Shadow

It is crazy to me that we use “animal” to represent the shadow, especially if it is supposed to be “evil”. That, alone, speaks to how much in the shadow our own nature is.

Do animals build concentration camps? Do they industrially slaughter trillions of other animals? Okay, certain insects do that kind of thing. Is the shadow our insect-nature?
It might be the case. Like us, the crueler insects have societies, on whose behalf they kill and destroy like automatons.

I agree with Karpel that imagination and images do no suffice to bring the shadow to consciousness. It is, as Jung says, an arduous moral struggle. It lasts a lifetime, I think Jung would say the enlightened life is that moral struggle.

Yes, the emotions and passions often get blamed for violence and evil, but emotions and passions alone might lead to single acts of violence, but only detached and diseased tip top of the cortex can come up with cold holocausts and exterminations of the serfs, for examples. And the ones who carry that stuff out have long, dark shadows, because so much is suppressed and denied.

I don’t think 99% of people’s shadows are really very important, on an individual basis. There’s no point romanticising it, or blaming it, or believing it gives you super powers. It’s a ‘talent’ - a subset of abilities and psychological drivers used in extremis. And we all have one, but nor do I think there is much value either way whether people accept or deny it is a part of of them.

What matters is how it manifests, which is something we can control, and under what circumstances it becomes manifest which is largely something we cannot.

I’ve read a few books on behaviour. One covered mob psychology. What turns a bunch of peaceful protesters into molotov cocktail throwing, window-smashing looters…? It’s nothing much. Everybody has a threshold for violence. Some lower than others. Think of them as empty glasses that fill, and errupt into violence when they overflow. Listening to a speech will fill them a little. What fills them the most is seeing other people become violent, especially if a context exists where that violence is even remotely justified. It’s dominoes. A protester with a low threshold tips, charges the police shields - if this was shopping he or she would be termed an ‘early adopter’. This is enough to tip a whole secondry tier of people into violent action. The actions of those will tip almost everyone else. It works with bees too. :smiley:

We are basically lazy, some more than others, some less so. But we all see the logic of working just hard enough to achieve a given reward. Going against ingrained habits of thoughtfulness and non-violence is difficult. So we tend to count that into our subconscious formula of cost/gain - which is why we don’t usually let the shadow out very often. Cognitive dissonance - roughly equivalent to ‘acting out of character’ - kinda hurts.

There is 1% that does matter though. Psychopaths. People with very low thresholds, or no thresholds, for letting their shadows out. These people are almost always the early adopters of ‘evil’, whether physical, corporate, or institutional. 7.7 billion people last time I checked. That’s a whole lot of people with psychopathic tendencies. When a psychopath does a cost/gain analysis regarding a goal, they don’t have to figure in the cognitive dissonance of bad behaviour, to them instinctively, going to the shop and buying a chocolate bar is exactly the same as punching a kid in the face and taking theirs. The end is the same. They may learn not to eventually. In the same way someone dyslexic can learn to read. Difficult though.

But these guys, if they are in positions of power, can and will draw out other people’s shadows through (bad) example. Which is why you sometimes end up with your otherwise spectacularly normal Mum working at Auschwitz, planing to spend next month’s wages on kitchen appliances.

Research on psychopathy, and mandatory programs of early detection both wannabe parants and infants/children, would go a long way to solving some of our problems.

It was Jung himself writing in 1918 at the end of World War 1 who observed that the “ animal in us only becomes more beast-like” when it is repressed. He went on to say “ that is no doubt the reason why no religion is so defiled with the spilling of innocent blood as Christianity and why the world has never seen a bloodier war than that of the Christian nations” (Vol. 10, p.22)

It will be ironic indeed if this thread becomes a virtue signalling competition. But, yeah, yeah as the famous misanthropist Mark Twain wrote ‘Man’ is the lowest form of animal. cusd80.com/cms/lib/AZ010011 … 0Twain.pdf

And it may be the very split of the split of consciousness into light and shadow, and the repression of the latter that results in the projection that makes us the lowest. Jung thought if only he could get the practice of uncovering the Shadow to the masses he could save the world from self-destruction. But, how to do that?

Jung knew the process involved risks. As he said quoting Holderin, "Where danger is there is salvation also”. Still “ In so far as analytical treatment makes the “shadow” consciousness it causes a cleavage and a tension of opposites which in their turn seek compensation in unity.” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p335)

Re. Repression → Beast-like.

I think if you repress your innate will to violence you are necessarily utterly inexperienced in its use, and therefore find that when circumstance does conspire to summon forth that violence, you have zero control - neither over your own fear at that moment, nor the amount of violence or agression required to achieve your goal. So, driven back into a wholly animalistic, instinctive state, you lash out and only come back to yourself when everyone’s down and/or dead.

Everyone should do some full-contact self-defence at some point perhaps.

Re. Christians and bloody wars.

Well duh. Christianity is a psychological battle program for societies. It does its job well. So perhaps it’s not a surprise that it’s helped generate the worst wars. It’s like accusing ferraris of causing speeding…

Donald Trump–America’s shadow.

And he does an impression, sometimes, of The ID. But the neo-cons, who had at best mixed feelings about him, they got long dark shadows, and Clinton was right in there.

Certainly repressing anger can lead to violence when is comes screaming out. But think more violence is caused by repressed fear. Battering husbands are moving towards yang and aggression, because to go into their fear - that they are not lovable, that they are not in control, that they are not adequate, is too much for them. So, they flip to fear, because there anger has no fear to allow for a more nuanced reaction to when they feel disrespected, for example.

So, we get a leap from clenched anger expression with words to violence. This is a leap.

There is a huge space there in between verbal anger and violence,w hich would be to express both the fear and the rage in sound. To really show all that to yourself and the other person. But that feels dangerous, because the other will see your vulnerability. So they make the leap. Women obviously can do this also, though the tendency is not so strong.

I share this view.

The main difference between views is in value judgments of the shadow. The above and Jordan Peterson’s views have a positive value judgment, see the shadow a resource.

Trump is an integrated Shadow.
He has about a ten-thousandth of the number of deaths on his record as what would be the low average for US presidents. Yet, what little darkness there is in him is fully visible.

Given the opportunity, Abraxas forbid, Trump will surpass them all.

I think Americans have a very long unintegrated shadow and, despairing of it, project their dark stuff on Trump now. It is rather upsetting to see the nation reach so deep in darkness to cast off its moral shadow on such a convenient scapegoat, who in effect is doing really good work around the globe, handling the ‘darkness’ of US capacity for violence with elegant precision and, as far as Im concerned, highly sophisticated priorities. But … Trump plays it this way. It’s his method. I am in awe.

The moral struggle of integration is very much related to judging reality by what really happens, rather than what it makes you feel.

Ill shift to a more human-sized shadow. youtube.com/watch?v=SIkK-XH6TG8 - it just appeared in my suggestions and it is elementary shadow play.
“Every time this shit is coming, I turn this into a joke. I don’t want to go too deep. Because Im gonna get - maybe Im gonna understand. And Im gonna get scared for real.”

Is this thread going to be a vice signaling competition?

Yes lol I was gonna say.

Politics, dude.

Its the most complex shadow play there is in this world, wouldn’t you think?

What do you think of the comparison I made of clandestine services and the Shadow?

Again - I feel the Key, if there is any, to Jung, is the paradoxical relationship of the individual shadow with societal shadow.
Its almost like an LSD trip to contemplate them together.

For example, it is a common pattern to see musicians celebrate the individual shadow in one song and denounce the societal shadow in the next.
Sex drugs and rock and roll, and then preaching of peace and love and social order. Eminem, who becomes famous by rapping about violence and then uses this fame to help enforce moral restrictions on less wealthy people.

Meaning such celebration of the shadow as what he is famed for is what Jung attributes to monkeys.
Its almost as if art has yet to be born.

It may be necessary to know a bit of Nietzsche in order to wade through Jung’s murky shadow concept, which appears to exist beyond the distinction of individual and society.

The individual as a polis of drives inside of a larger polis of drives, without a clear distinction.

This explains much of camp-guard type behaviour. Violence is displaced. And also on the other side, excessive meekness is cultivated.
Both go hand in hand to create death-camps. The US was set up almost to enforce a bit of capacity for violence upon everyone, to push for integration of the shadow.

“When we strive after the good or the beautiful, we thereby forget our own nature, which is distinctiveness, and we are delivered over to the qualities of the pleroma, which are pairs of opposites. We labor to attain to the good and the beautiful, yet at the same time we also lay hold of the evil and the ugly, since in the pleroma these are one with the good and the beautiful. When, however, we remain true to our own nature, which is distinctiveness, we distinguish ourselves from the good and the beautiful, and, therefore, at the same time, from the evil and the ugly. And thus we fall not into the pleroma, namely, into nothingness and dissolution.” ( From" Septem Sermones ad Mortuos" by Carl Gustav Jung, 1916)

You want it darker? youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y

“What precisely is the fucking shadow?”

He may have changed his mind - since - (these chaps were renowned for writing lots of books). However, from what I hear, Mister Young said, in the IotP:

The character that summarizes a person’s uncontrolled emotional manifestations consists, in the first place, of his inferior qualities or peculiarities. Even people we like and appreciate suffer from certain imperfections of character that have to be taken into the bargain. When people are not at their best, such flaws become clearly visible. I have called the inferior and less commendable part of a person the shadow.

My hat is off to those who skip through the process! :laughing:

Bru that’s not even sundown. It’s in fact nine o clock in the morning when everyone realises it from tme to time.
If not every day.

Same to Derley. A little darker would be good.