Shadow

Yes. The Stanford Prison Experiment stands out as a definitive proof of this stuff.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_ … experiment

Yes, and how has this been done, how can it be done now?

And, there is both the shadow of society, of masses, and of personal humans individually.

How do we go about taking into account the individual shadow?

Im just asking now - as, to be frank, Ive been wiser in this regard than I am now.

We’ll need a context of course.

A shadow in what sense, relating to what set of circumstances, understood in what particular way?

That’s exactly why Freud kicked Jung out of his set. The moment Jung started getting all spooky Freud was like ‘bro I can’t roll with you anymore. You sound like a philosopher or something.’

Yes, thats what Im basically asking. Not sure if I should be expecting responses because its damned hard to figure out about oneself, and if one figures it out it isn’t necessarily something one would like to share. Maybe.

But okay. You were in a war. Could I ask you to focus on that and tell me something, which applies to any of Jungs quotes above?

I didn’t know about that.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” That kind of optimistic bullshit needs to go for a start.

When a developer codes a game, or an app or an OS, they realise that someone somewhere will try to hack, crack or otherwise exploit it. So they beta-test it. Run it in a sandbox, throw it to white-hat hackers for a good going over. We should do the same to social institutions.

Governments should employ thieves, perverts, gangsters, terrorists, embezllers and other assorted ne’er-do-wells to troubleshoot themselves perhaps lol.

“Governments should employ thieves, perverts, gangsters, terrorists, embezllers and other assorted ne’er-do-wells to troubleshoot themselves perhaps lol.”

I like that.
That has some meat on it.

Can we transpose this to the individual?

Well, as matter of fact, I was in a war. The Vietnam war. I went over there a gung-ho, red-blooded American Christian, ready to kick the Communists ass. I returned a radical left-wing atheist who tossed away his Bronze Star medal and Army Commendation medal with a V-device for valor on April 19th 1972, the one year anniversary of Operation Dewey Canyon III protest in Washington D.C. Just tossed them into a dumpster outside my apartment complex. At the time a very powerful and very personal experience. Just me, myself and I.

Ironically enough, not more than a couple of miles from where I live now. And I’ve lived all over the Baltimore metropolitan area.

But now, years later, I am considerably more ambivalent about all of the things I did back then. From the radical right to the radical left. Back in my own “objectivist days”.

As for Jung, how would those here who share in any of the points he raised above react to what I did back then? How would the Freudians?

Jung:

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”

How does that fit into my reaction to the Vietnam war? Damned if I know. What the hell does this even mean in regard to any particular individual facing any particular situation in which moral and political narratives come into conflict?

More to the point [mine] in terms of your own interactions with others involving “considerable moral effort”, what does it mean to you?

Cite a situation you have been in that allows you to describe it more substantively.

Same with all the other quotes. They are all just “general description intellectual contraptions” to me.

But if anyone here would like to reconfigure one of them into an assessment of a particular set of circumstances they have been in such that this “shadow” becomes more substantial, I’d be interested in exploring that.

To me your shadow is your dark side and because it is your shadow it cannot be separated from you but remains a part of you always
So I think Jung was wrong when he implies that it can be separated from you physically because your experiences define who you are
He is right however in that it is the dark within someone but it never leaves you although it may significantly change shade over time

I think that is determined by the degree to which one accepts responsibility for oneself more than the actual things themselves
Once done ayn action cannot be undone but introspection is always a process that will be ongoing until resolution has occurred

The dark side is always there both potentially and actually - potentially for what can or will be done and actually for what has been done

Evil is more noticeable in the individual because it is so brutal compared to the norm but on a truly grand scale it then becomes the norm
That famous phrase banality of evil allows anything at all to be seen as morally unremarkable if it is sufficiently widespread and accepted

The question is why are people unaware of what is going on in their subconscious ?
A part of the answer is that the subconscious itself does not fully reveal itself to us

Also there may be those who do not want to look into the abyss for fear of what they may see
But this may be more preferable to not looking in at all - ignorance is after all not always bliss

Once done any action cannot be undone but introspection is always a process that will be ongoing until resolution has occurred
Sometimes it can simply be a question of allowing sufficient time to pass in order for the healing process to become complete

Other times it may require therapy because the individual cannot heal by themselves because they do not know how
There is so much we do not reveal to others but it is necessary for our well being that we try and do it to ourselves

To go through suffering and to emerge from it damaged but also more complete because one has survived
It strengthens one psychologically and philosophically and prepares them for possible future suffering too

One probably never truly heals because there will always be something left behind even if we do not know
As that may be necessary to protect ourselves if we ever need a defence for events that are yet to happen

The subconcious apparently controls everything but can we ever fully understand it through the conscious ?
Is trying to understand it even the right way - is it not better to simply let it be without expecting answers ?

Eighteen years ago I went into a black hole that I had absolutely no control over that tried to kill me
I am out of it now but I bet you my life my subconscious has retained the memory until the day I die

But what if, Your show is playing games with you, like it makes you think you are out of it? :

Or did You so it kind of like this guy describes? :

youtu.be/ictUbyRBW6Y

Yes I didn’t mean a hypothetical, its known you’re a veteran of that war.
Thanks for the elaborations, this is interesting stuff to me, as it is directly pertinent and you answer your own question;

This would be the beginning of that moral effort.
I’d think.
But far from the end of it, as you also clarify.

What’s Baltimore like these days - you recognize it in The Wire?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6EpfCzdMoY[/youtube]

I would say that you threw yourself on the Shadow immediately, as did a lot of Vietnam veterans.
Their confrontation of it became a whole corpus of literature, music and film and formed a basis of a new national conscience.

But, the shadow is elusive.
As it is in oneself.

Jordan Peterson says of the Shadow that it is the capacity for cruelty.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6VRWX1Sz5s[/youtube]

Well yes, this is a distinction, a problem I also noticed;
We have the individual shadow and then he societal shadow which is far larger, and yet, the same.

The elusiveness of the shadow points to the mystery of separation and unity of the individual and his world. Thats a thought that comes to me now, writing this.

it means so very, very much.
My life, dude, I can not even tell you a single detail. Its unfortunate. Lurkers.

But in general, Ive always made a great effort to bring to light the darkness where I would rather not recognize it.
One thing I can tell you: People who consider themselves “light workers” are usually the very opposite. Demons, sick people.

I suppose this is in part why I was so drawn to Nietzsche, and in particular his darker side. I never had the slightest faith in anything that wasn’t addressing the very heart of darkness.

Looking to deeply will break the average person.

Most “spiritual” people are wretched; their “spirituality” is merely an excuse to not look into their heart, which rots away as they preach of peace and love.
They will defile children telling themselves they are “healing” them. Their sexual urges ooze through the pores of their “body of light”.

Most therapists are simply projecting their own shadow onto their patients.
Ive visited around… Id say 6 therapists in my life, all but one for very short periods because they were completely useless and obscenely vain. The least bad of them was simply salivating over my stories and said to me that he’d never had such interesting casework. He did nothing whatsoever to help me with any of it and still took my money.

Ive had one good therapist though and I stayed with him for a year. He was able to identify a very important thing.
Even still he had all kinds of opinions about the human species and politics he was fond of sharing with me in the time I was paying for. But at least he wasn’t projecting. I dare say this guy is pretty wise. He’s also the only one of them that refused insurance coverage as it would compel him to share his diagnoses with the State.

a very simple concept that has been turned into nonsense on stilts by an eccentric pseudo-scientific psychologist/mystic who needed to write some books to make some money?

this ‘shadow’ is nothing but that anachronistic and relatively unevolved part of the neurological and hormonal foundation of the psyche that was suddenly put into conflict with the ‘higher brain’ when modern societies came into existence and demanded moral restraint from the individual. freud covered all this in his psychic apparatus theory and remained mostly reductionist about it… something jung didn’t do, hence, one of the reasons why freud ended his relationship with him. it’s not ironic that freud once said of jung something along the lines of; he’s not aware that his theories are symptoms of his own neurosis.

but basically what’s been done is a kind of clinical vilification of natural drives and desires that come into conflict in a society that, because of how it is arranged, greatly amplifies and augments the circumstances that generate these conflicts. it’s the battle between the id and the super-ego, more or less. in restraining the more anachronistic side of the individual, the individual undergoes a frustrating psychic split as he’s forced to conform to the rules of society.

next comes the systematic distortion of the conscience by wind-bags like peterson and other modern psychologists who’s intention is to vilify and ‘make sick’ those individuals who naturally resist the forces of civil domestication and conformity in modern society. now, the non-aggressive individual who is fully compliant to the sweeping changes and demands made by a modern society responsible for creating social relations jam-packed with new conflicts, is the healthy one.

but this is not to say that all ‘shadows’ are instances of some stronger side of man being hidden away and repressed for the purposes of social conformity. some ‘shadows’ are based in inferiority and ressentiment and can be counted as a manifestation of some kind of vengeful cruelty that’s subconsciously harbored by the individual. take the ‘rapist’ example in peterson’s video. he unequivocally characterizes all rapists as ‘weak’. but while very many (and probably most) modern rapists are expressing a desire to control and hold power over the victim (this to compensate for their feelings of inferiority), some rapists simply just want to get laid and have no desire to humiliate their victims. they aren’t on a quest for power and in no way feel inferior… nor do they secretly despise women.

the shadow of the former type is developed from within an environment that facilitates the production of males who’s natural, anachronistic drive for sex is complicated further… i could even say complimented… by conflicts that constantly impede on his ability to satisfy those drives. while the shadow of the latter type exists independently and free of any sublimated conditioning that’s involved in the creation of the vengeful cruelty that forms the basis of the inferior guy’s ‘shadow’.

this latter type wouldn’t be ‘weak’ as peterson claims, because his id is not ‘broken’ by some super-ego that brings to bear an awareness of inferiority.

such an example could be used to analyze any particular instance of a ‘shadow’ and whether or not it is a center of psychic sickness or health. whether or not it is a product of a natural, anachronistic will unaffected by modern society’s pressure to passively adapt to all the conflicts it creates, or a product of a poisoned conscience that forces frustrated and/or inferior people to endure their psychic split and keep the ‘other’ side hidden… in which case it inevitably finds a way out in expressions of ressentiment and revenge.

some shadows are great, others not so much. to make/keep the shadow - which is really only the ‘id’ - healthy and strong, quite a bit of intellect is needed to sort through the incriminating nonsense that modern psychology has made out of it and refuse to drink the kool-aid they try to sell you.

one very obvious fact is that in an environment where there are multifarious forms of competition… more cases of the ‘sick’ shadow are made possible, because there will be more cases of losers… and losers resent. not to say that these competitions aren’t ‘natural’, of course. only to say that with them come certain kinds of consequences that might not exist in other environments in which no such competition exists.

The unconscious psyche makes itself known only indirectly via images. These arise spontaneously as dreams, hypnagogic hallucinations, daydreams, slips of the tongue, earworms, etc. One can become more aware of the images by attending to them. According to my experience, the psyche is a wise and subtle trickster who knows more about me than I do consciously.