[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kugVsHhXnDE]
We're not just stuck in ego and family roles; we're stuck in social-historical-mythological roles as well.
Illustrations by Bob Hobbs, from Shadow in the USA
History
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4FubULXkFQ]
How a little old lady in Oregon became crazy enough to think she ought to promote a better understanding of the human shadow, and why the resulting book is illustrated.
Illustrations by Bob Hobbs, from Shadow in the USA
Something is amiss, and it’s lurking in our shadows
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oic_OBNiID4]
Your "shadow" is the stuff you don't like about yourself, the stuff you don't want anyone else to know about you. And if you just can't stand to face some of your own stuff, then you will see your own stuff on someone else's face.
Illustrations by Bob Hobbs, from "Shadow in the USA"
Integration
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvEvwJ8NbEU]
We can't "get rid of" our shadows. But we can strive to integrate — to successfully combine — the inner and the outer.
Illustrations by Bob Hobbs for "Shadow in the USA"
We’re all bewitched
Whenever we try to appear angelic on the surface, the devil inside dances.
As soon as we become absolutely certain that our way is the only way, imps start to grin.
If we can’t admit being wrong… can’t calmly discuss important issues… simply won’t tolerate other points of view, much less change our minds faced with new evidence…
when we are obviously much cooler and smarter, and other people are obviously much lamer and dumber…
we are bewitched. Self-enchanted. Firmly stuck in a fairy tale role.
And there's only one way to break such a spell: to take off the mask that goes with whatever role we're playing.
To bare-facedly face the fact that every person on earth—you, me, and the guy in the corner booth over there—is just as much Court Jester as Wise King, just as much Wicked Witch as Snow White.
To go ahead and admit that we're not always perfect, so we can start to do something toward mending our mistakes.
quote 3
"I like your enthusiasm for the shadow."
–Robert Bly, National Book Award winning poet, storyteller, troublemaker and author of A Little Book on the Human Shadow.
Ignorance vs confidence
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
–Charles Darwin
Technology and Soul
Technology and Soul
I recently went to a workshop given by Glen Slater, PhD, on "Technology and Soul, Living at the Turning Point," and was just getting on here to write about it, when up popped a whole slew of new options I could add to my blog site — Do I want my readers to be able to flip through my old blogs, or scroll through my old blogs, or eat my old blogs, or what? — that I had to think about before I could even get onto my blog site.
And of course, by the time I suffered through those initial interruptions, full of seemingly pressing questions that sounded like they needed to be answered immediately, before I could go any further, before my blog started appearing out-of-it and antiquated to all observers, I was in great danger of forgetting what I had gotten onto my blog site to write about in the first place.
Perfect. And exactly what Slater’s workshop was all about.
We are absolutely inundated with choices. Many of them technological. Most promising to make our lives easier or to make our work go faster or to make us cooler or smarter or even more attractive than we (of course) already are. Most sounding downright irresistible, now that human beings have learned so much about how to market things to one another. So we scurry from choice to choice, trying to make the "right" one each time, trying to keep up, trying to do what everyone else is doing, leaking little bits of our own unique creative individuality all the time.
Soul making takes some peace and quiet. Some continuity. I had an entire chain of thought going about that workshop which will never quite exist again. Because it was booted out, rooted out — almost entirely expunged — by another set of ideas that popped up in front of it. Did you ever read Watership Down? (Great book.) At one point the rabbits are trying to get a big old dog to go in a certain direction, so one rabbit pops up in front of the dog, which it chases, and then another rabbit pops up in front of the dog, which it chases, and then another rabbit pops up in front of the dog, which it chases…
…that is our minds, folks: USA, circa 2000s. We run hard, but we are easily distracted as to direction.
50 years ago school children read Treasure Island or Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn or Little Women. Today, many of our school children have to struggle to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. There are so many different levels of communication and entertainment available to us at all times that we can't bear to limit ourselves or our children to doing only one thing at any one time. But we know from brain scan studies that multi-tasking prevents deep comprehension of the tasks involved. Or, multi-tasking actually trains the mind to think shallowly. (Or, there are a lot more channels available to us today than we actually have the physical bandwidth to receive.)
We can't keep technology from affecting our souls. That's where we are. That's what's happening today. But we can, as Slater suggests, try and make its impact on our souls more conscious. We can make more of an effort to choose what will truly serve us and to decline what will not.
We can start to realize that the "hive mind" produced by cyberspace is not unbiased, it's actually extremely biased, and not biased towards wisdom, either — biased towards getting our attention. Biased toward selling products.
We can start to realize that we don't have to chase every new rabbit that pops up in front of us.
Books recommended by Slater:
You Are Not A Gadget, Jaron Lanier
Enough, Bill McKibben
Alone Together, Sherry Turkle
What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr
Movies recommended by Slater with an interesting slant on technology vs soul:
Blade Runner
Matrix
Metropolis, by Fritz Lang (the most expensive silent movie ever produced – get the restored version)
the Star Trek & Star Wars series, of course—noone wants to end up looking like Darth Vader
quote 5
"This is a powerful little book—a gem whose facets gleam with insights into our shared American identity. It is also a dangerous little book. Plumb strips away our delusions of God-given moral superiority to expose the emptiness of contemporary American life and the dark powers of hatred and greed with which we deny that emptiness. Why read this book? Because somehow it also manages to be delightful. It’s a powerfully written, exquisitely illustrated tale of profound psychological importance—the first of its kind, as far as I know. And because the true potential of the USA—as well as the true potential of individual freedom—can only continue to evolve if we dare to look into such mirrors."
–Robert Tompkins, PhD, MFT,, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Western Oregon University; licensed Marriage and Family Counselor.
quote 4
"While skillfully retelling a familiar tale, Kay quickly leads us into depths which invite introspection regarding the "beast" within each of us, and the "beast" within our culture. Those aspects of ourselves we would deny or project onto others invariably show up in ourselves anyway, slipping through the cracks of our denial, repression and psychological sloth. This book obliges the reader to look at ordinary life through a sharpened lens, and see that, beneath the surface of daily events, deeper and darker energies are spilling into our lives."
–James Hollis, PhD, Analytical psychologist, Director of Jungian Studies for Saybrook University, and author of thirteen books including Why Good People Do Bad Things, Understanding Our Darker Selves, a penetrating look at the human shadow.