When the Shadow comes to call …

The “shadow,” in Jungian psychology, is everything repressed and refused by consciousness. That which we feel, think, desire and believe which is unacceptable to us personally, or to our families, or to our culture is buried deep. The problem with the shadow is that is doesn’t vanish … in fact the fiercer the repression, the more powerful the shadow becomes. The shadow breaks out of its prison in any way that it can. The primary way is through “projection.” Rather than facing their own shadow, the individual (or country) projects these rejected qualities outward, onto others.

The perceived weakness a man has within himself he represses and projects onto women. The greed a woman feels she represses and projects onto Jews. The violent urges a white man has he projects onto black men. The murderous zealotry a Christian has she projects onto Muslims.

What we don’t want to see and own becomes our personal shadow, and in the same way in the formation of a collective national culture, what we don’t want to see and own becomes our national shadow.

The fury, shock, fear, and hatred bursting out from all sides following the Trump election seems to me to be a sign that the Shadow has come to call on a national scale. On the one hand racists and xenophobes have felt empowered to act out their shadow in violent ways since the election. On the other side democrats and progressives express shock, despair, and scramble to explain how Trump could possibly have been elected. One thing that I noticed was that various groups have adopted different narratives of the how and why of Trumps electoral college win – and they are defending those versions with a furor that, itself, seems to be evidence of the shadow at play. Skip from news outlet to news outlet, Facebook to Twitter and the reasons range from Racism, to Sexism, to the Media, to Facebook, to the economy and dire state of the working and middle classes, to Bernie Sanders, to the failure of the Democratic establishment to comprehend the true tenor of the political moment in their campaign strategy, to election rigging, to third party candidates syphoning off voters, to a nihilistic desire to see America’s system of government burn.

I wholeheartedly agree with the importance of sussing out the reasons behind Trump’s win (including if it is Russian hackers). What has stunned me is that rather than taking all of the information in and weighing it together – there is a terrible desperation to defend one’s particular version, to the exclusion of all others.

Personally, I tend to agree with the far left, more economic-based perspective that many of the voters for Trump did so because of their desperation and despair over their economic position in America and a frustration with the Democrats who were supposed to be the champions of the working class. To illustrate, a quote from Noam Chomsky in an excellent interview from November 14^th on Truth-out. As Chomsky says:

The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the 50’s and 60’s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

Despite the advent of the Affordable Care Act, many people haven’t received truly affordable health insurance. Even with government subsidies, rates are high enough to cause most of the people who qualify for those subsidies, real grief. I can personally attest to that.

So I agree that economic and social despair contributed largely to the election. But I would also argue that these voters, even if not actively racist, were able to overlook Trump’s blatant racism to vote for him. And even if that’s not the same as being a card-carrying neo-nazi, it is a tacit acceptance of the racism that runs so deep in America.

The same goes for sexism. Even if all those Trump voters (many of them women) aren’t actively misogynist … this vote marks a tacit acceptance of an underlying malignant sexism within the country and within our psyches.

And what about Climate Change? Perhaps the biggest loser of this baffling election cycle is, well, the planet. Despite the fact that according to 2 different polls (A Monmouth poll in 2015 and a Gallup poll in 2016) between 64-70% of Americans believe in and are concerned about climate change – those Trump voters were able to put that concern aside when they voted for Trump. They were okay with a candidate who claimed that Climate Change was a hoax made up by China, and whose main concern about it apparently was that he wasn’t able to use the aerosol hairspray he used to like.

Prior to the election – in October, there came the news that the world may lose a full 2/3 of its wild animals by 2020. And on November 8^th the World Meteorological Organization delivered a report that confirmed that climate change is speeding along to devastating effect. See (this, this, and this again.)

But here is the thing, I think that this urge to pigeonhole the reasons behind the vote – to passionately make it about only one or another issue – comes from the same “letting it slide” urge that Trump voters had when they filled in the circle next to his name.

Its just too painful to hold it all in our heads and hearts … to face that America is not only failing the majority of its people economically, but also that it has failed to live up to its promise as a place of equality and justice, and the knowledge that our way of life has disproportionately contributed to the dawn of the Anthropocene era—with its mass extinctions, drowning coastlines, droughts, and mega-storms. With only 5% of the world’s population, America has, for decades, used roughly 25% of the world’s natural resources. (Here.) That is another large piece of the shadow that we have been carrying around.

There are so many reasons to cling to ignorance, to ignore the shadow. Shame, guilt. Grief. The loss of a sense of solidity, the inability to rely on others to run our lives for us or give us the answers. In Jungian terms, the period when the shadow comes to call is the beginning of the dark night of the soul. It is the harrowing decent into darkness that heralds the beginning of the process of individuation. Basically facing the shadow is a requirement for growing up. The “persona” – the shiny narrative of our selves, and of our country, which is accepted as reality – must be broken down. We have to see the dark side, personally and nationally. Now that decent into chaos poses huge risks – it is a time when, since everything we thought was solid is found to be fluid, we run the risk of over-identifying with the shadow, of becoming the darkness.

Balance comes with the acceptance of responsibility, the ability to heal while maintaining a conscious awareness of the shadow, a responsibility toward it, without merging with it. Despite its terrors, as with the psychological process within an individual, this dark night is an opportunity for us, collectively, to truly see ourselves, our country, our history, as it is. It is only through this process of clear-sighted awareness that we have any hope of changing the course of our nation, of making the radical shifts necessary to generate real change.

A personal lesson about fear ….

I haven’t posted a blog since just before the election. Right afterward I had lots of ideas for blogs, including one about fear. I wanted to post a poem by Joy Harjo called “I Give You Back.” It’s a poem I have loved for a long time. On the Wednesday following the election the poem deeply moved and inspired me to work past my initial grief and fear about the election results.

But I didn’t post that article. Or the three or four others I considered in the following weeks. A month later here I am. So why didn’t I post? What happened? Well … fear.

Fear is one of the great inventions of the human evolutionary process. Fear alerts us to danger, both physical and emotional, and can prompt us to respond in a way that will save our lives, triggering the “Fight or Flight” response.

Fear is usually real and valid. For immigrants, women, Muslims, and many others who Trump and his cabal of cronies maligned during the campaign, that fear is devastatingly real. For the working class that Trump promised to raise up that fear is likely to become real very soon. (He has already betrayed them with appointments like Andrew Puzder, CEO of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s – who has come out as opposed to raising the minimum wage, against overtime pay, and against paid sick time, as well as being anti-union -- as Secretary of Labor.)

Like so many women out there who have been the object of sexual predation (in my early childhood and again in high school), I watched Trump’s campaign in horror. His arrogant dismissal of women, his school-boy name-calling, his body-shaming, his use of the age old “she had her period” (though much more disgustingly stated) to try and reduce the valid questions of a journalist to so much feminine irrationalism – these examples of his misogyny were only made more urgent by the numerous women who came forward to accuse him of sexual assault.  

Its not that I was living under some kind of delusion that sexism was done and over with in American culture. Far from it. And its not that I think every person who voted for Trump is a malignant misogynist. But those voters were able to overlook his sexism and sexual predation when they voted for him. As happens so often in our culture those voters “let it slide”. This is the same thing that happens on college campuses where date rapists get off with a slap on the wrist, or in corporate or military culture where years of sexual harassment and assault go unpunished.

The election of Trump was a signal that some very large portion of the population are tacitly okay with misogyny, just as it shows a large part of the population are tacitly okay with racism and xenophobia. Not that that should be a surprise either … the lack of any real action on the epidemic of police killings of black people which led to the “Black Lives Matter” movement should be proof enough that just because the United States elected a black president in 2008, we aren’t living in a “post-racial” society.

And so back to fear ... There is one more, lesser known “F” that is often triggered by fear. In addition to “fight” and “flight” – there is also “freeze.” Its another one of those hardwired, gut-level, animal responses. Think of the wild rabbit in the brush – freezing in its tracks as you walk by on a trail.

For me personally, freeze has always been my brand of fear response. It started for me as a very young child, as a victim of sexual and emotional abuse.  If I freeze, if I become small enough, quiet enough, if I’m good enough … It’s the reaction tied, for me, with dissociation (which in psychology is the detachment from physical and emotional experience) – a pattern that has continued throughout my life. The ongoing freeze-fear often kept me distanced from friends, lovers, family, from physical and emotional joy. This numbness led me to self-harm in high school, and later led me into a multi-year low-level depression that I wasn’t even able to identify until I was on the other side of it. This fear has kept me from expressing myself, being authentic, from writing, and from engaging with the world for decades. I don’t share any of this for any other reason than to stand in solidarity with every other person on the planet who lives with fear. One way or another, that’s pretty much all 7 billion of us.

I share this because my response in the days following Trump’s election was initially a vow to engage with my fear, rather than let it rule my life. It’s a work in progress. This fear still lives inside me. This fear kept me from writing or posting this article until now (and I am shaking as I press the “post” button). And that is what people in power, people trying to exploit our fears, rely on. They want our fears to spin us out into attacking each other, into immobilizing us, into preventing us from banding together. Our fear helps them maintain control.

So here is the thing about fear … it is always a signal to pay attention. Whether it’s a politician threatening a Muslim registry and a wall – or a gut-level fear of being fully present and telling our story -- fear wants us to pay attention and see what’s really going on. It took me decades to start actually paying attention to the daily signals of fear in my body – to believe in that physical response and begin to investigate it.

So, here we go, finally – a poem from Joy Harjo about engaging with fear. She posted the poem on her Facebook page in July of this year with a preface and an offer to share it far and wide:

“Because of the fear monster infecting this country, I have been asked for this poem, this song. Feel free to use it, record it, and share. Please give credit. This poem came when I absolutely needed it. I was young and nearly destroyed by fear. I almost didn’t make it to twenty-three. This poem was given to me to share.” – Joy Harjo

Fear Poem, or I Give You Back

I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin, but now, I don’t know you
as myself. I release you with all the
pain I would know at the death of
my children.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the soldiers
who burned down my home, beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.

I release you
I release you
I release you
I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved.

To be loved, to be loved, fear.

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart my heart.

But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid
of dying.

c. Joy Harjo, “She Had Some Horses”

Voting from our wounds ...

Voting from our wounds …

This morning mist rose from the mountains east of the apartment. Yesterday, there was a double rainbow across the valley. The pear tree, leaves a perfect slick red, is still holding on to handfuls of its leaves. These are comforting physical facts. Reminders of beauty in what has been feeling lately like a world without hope.

There is such fury, fear, and invective on all sides in this election – whether it is the mainstream democrats toward progressives voting for Jill Stein, or Bernie supporters heart-broken and enraged by the stealing of their candidate’s votes in the primary, to the fear-and-despair-driven invective of Trump supporters. We see a politics of conflagration arising out of the demise of the American dream, and a lack of confidence in the very concept of democracy as a form of government. (According to an article in The Economist, 25% of Americans born after 1980 think democracy is a “bad” form of government.)

No one is happy about this election, its candidates, or its potential outcomes, except perhaps the corporations which have made this state-of-affairs inevitable. With no one left to speak for the poor, the working class, and even the bleeding-at-the-seams middle class, the right-wing Democrats (who would be considered conservatives in any European nation) have pushed the Republican party right into the territory of the Tea Party and the wild-west reality-tv hucksterism of Trump.

On a day when I read about how Trump plans to eliminate all funding for alternative energy research if he wins the presidency (And seriously at this point I think that those in positions of power who act on their climate change denial should be considered criminals against the planet) I thought I would share some Noam Chomsky wisdom. Needless to say he is an idol of mine. Chomsky is a person of deep insight and keen intellect.

In an insightful article from progressive news outlet AlterNet, authors Jeff Cohen and Normon Solomon discuss “3 Dangerous Myths about Trump that Some Progressives Cling To”. The first is that Trump can’t win – and of course if you’re following the polls right now as obsessively as I am, you’ll see this isn’t necessarily true. The second and third myths both generally have to do with Trump not be able or “allowed” to enact his frightening social policies – but with episodes of armed Trump voters already harassing voters (and plans for mass turnout on election day to suppress the Black vote) the rhetoric is already being made reality. And if you think the Democratic machine or the Republicans currently against Trump are going to obstruct him – just take a look at history and notice that what these politicians mostly, ultimately, want is power (a main reason we’re in this situation). They ended with Chomsky’s advice on voting in a Clinton-Trump match-off: “in a swing state, a state where it’s going to matter which way you vote, I would vote against Trump, and by elementary arithmetic, that means you hold your nose and you vote Democrat.” 

But unlike so many of the voices I read out there, although he feels that if Trump wins, “the human species is in very deep trouble,” Chomsky also believes that Trump supporters have been failed by the system. As he says: “They give the impression of being hard-working serious people who think they’ve been doing everything right. They’ve been doing what they’re ‘supposed’ to do … What are they doing wrong and how come their lives are so crummy?” He goes on to say: “They’re not getting answers. The answers they are getting are not only crazy, but extremely dangerous, so the right response is to ask ourselves, why are we failing to organize these people?”

From my own limited perspective of this election, it feels like we are all the walking wounded. Each side elides negatives about “our” candidate and focuses with fury on the faults of the other. We are voting with our wounds. It isn’t something that I think is very new. I think in the past our “wounds” have made the majority of us vote for whichever candidate we felt would take over and then we could just forget about it, and go back into sleep mode for another four years. By and large we have voted for a “parent” to fix the problems, keep dinner on the table, and tell us how to feel about the issues. This in and of itself reflects a wounding of our ability to take responsibility for our own lives. 

And this year I think those wounds are particularly raw, deeper, scarier, more personal. It might be a woman voting for Trump who can’t admit the pain of having a father who denigrated and objectified her as a girl. Or a Stein voter who, as a progressive activist all his life, has shouldered the shadow-burden of America’s horrors and can’t bear to “take another one for the team.” It is all of us who have had faith in the massive edifice of our government, unable to square that faith with the daily reality of racism, gun violence, environmental disaster, poverty, misogyny, and perpetual war.

The thing about our wounds – the personal or the social – is that the scariest thing is to turn around a face them. But until we do there will always be fear, lashing out, and blind spots. The blind spot could be a professed liberal not seeing the corruption of the corporate-owned Democratic machine. It could be the inability of a Trump supporter to discern that despite his words, Trump, as a representative of the corporate model, will only ever look out for his own bottom line.

Without looking at the wound we will continue to blame each other for the problems of this world, rather than beginning to look rationally and with hope at reality. The thing about the United States is that it is us. And that can be harrowing, having to turn around and face the guilt and shame of our shared history. But it is also remarkable—because it means we can change it.