bogus theories rapidly circulated on the internet, closed minds in law enforcement and the judiciary… step right up, folks! We’ve got it all.

 

But we do have brains. We could improve. Here’s a passage from near the end of the book:

 

“The moral of our story is easy to say, and difficult to execute. When you screw up, try saying this: “I made a mistake. I need to understand what went wrong. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.” Dweck’s research is heartening because it suggests that at all ages, people can learn to see mistakes not as terrible personal failings to be denied or justified, but as inevitable aspects of life that help us grow, and grow up.

Our national pastime of baseball differs from the society that spawned it in one crucial way:  The box score of every baseball game, from the Little League to the Major League, consists of three tallies: runs, hits and errors. Errors are not desirable, of course, but everyone understands that they are unavoidable. Errors are inherent in baseball, as they are in medicine, business, science, law, love, and life. In the final analysis, the test of a nation’s character, and of an individual’s integrity, does not depend on being error free. It depends on what we do after making the error.”

 

 

 

OK, you admit you have a Shadow. Now what?

Posted on by kay

 

Let’s say you’ve hit the tip of the iceberg—you realize you have a Shadow, with a capital S. You’ve managed to become aware that you’re mostly unaware of what goes on in your mind. You’ve gotten uncomfortable with the thought that your ego marches out to defend itself from reality on a daily basis, and does not hesitate to blame others in order to maintain a good opinion of itself. 

 

Congratulations! You have just gotten much further along the road to consciousness than most people have ever been or are ever going to get. And that was the easy part! Now what? What do you do about an ego defense system that’s mostly unconscious? That’s the hard part.

 

Getting to know your own shadow, taking responsibility for what you find in there, dealing honorably with what you find in there, is a lifelong task. We don’t ever get “done” with Shadow work, any more than we get “done” with growing up.

 

And while it’s only the tip of the tip of the iceberg, listening to yourself is a good place to start.

 

Yup. That’s right. Just LISTEN TO YOURSELF. Listen to your words and your thoughts. NOTICE what passes through your mind. Ha! ADMIT what passes through your mind is more like it… Who and what we mutter about matters. Who and what we mutter about says far more about us than it does about them.

 

Another useful tool for Shadow work is talking to yourself. Yup. Talking to yourself.

 

A good friend of mine has been plagued by a bad temper all his life. He can drop into anger as fast as you or I can drop into a chair. Which is harder on him than it would be on most folks, because he’s actually a very gentle heart. So a while back he decided to do something about it. He found a psychologist he liked to talk to. He started reading about the Human Shadow in general and thinking about his own Shadow in particular. And then he took a very important step. He gave this character in his personality a name: Short Fuse.

 

So now when my friend is driving and Short Fuse starts to rant and rave he says, “But didn’t you drive like that when you were a teenager?” or “Didn’t you cut someone off without meaning to, just yesterday?” And with the wind taken out of his sails like that, Short Fuse quickly drops behind.

 

Naming the characters who show up over and over again in your behavior, so you realize who they are and what they’re liable to be up to when they show up, takes away some of their power. Makes them easier to control. Got a Preacher in there, who likes to tell other people what to do? Or a Smart Guy, who knows everything? How about a Princess, who can get real pissy about performing simple chores? Do you have a Saint in your shadow, who does no wrong? Or how about a Whiner, or a Pouter? Do you see a Bully, or his opposite, a Tail Wagger, when you look in the mirror?

 

Whoever the habitual characters in your Shadow are, name them. Start talking back to them. Find out what they want, why they keep showing up–how they hurt you and how they help you. Invite them out of the shadows and into the light of consciousness.

 

We need all of these characters in our psyches. Each of them has a value and a use. Preachers care about making the world a better place. Princesses throw good parties. Smart guys invent things, and Tail Waggers keep the peace. What we don’t need is for any one of these characters to drive us–or anyone else–crazy. And we really don’t need for any one of these characters to get away with thinking they run our whole show.

 

Present responses are programmed by past experiences. We react to here-and-now stimuli with emotional complexes that were formed in childhood. And while there’s no way to keep a childhood complex from cropping up, again, we can learn to recognize that is has cropped up, again, and talk ourselves out of it.

 

So… step one is listening to yourself and step two is talking to yourself?

 

Yup. A sense of humor is required for Shadow work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s time to explore inner space

Posted on by kay

 

The average human being knows more about outer space than they do about what goes on inside their own head. The ever present inner battle between consciousness and unconsciousness, between Ego and Shadow, entirely escapes most of us.

 

We can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world, through messages bouncing off satellites orbiting the planet, but we still haven’t learned how to listen to ourselves. We NAIL telecommunications. But, basic human psychology? Not so much.

 

So we still have the same old problems that people had back in medieval times. Psychotic rulers who demand absolute obedience–and get it. Appalling poverty, racism and social injustice in the masses, while rich people take shelter behind visible and invisible walls. Religious wars fueled by self-righteous fanatics. Political parties who hate one another and constantly jockey to stay in power, but solve no problems, or create more problems, when they are in power. We still even have plagues, spread by carelessness and ignorance.

 

Heck, we moderns have added whole new categories of UNconsciousness. Wholesale destruction of the environment to such an extent that we’re ruining the climate. Saying the first thing that pops into your mind –which saints, sages and saviors have advised against for thousands of years — to anyone who will log on. (Monkey minds, running amok. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, “Don’t believe everything you think!” and almost cried for joy.) Giant international companies dedicated to making as much money as possible selling things they KNOW are bad for their customers and their planet. (Golden rule? No more, no way, only for schmucks.)

 

For sheer UNconsciousness, we moderns have outdone the medievalists. For an “advanced” species, we are woefully ignorant about what works and what doesn’t.

 

When people ask me what I do, I say, “I try to promote a better understanding of the Human Shadow.”

 

When they ask me why, I quote these guys:

 

“We just might be in time to stop the apocalypse, but it will be touch and go.”

—Konrad Lorenz

“Projection of Shadow material causes most of the misery, injustice and warfare in the world.”

–Robert Bly

“Unleashing the power of the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking. We need an essentially new way of thinking if mankind is to survive.”

—Albert Einstein

 “The task of confronting the brutal, destructive elements of the Shadow has become the inescapable destiny of our species: If we fail, we cannot hope to survive.”

—John A. Sanford 

“Learning to integrate Shadow material is the single most important task facing mankind, as failure to do so will lead to the extinction of the human race.”

—Carl Jung

 

The only thing that will save the human race now is introspection. Really, truthfully examining what goes on inside our heads and taking responsibility for what we find in there. With the same energy and passion that we put into figuring out how to get satellites and spaceships off the ground.

 

 

Black people are NOT the Shadow of white people

Posted on by kay

 

Black people are NOT the Shadow of white people. But they are trapped INSIDE many white people’s Shadow projections. It’s a terrible position to be in.

 

We all have Shadows, both personally and collectively. It’s where our psyches store the things we don’t like about ourselves, the things we don’t want other people to know about us. Yet these denied qualities are still part of us, and demand to be seen. So we tend to project the things we don’t like about ourselves out onto other people. Then we can hate those OTHER PEOPLE, without feeling a need to change anything personally.

 

Denial, projection and blame are the tools the ego uses to protect itself from whatever lies in its own Shadow.

 

Denial, projection, and blame are the ego’s basic defense against reality.

 

Think of a projector. You’d be that little machine whirring in the back, and the other person would be the big screen down in front. You’re creating the image, the image is actually being produced inside your head, but the other person is the only place where you can see the image. Projection.

 

We’re talking about the pot calling the kettle black, people living in glass houses who throw stones, hypocrisy in action. When we can’t face our own stuff, we see our own stuff on someone else’s face.

 

Black people are NOT the Shadow of white people. But they are trapped INSIDE many white people’s Shadow projections. It’s a terrible position to be in. 

 

Because when enough people deny the same things in themselves and then project those qualities out onto other groups of people, great evil occurs. Witch hunts, Inquisitions, slavery, genocide, Holocausts, exterminations of native populations, systemic racism… that recent mass shooting at a grocery store…

 

As history shows us again and again, the Collective Shadow can do colossal amounts of damage.

 

“The projection of Shadow material causes most of the misery, injustice and warfare in the world.”–Robert Bly

 

Hypocrisy, USA

Posted on by kay

 

Hypocrisy is one of the deadliest and most frequently used weapons in the Shadow’s arsenal. Hypocrisy is the projection of one’s own Shadow material onto others, pure and simple.

 

If we howl loudly about something someone else is doing, they may not have time to notice that we’re doing the same thing, or worse. It sounds childish — it is childish — yet it happens all the time.

 

The people who absolutely refuse to wear face masks or be vaccinated during an epidemic  because it would infringe on their personal freedom — when doing so would save lives and protect others — are the very same people who feel they have a right to tell women what to do about family planning. To tell people what gender they must exhibit. To tell people which books they can read. To tell people what version of history should be taught in schools (because what actually happened makes them feel bad). To overturn elections when they don’t like the results.

 

The people in the USA who invariably howl the loudest about “freedom” and “democracy” are the very same ones who want to take freedom and democracy away from anyone who disagrees with them. They’re authoritarian bullies who don’t really  believe in democracy at all. What they actually believe in is getting their own way. In telling others what to do. In power.

 

Slapping down someone else’s idea  NO!  while simultaneously feeling you have a right to tell them what to do is a holdover from the Patriarchal Age. You can’t make me wear a mask in an epidemic! But I can tell you what to do with your whole body, all the time. 

 

Joseph Campbell would’ve called that a function of Old Testament thinking, and it is not even close to our modern idea of democracy. Bossy edicts from on high worked 4,000 years ago in the Near East (although they did lead to slaughter after slaughter). But this is the United States of America, in 2022. We ought to know better by now.

 

Alas. The Shadow of our beloved “personal freedom” is still trying to shackle other people. And it has from our very earliest beginnings.

 

Review of the “Breaking Bad” film series

Posted on by kay

 

One of the best books ever written on the human shadow is James Hollis’ Why Good People Do Bad Things. That would be a perfect subtitle for the “Breaking Bad” series.

 

But then the series would need a second subtitle, “And Also Why Bad People Do Bad Things,”so I suppose it’s good they just kept it simple. “Breaking Bad.”

 

While watching “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” and “El Camino” I felt annoyed, amused, upset, saddened, horrified –you name it. It’s hard to watch people shoot themselves in the foot over and over again, even when they finally win terrific battles against amazing odds. Even when they can also be funny and lovable.

 

It’s hard to watch because it’s a lot like real life. (And no, I do not have a meth lab out in my barn.)

 

We are pretty unconscious about the effects our actions have on our loved ones. We do tend to think of ourselves as ‘caring for’ others while we mostly ignore them.We can make questionable little choices every day that eventually pile up into huge multiple-car-life-wrecks. Plus, who doesn’t envy the wildly successful, want revenge on the bad guys, or crave credit for their accomplishments? Who wouldn’t like to strike it rich at least once?

 

You don’t have to work with gangs or drug cartels to practice cringe worthy selfishness on a daily basis. No indeedy. It’s what we do. It’s how humans roll.

 

That’s why this series is so fascinating. While portraying lives most of us will never come anywhere close to living, it very successfully portrays how each of us act.

 

 

 

 

Are we ever gonna learn to say no to despots?

Posted on by kay

 

Here we are in 2022, rich men flying to outer space and messages bouncing off satellites, yet another strongman, one single despot, ONE man (aided and abetted by those he enriches), can cause thousands of people to suffer. Can wreck havoc on an entire country.

 

While the rest of us bemoan events and wring our hands and count our missiles, Ukrainians suffer and die. As the whole world watches, Putin wastes thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives in battles that never should’ve happened. That didn’t need to happen.

 

How is this still possible? Why are human beings still allowing obviously warped despots to gain control over their lives?

 

Are we really that desperate for someone to tell us what to do? Do we secretly crave a cozy relationship with Big Brother? Is democracy just too much of a burden for the average human being?

 

Here in the USA, other than Lynn Cheney, there is not a single Republican senator or representative brave enough to tell Trump to sit down and shut up, even though they KNOW he’s not only a crook but wrong, dangerously wrong. Like, no more fair elections, wrong. Like, end of democracy, wrong. How absolutely twisted is this reality?

 

In “The Second Coming,” Yeats said The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

 

Sobering. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

 

And the world is smaller now than it was in Yeats’ time. Smaller and faster and far more deadly.

 

If we can’t learn how to keep the worst among us from gaining control, the human race really is in trouble.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lead, follow, or get out of the way, Republicans.

Posted on by kay

 

One definition of the word adult is “someone who makes rational, intelligent decisions.”

 

One definition of the word democracy is “adults who govern together.”

 

One depends upon the other. Unless its citizens are adults, capable of practicing rational, intelligent decision-making, how can a democracy function?

 

About like ours is functioning right now. Very poorly.

 

Way back in ancient political history (the 1990s), when Newt Gingrich saw that Republicans couldn’t hold onto power without demonizing Democrats and adding emotionally laden issues to their platform, rational and intelligent decision-making was consciously dropped by the powers that be in the GOP. In order to stir up subconscious fears in the masses,  emotional issues like same sex marriage and abortion were consciously added to the Republican platform. But not because they really cared about those issues. Nope. Because they wanted to win. Because they wanted to stay in power.

 

When Biden asked, “What are you guys for?” last week, he hit the nail on the head. Republicans are not for anything anymore. They’re just against. Against minorities. Against taxes. Against immigration. Against abortion. Against “government.” Against wearing masks in epidemics. Against vaccinations. Against gun laws. Against looking clearly at their own history. Against equal access to voting.  Against anyone other than their own candidate winning.

 

When the whole world has so many serious problems to face, this is simply ludicrous. You can’t solve problems by being against things. You can only solve problems by engaging with things.

 

As history shows. Every time Republicans have been in power since the 90s the deficit has soared, wars have waged, the gap between rich and poor has widened, pollution has increased, the climate has worsened, and an epidemic spread unacknowledged and unchecked. So what is it that Republicans want to be in power for, anyhow? To hasten the apocalypse? To get a better parking spot in DC?

 

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” Republicans. The rest of us aren’t ready to give up on the world just yet.