The Shadow in Warfare

Posted on by kay

Oregon Friends of CG Jung managed to convince Karl Marlantes to come talk here in Portland two weeks ago, and I'm still not over it. Marlantes is the author of Matterhorn, a novel based on his own experiences as a Marine during the Vietnam War, and the non-fiction What It Is Like To Go To War. You need both books. Buy them. Read them. Recommend them to others. This man has been there, done that — and then spent the next 40 years dealing with it.

The following quotes are from What It Is Like To Go To War:

"Part of us loves to destroy…  this feeling is just the other face of creativity, in Jungian terms, the shadow side of creativity…  What's scary is that it is far easier to take the path of transcendence through destruction than to take the path of transcendence through creation. And the destructive path gets easier as technology improves, while positive creating, whether spiritual, artistic, or commercial, is just as hard as it ever was." p. 63

Isn't that what Yoda said? The dark side isn't stronger. Just easier. Faster. More seductive.

"You can't be a good person until you observe how bad you are. It is only when the evil is conscious that it can be countered." p. 64

"The transcendent realm one reaches through violence is one that society says it condemns but in fact celebrates everywhere, on film, on television, and in the news. It is because of this split that these feelings are so very dangerous. This split is like the wicked fairy who isn't invited to the wedding but who will get her due. It is the darkness that haunts the lynch mob that in the daytime is dispersed as lawyers, doctors, and church aldermen." p. 66-67

"We are legion, says the Bible. We have a shadow, says Jung." p. 68

"Once we recognize our shadow's existence we must resist the enticing step of going with its flow. This is the way of Charles Manson and terrorist cells. This is also the way of filmakers who suddenly get into its dark power and splatter it all over the screen in slow motion. This is the wrong way to relate to it." p. 69

"The critical psychological issue about weapons technology is the ability to distance the user from the effects. A constant martial fantasy is the 'clean kill'… This clean-kill fantasy avoids the darkness. It allows the hero trip without any cost… Even the language is getting neat and tidy, as in 'surgical strike'… Numbness and hypocrisy aren't learned in boot camp. When it comes to inurement to violence, boot camp is just a finishing school… Getting used to the extremes of violence in combat is just another level up from our everyday training. The circuitry is all in place, having been wired long years before. All that's happening is an increase in voltage. The problem is, however, that the voltage has been steadily and rapidly increasing in all of the entertainment fields… our psychic wiring is getting sized upward for higher and higher voltages." p. 71-73

"If you don't recognize your shadow sides, you'll be likely to cause a lot of damage trying to do your heroic deeds." p. 85

"Then we started seeing some hard-to-stomach reality on television. [during the Vietnam War] Rather than accept that this terrible reality was the result of our inflated ideas of being the good-guy soldiers we thought we were, and accept that we'd buried deeply our own despised Nazis and Tojos, it was easier to throw that darkness onto the people we asked to do the fighting. So the Vietnam veterans came home catching everyone's shadow, portrayed as dope-shooting,coke-snuffing, baby-killing mercenaries. They were far from that." p. 86-87

Well, this is ridiculous. I'll end up quoting the whole damn book.

Go buy Marlantes' books yourself:  Matterhorn and What It Is Like To Go To War.

Then read them.

We owe the people who fight our wars for us. Big time.

 

 

Is there another species I could join?

Posted on by kay

I was minding my own business today, tootling along being incredibly domestic, ironing some shirts that got so wrinkled in a neglected washload I'd shoved them into a plastic bag and stashed them in the freezer. (This is a highly recommended old-Southern-lady-ironing trick: put washed, damp linens or cottons in plastic bags and stash 'em in the freezer. They'll iron up beautifully whenever you finally get around to doing it.)

So I turned on the radio to keep me company while performing such a lonely and domestic chore, and there was Mitt Romney. Telling me that my husband and I are victims.

Moochers.

Losers.

Telling me that the several hundred thousand dollars we've put into Social Security by now — amounts we put in paycheck after paycheck, every paycheck, every year, all of our married lives, amounts which were matched by David's firm (which, incidentally, fired him after 40 years of service, a few months before he could legally retire, and then went out and hired a kid with no experience who'd work for a shitty salary) — did not count.

Yup. I'm serious. There was ole Mitt, on the radio, telling me that anyone who was asking the federal government for anything, even something they'd given to the federal government themselves in the first place, was some sort of creep. Weak. Grasping. Liable to vote for Obama.

i got sick to my stomach.

Still am, sort of, although it's hours later now.

Pablo Neruda, in one of his poems, says he's tired of being a man.

I can relate.

If that is all the Republicans have to offer, in a Presidential election, in the year 2012, I'm tired of being human.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Keep Running Into Myself In This Presidential Race

Posted on by kay

What makes political races so frustrating and so annoying?

The fact that we keep running into ourselves. That we're actually running against ourselves.

Your shadow — the part of yourself you don't like and don't want to admit — is part of your psychological make-up, and ignoring its presence will not get rid of it. As part of your psyche it has to, it will, show up somewhere in your life. So if there are some things you just can't stand to admit about yourself, if you just can't face some of your own stuff, then you're going to see your own stuff on someone else's face.

Guaranteed. The things we don't like about ourselves don't just disappear. They don't give up and go away because we don't want to think about them. They start showing up in other people. They pop up here and pop up there until they get our attention. And anyone we see doing whatever it is we don't like about ourselves will look worse and worse as time goes by.

Kind of explains why we hear so much ranting and raving about the other guys, doesn't it? Why it's so easy to get all hot and bothered about what someone else is doing… why we're so attracted to vicious speculation and hateful rhetoric… why we just can't seem to get off of certain subjects…

It's pretty simple, really: we dwell on what others are doing to keep from having to look at what we've been up to ourselves.

This process is called projection, in psychological terms, and it happens all the time. It starts with denial, and it ends in blame. We take some part of ourselves we don't like — or are ashamed of, or don't want to think about, or can't bring ourselves to deal with — and then we project it out onto another person, where we can see it. 

Imagine a movie projector. You would be the projector whirring in that little room at the back, and the other person would be the big screen down in front. You're creating the image, the image is coming from inside of you, but the other person is the only place where you can actually see that image.

You don't look beastly… other people look beastly…

Your policies didn't ruin this country… the other guys' policies ruined this country… We didn't cause the depression and the deficit… They caused the depression and the deficit.

It would be easier to govern if we could turn off our projectors every now and then.

Hell, it would be easier to be human if we could turn off our projectors every now and then.

 

Homo hostilis

Posted on by kay

Given the news these days, it seems like a swell time to quote from an essay (feedbacks) that Sam Keen wrote for Meeting the Shadow some years ago.

"The problem seems to lie not in our reason or our technology, but in the hardness of our hearts. Generation after generation, we find excuses to hate and dehumanize each other, and we always justify ourselves with the most mature-sounding political rhetoric. And we refuse to admit the obvious. We human beings are Homo hostilis, the hostile species, the enemy-making animal. We are driven to fabricate an enemy as a scapegoat to bear the burden of our denied enmity. From the unconscious resudue of our hostility, we create a target; from our private demons, we conjure a public enemy. And perhaps, more than anything else, the wars we engage in are compulsive rituals, shadow dramas in which we continually try to kill those parts of ourselves we deny and despise." Meeting the Shadow, The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, Tarcher, edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, 1991, p. 198.

Leonard Pitts nailed it today

Posted on by kay

Leonard Pitts' article in today's paper, When Facts Don't Matter, eloquently illuminates the deep course that unchallenged shadow material eventually dredges through a culture. Get the whole article in The Oregonian, or from The Miami Herald, its source. Here are a few excerpts:

"Not long ago, if you told a whopper like Palin's and it was as thoroughly debunked as hers was, that would have ended the discussion. These days, it is barely even part of the discussion. These days, facts seem overmatched by falsehood, too slow to catch them, too weak to stop them…

Indeed, falsehoods are harder to kill than a Hollywood zombie. Run them through with fact, and still they shamble forward, fueled by echo chamber media, ideological tribalism, cognitive dissonance, a certain imperviousness to shame, and an understanding that a lie repeated long enough, loudly enough, becomes, in the minds of those who need to believe it, truth…

It seems that not only are facts no longer important, but they are not even the point. Rather, the point is the construction and maintenance of an alternate narrative designed to enhance and exploit the receiver's fears, his or her sense of prerogatives, entitlement, propriety and morality under siege from outside forces…

This is the state of American political discourse… where a sense of dislocation, disaffection, and general been-done-wrongness has become sine qua non, coin of the realm, lingua franca of the true believers — and of their true belief in the desperate need to turn back the unrighteous Other and his unwelcome change…

The result of which is that Americans increasingly occupy two realities, one based on the conviction that facts matter, the other on the notion that facts are only what you need them to be in a given moment…"

Beautifully put. Frightfully true. Thank you, Leonard, for your clear eyes and eloquent voice.

 

 

Just flat sick and twisted.

Posted on by kay

Here's how the human shadow works: you take a deep fear, a fear you can't stand to acknowledge, something you're ashamed of, your worst fear, and then you project it out onto the "other" so you can accuse them of carrying out your actions.

Is Obama really responsible for our national debt, as the $7 million ad, paid for by Crossroads Group and now appearing on TV, charges?

Or, are the very people paying for the ad actually responsible for our national debt?

Let's reprise, folks. The national budget was balanced, had a bit of a cushion in fact, when Bill Clinton stepped down and George Bush Jr took over.

Then, during Jr's administration, the debt began to blossom. First there were tax cuts, mostly benefiting those who were already quite wealthy (wealthy enough to help him win elections, anyway). Then there was more de–regulation of banking and lending (which started under Reagan, another Republican), until big money got so complicated no one knew what was going on.

Then we got into not 1 but 2 unfunded wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfunded… that means not paid for in the regular budget. That means paid for by borrowing. Unfunded. That means your national debt begins to balloon and swell out of control.

Then finally, just a few months before he left office, Jr enacted a huge emergency bailout, as our whole economy began to implode under the weight of 8 long years of catchily-phrased-but-poorly-thought-out Republican policies.

FOR PETE'S SAKE, AMERICA – WAKE THE FRACK UP!!

Did Obama really step into a peaceful, orderly land of plenty and then begin to maliciously max out the USA's charge cards for no good reason?

The worse Republican policies work, the harder Republicans try to blame the effects of those policies on Democrats. 

This isn't governing. Or wisdom. Or patriotism. Not even the rah-rah-Tea-Party-foam-at-the-mouth kind of patriotism.

This is wrong. Just flat sick and twisted.

This is a childish failure to take resonsibiity for one's own actions, played out at a national level, for very big stakes.

This is "doublethink" and "newspeak," just like George Orwell predicted in 1984.

This is the way down.

Have we finally made it to 1984?

Posted on by kay

DOUBLETHINK

Stirring up hatred for the "others"…

being-dismissive-to-downright-lying about your opponent's policies and ideas…

saying the exact opposite of what is actually happening and true…

 

NEWSPEAK

Creating catchy soundbite "solutions" when you know they would never actually work…

relying on jingles rather than judgement…

using archetypal words (homeland, freedom, liberty, etc) to stir unconscious passions…

Are we going backwards? Have we finally made it all the way back to George Orwell's 1984?

Dis-satisfaction is a necessary precursor to satisfaction

Posted on by kay

More thoughts provoked by hanging out with a baby…

Willy wore himself out yesterday trying to get up on all fours, and trying to get to the toys I'd placed so provocatively near, and trying to sit up.

When I laid him down on his back on the play pad he'd hold his head and shoulders off the floor, trying to get back up. You know how hard that is? Like the first part of a sit-up? Wow. What a lot of work it is to grow up!

It made me think about how dissatisfaction fuels human development. If we weren't dissatisfied with lying around, we'd never start rolling over. If we weren't bored with rolling over, we'd never get up on all fours. If we didn't get annoyed by having to crawl everywhere, we'd never learn how to walk.

Dis-satisfaction is a necessary precursor to satisfaction.

Shameless

Posted on by kay

Most of us would feel something between sheepish to completely mortified if we threw up in front of someone else. Not this guy. This guy is shameless.

So when he stops eating and starts wiggling today –which I know by now is not a good sign– I sit him up, and yup, Willy hurls. I mean, hurls.

I'm holding one of those 50 cent IKEA towels up in front of him, and he just fills that sucker. So I'm sitting there holding a towel full of vomit, plus it's all over my left arm and all over the receiving blankets I've draped over the chair, but before I can even move, Willy — with stuff still dribbliing out of his mouth and rolling down his chin — turns to me and gives me a peaceful, heartwarming, absolutely beneficent smile.

I laughed till I cried. Oh, what bliss! To be 16 weeks old and shameless! To have no concept of "wrong," "bad," "uncool," or "improper." To not be embarrassed or ashamed of anything your body does as it goes about its appointed tasks.

In A Little Book on the Human Shadow, (HarperSan Francisco, 1988, page 17-18) Robert Bly uses stuffing a bag as a metaphor for what inevitably happens to our shadows as we grow older:

"When we were one or two years old we had what we might visualize as a 360-degree personality. Energy radiated out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche. A child running is a living globe of energy. We had a ball of energy, all right; but one day we noticed that our parents didn't iike certain parts of that ball. They said things like" "Can't you be still?" Or "It isn't nice to try and kill your brother." Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don't like, we, to keep our parents' love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: "Good children don't get angry over such little things." So we take our anger and put it in the bag. By the time my brother and I were twelve in Madison, Minnesota, we were knows as "the nice Bly boys." Our bags were already a mile long.

"Then we do a lot of bag stuffing in high school. This time it's no longer the evil grownups that pressure us, but people our own age… I lied all through high school automatically to try to be more like the basketball players… out of a round globe of energy the twenty-year-old ends up with a slice. We'll imagine a man who has a thin slice left –the rest is in the bag– and we'll imagine that he meets a woman. Let's say they are both twenty-four. She has a thin, elegant slice left. They join each other in a ceremony, and this union of two slices is called a marriage. Even together the two do not make up one person!"

Then Bly goes on to say that since we spend the first halves of our lives putting stuff into the bag, to ever grow up we have to spend the second halves of our lives choosing what to pull back out of the bag. We have to do what everybody wants us to do when we're children, to belong to a culture. Then we have to go our own way later, to turn into individuals who can each think, create and contribute in their own way.

I'm feeling pretty delighted to be hanging out with someone who can still radiate in all 360 degrees. Thanks for your sunshine, Willy!