The Dark Side: good and evil co-existing in humans.

This blog has moved

2010-04-28T12:35:00.001-04:00

This blog is now located at http://humanshadowdiscovery.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://humanshadowdiscovery.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Civilization's First Attack Ads, by John Lundberg

2008-04-27T09:46:00.002-04:00

If you've missed Rudy Giuliani's 9-11 exploitation ads or waited anxiously for Swiftboaters to start running some shadowy Bin Laden video, this 2008 Democratic primary is for you! At the rate it's devolving, voters in South Dakota and Montana can look forward to Deal or No Deal getting interrupted by footage of Hitler at the Reichstag--with Obama.

All the ridiculous sniping got me wondering how politicians went after one another before television. It turns out the Ancient Greeks--inventors of Democracy--may also have invented the first smear tactic: the attack poem.

Don't laugh. Poetry was primarily spoken, not written, back then, and it was often recited publicly. A well-timed poetic assault in front of the right audience could do some serious damage to one's rival. Archilochus, a soldier and renowned poet in the 7th Century BC, had such a gift for these attacks that it's said he drove a rival--and his entire family--to hang themselves. His verse was nasty enough to get him banned from Sparta. Just how how nasty could Archilochus get? Here's a poem he directed at a rival (all translations are from Brooks Haxton's book Dances for Flute and Thunder from Viking Press):

Swept overboard, unconscious in the breakers,
strangled with seaweed, may you wake up in a gelid

surf, your teeth, already cracked into the shingle,

now set rattling by the wind, while facedown,

helpless as a poisoned cur, on all fours you puke

brine reeking of dead fish. May those you meet,

barbarians as ugly as their souls are hateful,

treat you to the moldy wooden bread of slaves.

And may you, with your split teeth sunk in that,

smile, then, the way you did when speaking as my friend.

Such attacks weren't an uncommon practice. Even the kinder, gentler--though no less passionate--poet Sappho (7th-6th Century BC), lashed out at her enemies:

Dead, no thought of you from anyone
who wants or wishes anything,

no one word said concerning you, forgotten,

wavering beyond extinction, may you be

unseen, and restless there, among the corpses.

In a particularly vicious (and effective) political attack, Timokreon of Rhodes (5th Century BC) wrote the following lines about Themistokles, a hero in the Athenians' war against the Persian Empire. Off the battlefield, not everyone held Themistokles in such high regard. Here's Timokreon's attack:

Themistokles--who kept Timokreon his former host in exile,
and who helped his fellow thieves, hurt friends, and murdered

anyone you like, for money--first was ostracized,

and then, before he killed himself in shame, set up

an inn for scum and losers, whom he served cold meat.

There, at his own table, lowlife daily cursed his name.

It's the textual equivalent of stabbing someone on the forum floor. Simonides, a friend of Themistokles, struck back at Timokreon after his death with the following epitaph:

Having eaten much, drunk much, and said much ill
of many men, here lies Timokreon of Rhodes.

I guess it's heartening to know that politics hasn't deteriorated much since Ancient Greece. If anything, it's gotten more civil (and probably less artful). How might the old attack poem look today? Here's my best shot:

Barack--who kept me from my rightful nomination,
who would not wear flag pins, and called many men

bitter--long ago he crossed paths with scum and losers:

a thief, a former Weatherman and a crazed preacher

who said "God Damn America." He's also Muslim,

some say, though I take him at his word.

And, of course, the responding epitaph:

Having spent much, won...not so much, and said much ill
of one man, here lies Hillary's campaign.

Here's hoping we can use that last one soon.

END

Paschal: aside from the above, in both the Old Testament and the New we find plenty of "attack ads" or diatribes against others, even among the words of Jesus.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/civilizations-first-attac_b_98647.html?view=print

How Texas viewed polygamist cults differently.

2008-04-12T11:48:00.001-04:00

Unlike Arizona and Utah, it closed a compound forcibly.
By Miguel Bustillo and Nicholas Riccardi,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
April 12, 2008

ELDORADO, TEXAS -- After a polygamist sect took up residence outside this tiny ranch town a few years ago, the library stocked paperback, cassette and hardcover copies of "Under the Banner of Heaven," an unsparing look at such groups that was suddenly in hot demand.

The local weekly newspaper devoted stories in nearly every edition to the outsiders. And it posted online audio clips of the sect's self-styled prophet, Warren Jeffs, ranting in a creepy monotone about the Beatles being covert agents of a "Negro race."

The people of Eldorado (pronounced el-doh-RAY-do) took in the sect's arrival with nervous anticipation -- because they understood that, unlike in Utah and Arizona, this would not last long in Texas.

Texas' aggressive raid this month -- in which state investigators took custody of more than 400 children, disclosed evidence that men were marrying girls at puberty, and discovered beds allegedly used for sex acts inside a towering temple -- is the most decisive action against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in at least half a century.

Court papers released Friday showed that state investigators hauled off a cache of evidence from the polygamist compound that included marriage and birth records and what was cryptically described as a "cyanide poisoning document."

Texas' raid contrasts sharply with the approaches of Arizona and Utah, which have looked the other way for decades while the FLDS put underage girls into "spiritual marriages." The 10,000-member sect was founded in the 1930s by religious leaders who continued practicing polygamy after it was banned by the Mormon Church in 1890.

"God bless Texas," said Flora Jessop, an activist who escaped the FLDS at age 16. "The state has done in days what Arizona and Utah failed to do in more than a century -- protect children."

Authorities in the sect's home states have recently taken more aggressive steps; Utah successfully prosecuted Jeffs last year for being an accomplice to rape after he arranged the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her cousin, and Jeffs awaits trial in Arizona on similar charges.

Utah and Arizona officials have long argued that polygamists are too entrenched in their states to simply stamp them out. In Utah, Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff's office has prosecuted polygamists for child abuse. But it has never contemplated a full-scale raid like the one in Texas, spokesman Paul Murphy said.

"Our approach has been, if there is child abuse in one family, we will deal with that family," Murphy said.

The office is trying to build trust in polygamist communities to report crimes such as underage marriage, Murphy added, but the Texas raids have sowed panic even in groups that practice polygamy only among consenting adults.

Texas Rangers stressed they tried to respect the group's religious privacy while searching for a 16-year-old girl who called a family shelter and claimed she was sexually abused by a man she was forced to marry at age 15. But after being refused a key to the compound's imposing temple, Texas Rangers forced their way inside -- and even applied Jaws of Life rescue tools to its doors -- as 57 men from the sect cried and prayed.

The girl, who claimed she gave birth eight months ago and was pregnant once again, has yet to be found.

"You can worship what you want, think what you want. But if you act to abuse girls sexually in Texas, we are going to take action," said Texas Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar.

The only FLDS event that compares to the Texas action is the dramatic 1953 raid by Arizona state police and the U.S. National Guard on the community of Short Creek. Authorities took about 400 residents -- the entire FLDS population at the time -- into custody and hauled away 236 children.

Emotional accounts of Short Creek children weeping while government agents stripped them from their mothers generated a backlash, and Arizona Gov. John Howard Pyle lost his job the next year, a lesson that influenced future Utah and Arizona politicians.

In Texas, however, the only criticism of the raid so far seems to be that it took too long to happen.

"It should have been taken care of a long time ago," said Charmarie Swinford, 37, a waitress at the Hitch'n Post, an Eldorado restaurant that had one item on the lunch menu: hamburger. "I have a daughter who's 14, and I just can't . . . " she said, her voice trailing off.

Men from the sect first showed up in Eldorado, population 1,800, in 2003 and said they were looking for a hunting retreat.

But soon after the men starting building up an exotic game ranch on the outskirts of town, it became clear that this was no hunters lodge.

WHY GOOD PEOPLE KILL, Rosa Parks, referencing the work of psycholotgist Stanley Milgrim.

2006-06-10T11:12:00.000-04:00

Why Good People Kill
Iraq murders reveal the warping power of conformity and dehumanization.
by Rosa Brooks

Are Americans good people?

After Vietnam — after My Lai, after the free-fire zones — many Americans were no longer sure.

After Haditha, the same question is again beginning to haunt us. We're supposed to be a virtuous nation; our troops are supposed to be the good guys. If it turns out that Marines murdered 24 civilians, including children and infants, how could that have happened?

In response to Haditha, U.S. government officials quickly reverted to the "bad apple" theory.

It's a tempting theory, and not just for the Bush administration. It suggests a vast and reassuring divide between "us" (the virtuous majority, who would never, under any circumstances, commit coldblooded murder) and "them" (the sociopathic, bad-apple minority). It allows us to hold on to our belief in our collective goodness. If we can just toss the few rotten Americans out of the barrel quickly enough, the rot won't spread.

The problem with this theory is that it rests on a false assumption about the relationship between character and deeds. Yes, sociopaths exist, but ordinary, "good" people are also perfectly capable of committing atrocities.

In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a famous experiment. He told subjects to administer electric shocks to other people, ostensibly to assess the effect of physical punishment on learning. In fact, Milgram wanted to "test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist."

Quite a lot of pain, it turned out. Most of Milgram's subjects continued to administer what they believed to be severe and agonizing shocks even when their "victims" (actually Milgram's assistants) screamed and begged them to stop.

Milgram's subjects weren't sociopaths. On the contrary, most expressed extreme distress about administering progressively more severe shocks. But almost all of them did it anyway.

Milgram's basic findings have been extended and confirmed since the 1960s. Depressingly, experimental evidence and historical experience suggest that even the gentlest people can usually be induced to inflict or ignore suffering.

There are several key factors that lead "good people" to do terrible things. The first, as the Milgram experiments powerfully demonstrated, is authority: Most ordinary people readily allow the dictates of "authorities" to trump their own moral instincts.

The second is conformity. Few people have the courage to go against the crowd.

The third is dehumanization of the victims. The Nazis routinely depicted Jews as "vermin" in need of extermination, for instance. Similarly, forcing victims to wear distinctive clothing (yellow stars, prison uniforms), shave their heads and so on can powerfully contribute to their dehumanization.

Orders, peer expectations and dehumanization need not be explicit to have a powerful effect. In adversarial settings such as prisons or conflict zones, subtle cues and omissions — the simple failure of authorities to send frequent, clear and consistent messages about appropriate behavior, for instance — can be as powerful as direct orders.

Against this backdrop, is it really surprising that ordinary, decent Marines may have committed atrocities in Haditha? All the key ingredients were present in one form or another: intense pressure from authorities to capture or kill insurgents; intense pressure from peers to seem tough and to avenge the deaths of comrades; the almost inevitable dehumanization that occurs when two groups look different, speak different languages, live apart and are separated by a chasm of mistrust.

Add in the discomfort, the fear, the constant uncertainty about the identity and location of the enemy and the relative youth of so many of our soldiers, and you have a recipe for atrocities committed not by "bad apples" but by ordinary people little different, and probably no worse, than most of us.

Of course, individuals still make their own choices. Most of Milgram's experimental subjects administered severe electric shocks — but a few refused. If Marines are proved to have massacred civilians at Haditha, they should be punished accordingly.

But let's not let the Bush administration off the hook. It's the duty of the government that sends troops to war to create a context that enables and rewards compassion and courage rather than callousness and cruelty. This administration has done just the opposite.

Our troops were sent to fight an unnecessary war, without adequate resources or training for the challenges they faced. At the same time, senior members of the administration made clear their disdain for the Geneva Convention's rules on war and for the principles and traditions of the military. Belated and halfhearted investigations into earlier abuses sent the message that brutality would be winked at — unless the media noticed, in which case a few bad apples would be ceremoniously ejected from the barrel, while higher-ups would go unpunished.

If we're talking about apples, we should also keep another old proverb in mind: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Rosa Brooks is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Her experience includes service as a senior advisor at the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, as a consultant for the Open Society Institute and Human Rights Watch, as a board member of Amnesty International USA, and as a lecturer at Yale Law School. Brooks has authored articles on international law, human rights, and the law of war, and her book, "Can Might Make Rights? The Rule of Law After Military Interventions" (with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman), will be published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

Who do we hate the most? Those most like us.

2006-05-26T21:33:00.000-04:00

The Narcissism of Differences Big and Small

By Sam Vaknin

Freud coined the phrase "narcissism of small differences" in a paper titled "The Taboo of Virginity" that he published in 1917. Referring to earlier work by British anthropologist Ernest Crawley, he said that we reserve our most virulent emotions – aggression, hatred, envy – towards those who resemble us the most. We feel threatened not by the Other with whom we have little in common – but by the "nearly-we", who mirror and reflect us.

The "nearly-he" imperils the narcissist's selfhood and challenges his uniqueness, perfection, and superiority – the fundaments of the narcissist's sense of self-worth. It provokes in him primitive narcissistic defences and leads him to adopt desperate measures to protect, preserve, and restore his balance. I call it the Gulliver Array of Defence Mechanisms.

The very existence of the "nearly-he" constitutes a narcissistic injury. The narcissist feels humiliated, shamed, and embarrassed not to be special after all – and he reacts with envy and aggression towards this source of frustration.

In doing so, he resorts to splitting, projection, and Projective Identification. He attributes to other people personal traits that he dislikes in himself and he forces them to behave in conformity with his expectations. In other words, the narcissist sees in others those parts of himself that he cannot countenance and deny. He forces people around him to become him and to reflect his shameful behaviours, hidden fears, and forbidden wishes.

But how does the narcissist avoid the realisation that what he loudly decries and derides is actually part of him? By exaggerating, or even dreaming up and creatively inventing, differences between his qualities and conduct and other people's. The more hostile he becomes towards the "nearly-he", the easier it is to distinguish himself from "the Other".

To maintain this self-differentiating aggression, the narcissist stokes the fires of hostility by obsessively and vengefully nurturing grudges and hurts (some of them imagined). He dwells on injustice and pain inflicted on him by these stereotypically "bad or unworthy" people. He devalues and dehumanises them and plots revenge to achieve closure. In the process, he indulges in grandiose fantasies, aimed to boost his feelings of omnipotence and magical immunity.

In the process of acquiring an adversary, the narcissist blocks out information that threatens to undermine his emerging self-perception as righteous and offended. He begins to base his whole identity on the brewing conflict which is by now a major preoccupation and a defining or even all-pervasive dimension of his existence.

Very much the same dynamic applies to coping with major differences between the narcissist and others. He emphasises the large disparities while transforming even the most minor ones into decisive and unbridgeable.

Deep inside, the narcissist is continuously subject to a gnawing suspicion that his self-perception as omnipotent, omniscient, and irresistible is flawed, confabulated, and unrealistic. When criticised, the narcissist actually agrees with the critic. In other words, there are only minor differences between the narcissist and his detractors. But this threatens the narcissist's internal cohesion. Hence the wild rage at any hint of disagreement, resistance, or debate.

Similarly, intimacy brings people closer together – it makes them more similar. There are only minor differences between intimate partners. The narcissist perceives this as a threat to his sense of uniqueness. He reacts by devaluing the source of his fears: the mate, spouse, lover, or partner. He re-establishes the boundaries and the distinctions that were removed by intimacy. Thus restored, he is emotionally ready to embark on another round of idealisation (the Approach-Avoidance Repetition Complex).

Right Wing Take-over of our Mainstream Churches?

2006-05-18T19:52:00.000-04:00

'STATE OF BELIEF' WAKE UP & LISTEN,

May 21, 5 pm. Radio program

This Sunday, May 21, on the national radio show State of Belief, Rev.
Welton Gaddy exposes the coordinated effort to undermine mainline
Protestantism -- and render America's largest denominations incapable of
standing up to right wing politics.

This unprecedented look into the takeover of America's churches reveals
the ugly truths, personal experiences, and exhaustive research of four
leaders: Dr. Bruce Prescott, Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma
Baptists, is, like Welton, a veteran of the purges that marked the
conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. The strategy,
says Prescott, is to keep mainstream denominations in turmoil over wedge
issues such as gay marriage, so that conservative leaders can be free to
achieve their political and religious goals.

Dr. John Dorhauer, minister for the St. Louis Association of the United
Churches of Christ, has seen congregations around him descend into
in-fighting, provoked by right-wing propaganda. Dorhauer explains, "What
the politically motivated achieve is the silence of the religious
conscience voice that has historically led this country....If you take
out the 45 million people that are represented by the National Council
of Churches, you are going to hollow out one of the cores of our
nation's democracy."

Dr. Andrew Weaver, a United Methodist pastor and research psychologist,
has traced the campaign against mainline Protestantism largely to the
Institute on Religion and Democracy, a think-tank funded by
uber-conservatives such as Richard Mellon Scaife and The Adolph Coors
Trust. Weaver says that the IRD and so-called religious "renewal" groups
are funneling money in "a systematic effort to undermine mainline
churches that still have democratic, transparent processes." The problem
in countering these efforts, he says, is that "All of these traditions
have niceness at the core; while we've been thinking it's touch
football, they've been playing tackle."

Welton offers listeners a wake-up call: "The Southern Baptist Convention
was lost not because of those trying to take it over, but because of
people arguing that it wasn't a big deal." This issue has never before
been discussed on national radio, and continues State of Belief's focus
on how religion is being manipulated for partisan political purposes. It
may stun listeners - and it is sure to inspire Protestant congregations
to reclaim their role as a positive and much needed healing force in our
nation.

State of Belief: religion and radio, done differently. State of Belief
is heard nationwide on Air America Radio on Sundays. In Asheville, you
can listen on Air America Radio, 801AM, from 5 to 6 PM EST. Information
about other affiliates, listening live via the internet, or podcasting
can be found at www.StateofBelief.com

Blindness of the white poliitical power structure in the U.S.A.

2005-09-03T18:16:00.000-04:00

September 2, 2005
A Can't-Do Government
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"

Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.

Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

DARE WE INTERROGATE OURSELVES?

2005-06-12T09:01:00.000-04:00

June 12, 2005
NY TIMES MAGAZINE.

Interrogating Ourselves

By JOSEPH LELYVELD

I. The Silence After Abu Ghraib

In order to get to the nub of the question of what we as citizens really expect and require of American interrogators facing supposed terrorists -- how far we're prepared to allow those asking the questions to venture into the dark realm of brutalization and coercion -- let's for argument's sake put aside the most horrific, shameful cases, those of detainees who died under interrogation: that of Manadel al-Jamadi, for instance, whose body was wrapped in plastic and packed in ice when it was carried out of an Abu Ghraib prison shower room a year and a half ago, where he'd been handcuffed to a wall; or Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who, elsewhere in Iraq, appears to have been thrust headfirst into a sleeping bag, manhandled there and then, finally, suffocated. By anyone's definition of torture -- even that of the Bush administration, which originally propounded (and later withdrew) a strikingly narrow definition holding that torture occurs only when the pain is ''of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure'' -- these cases answer the question of whether torture has been committed by our side in what's called the global war on terror. No one steps forward to condone what's plainly illegal under United States and international law. And although we've seen no indication that blame will attach to any official or command officer at any level for these killings, there are small signs that conclusions have been drawn somewhere between the Pentagon and White House, signs of an overdue housecleaning, or maybe just a tidying up. By the coldest cost-benefit calculation, a dead detainee is a disaster: he cannot be a source of ''actionable intelligence,'' only fury. So there's now a new policy, ''Procedures for Investigations Into the Death of Detainees in the Custody of the Armed Forces of the U.S.,'' that was duly conveyed last month to the Committee Against Torture, a United Nations body, in a subsection of a longer report. The subsection's heading even carried a whiff of contrition. It was ''Lessons Learned and Policy Reforms.'' Also, the Pentagon has let it be known that it's preparing a new manual for interrogators that prohibits physical and psychological humiliation of detainees. What interrogation techniques it does allow are listed in a classified annex as, presumably, are any hints of what can happen when those techniques fail to produce the desired results. Can the detainee then be handed over to another agency, like the Central Intelligence Agency, that may not be constrained by the new directives? Or to units of a foreign government like the counterterrorism units now being financed and coordinated in Iraq by the United States?

For more, see NY Times Magazine, feature article, June 12, 2005.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/magazine/12TORTURE.html?pagewanted=print

The Ultimate Temptation of the Religious Person

2005-04-29T04:41:00.000-04:00

THE ULTIMATE TEMPTATION
c. Paschal Baute, 1985

Once, out of time, the devil went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick up something from the ground.

"What did that man find?" asked the friend.

"A Piece of truth,” said the devil.

"Doesn't that disturb you?" asked the friend.

"No," said the devil, "I shall help him make a belief out of it. Before long, out of the vanity of his own discovery, he will end up worshiping his belief. Then he will become blind to all other truth!" And the devil laughed.

The temptation to use one's vision of God (or one’s reading of Scripture) to judge others is the ultimate temptation of the religious person down through the ages.

Once we decide we have some hold on some truth, then bolster this by some appeal to faith, bible or orthodox teaching, we put ourselves on the side-of-the-angels, and assume that God supports OUR view. Then we believe that anyone who opposes this view is either "blind," further removed from God, or perhaps even on the side-of-the-devil.

Our blindness in this is that we are more interested in proving the rightness of our point of view, than in discovering others views, finding out what else God may have said, or in appreciating that other sincere people, devout people of any Wisdom traditon, can come to very different points of view.

To the extent that we do this with faith, we have made an idol of our belief, and judged others by this belief. What concerns us is not God's truth, which in its depths is unknowable and incomprehensible, but such a passionate attachment to our idea of God that we find it impossible to believe that God does not share our vision.

Every convinced crusader, vigilante, book-burner, Klan-er, Nazi, Communist, Inquisitor, Censor, or terrorist has the burning conviction that They Alone are right with God, God is on “our side,” and that WE stand against the forces of evil. Because our own conviction is so sincere and noble, ours conviction must be the only right one.

Anytime we use our vision of God, our faith, to judge others as further from God than we are, we are guilty of a form of idolatry, a true perversion of belief. We reassure our own demons, and add to the forces of intolerance and prejudice. Thereby we add our speck to the power of evil in the world, all the while believing we are doing something good and holy. Unconsciously and symbolically we also re-enact the violent founding murder of Jesus by judging brother and sister using the gift of faith to do so.

Can we begin to understand that our need to be right has nothing whatever to do with any love of truth or God. Jesus didn't tell us to look for ways to be sure, but rather to take care: "Be careful lest the light in you be darkness." (Luke 11:35) Gregory of Nyssa in the third century said: "Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything." Religious people still kill people "in God's name.".

Consider that we have often distorted the way of Being Christian into a "salvation" exclusively for us, for our group of believers, and further, been ready to judge others as further from God because they do not hold the same beliefs. Rather than a dualistic acceptable/non-acceptable division of people, perhaps the unique way of being Christian has more to do with total equality of discipleship, and that each of us can learn from another, no matter how divergent the path, history, experience, or sinfulness we confront. Maybe this mystery we call God is already present; around, within and between us, and our summons is to recognize “that of God” in each and every human being.

We are being asked today to realize that we live in a global community, that each's welfare is dependent upon all others. We are called to accept the we are truly brothers and sisters of one another. If we dare to call God "Father," then every human being is brother and sister.

So we should be ready to give witness, but not to pass judgment on those whose convictions conflict with our own. This means that we must struggle to walk very humbly before God, to seek the truth and stand for it with passion but never act as if we have exclusive claim upon it. When we consider the terrible harm done to millions in the history of religion, we must conclude that no moral crisis can ever dispense people of conscience from full respect for the freedom and responsibility of every other conscience.

"You are confused about what has gone wrong, and how to set it right?" the prophet asks. "Then listen. This is what Yahweh asks of you, only this: to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

Comment, discussion?

TRIUMPH OF EVIL, 1994 Rwandan genocide

2005-03-19T00:06:00.000-05:00

One of the myths of Western civilization is that it is sufficient to be rational, generally benevolent and sincere. The dark side of human nature does not exist among civilized and cultured peoples. Yet in my work as a psychotherapist and psychologist and marital counselor over 40 years , I know not a few who by means of their own blindness to themselves end up being actually cruel to others. I have known suicides of despair that a spouse could not care or understand. If we want to understand who we are as a people, as humans, we must address the why and wherefore of human evil. How it can happen, and what are the conditions that encourage or support it?

"SOMETIMES IN APRIL" is a gripping new HBO movie, showing March 19, Saturday, 8-10:30 p.m. ET. , currently reviewed in WSJ, p. W6, Friday, March 18. In the Spring of 1994, Rwanda was ripe for disaster. Members of the French backed Hutu government were chafing at the terms of the UN supervised agreement to share power with a minority Tutsi rebel group. Resentment toward the Tutsis who had been once favored by Gelgian colonial rulers was growing. Under Hutu rule a whole system of delineation had been enforced including national identity papers.

Over 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered, while UN, Belgium and France--all of whom had a military presence there--failed to act, and the Clinton administration was reluctant to take any action. Hitler's or Stalin's butchers are not the last we shall see. We have had other holocausts since the Nazi Shoah against the Jews (which was also against anyone labeled or designated as not of Aryanian purity: gypsies, handicapped children, mentally ill, etc.

Question. What are the seeds of evil if not the dissing of another race or another faith, to somehow make them less than human? How can a people of faith, or a civilized humane society prevent such mass murder? The process of discounting and shunning another starts out slow and gradual, but can slowly take over the minds and hearts of others, as it did for 60 million German Catholics and Lutherans in the 1930s.

OUR PERSONAL SHADOWS Everyone's Unfinished Midlilfe Summons, Part One.

2005-02-09T23:51:00.000-05:00

"We have met the enemy and he is us." -Pogo

We learn in many ways
and find we can still learn
about ourselves
at different levels of being
as Life Invites us
to go deeper to
titanic vaults
of unguessed wisdom.

Often we are too busy
to pay close attention
take time to feel and discover
scarcely listen to selves
seldom to our inner-most selves:
vast sea within
seeking voyager!

In the changing of seasons
and our search after Life
we are brought
slowly but surely
sometimes sorely
to our own singular Truth
by Ways we could not foresee.

We have the right to understand
all stages of our experience:
even those we disallow,
are not yet aware of
or have not grasped til now.

By midlife (thirties plus)
a groundswell Is impending
for some,
a mild rumble
shaking footholds
passing unbalance.

For others,
an earthquake
storied house of cards
comes crashing down
trashing marriage, career, family
health or reputation.

Sooner or later
our Shadows dart to lengthen
swaying wiggle on the walls
rabbit ears no more
but dormant dinosaurs.

Paradox Is the law of life--
foremost In relating:
since Ego Is a tricky cheat
warped hearts can be opened
only by being broken--
made whole by being cleft.

Healing starts when we
confront our unchosen warps
accept the hole in our hearts
as pregnant void and seeming
is Reason's Control:
Just myth, icon ‘n proud dreaming.

Mating is a ballet
choreographed
by two Shadows stretching
for an elusive Unity
harmony in mime.
our Shadows not we
woo and sagely choose
musically in rhyme.

Whenever another entrances us
dimly we are yearning for an
untapped Shadow-self
response to Inner Child's stroll
to our daimon, genius, muse
not-yet-unfolded Whole Soul.

The dance of spouse
that charmed us once
is that prance later
Passion worn
we critique ‘n scorn:
mate's score is our own
Shadow smothered, ignored

If we never heard parents
argue, swap ‘n explore
we don't have program-score.
If we never saw
fair trade-offs capped
parental fun unwrapped
that model is not on our map.

Half-hearted hedges
self-defeating programs:
If only's--yes, but's--I'll try's
"if she(he) loved me...Why can't you "
what will others say if... ?"
"I can't help... It isn't fair..."
Blemish, guilt In cop-out tricks
are generational
hand-me-downs:
'twas the only game in town!

______

THEODICY the problem of evil in the world

2005-01-19T00:28:00.000-05:00

THEODICY: This is the theological term for the study of the problem of evil. Recent question: How can a loving God allow a disaster that can kill so many innocent children and families in the recent East Indian Tsanami on December 26. Some Christians were heard to say that was God's punishment for not being Christian.

By the way, visit a theological library of any size, and you will scarcely find a half shelf of books on "Evil," but many shelves on "Sin."

The question of the justification (dike) of God Himself (theos) is raised as a response to the problem of actual human experience within a world in which fulfillment is qualified or shattered by premature death, mental or physical retardation, destructive social conditions including war, the accidents of natural or man-made catastrophe, or the terror of history itself.

How can a benevolent, loving God create a world of such good and evil: e.g. when bad things happen to good people, how does a person of faith understand and explain this, e.g. the Holocaust, etc., or personal loss. Thus Job’s questioning of God in the Old Testament would be a study, as I understand it, in Theodicy.

The term appears first in the title of a work published by G.W. Leibnitz in 1710, and the ensuing discussion is shaped by the spirit of the so-called Enlightenment; but the problem is ancient, as illustrated 'by reference to the religio-secular wisdom literature of the Near East; Babylonian, Egyptian, and biblical. Presumably the problem rests ultimately in the effort to do justice to finite freedom in relation to divine creativity.

From The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, J.D.Douglas, Zondervan, 1974.

Question: Does the human shadow emerge in our attempts to use faith or religion to explain evil? Does religion have anything to say at all about the problem of evil? Job was "stuck" --a good man to whom bad things kept happening. His friends kept saying: "Admit your sins, brother!"

The Great (False) God of Masculinity, by Robert Hewitt.

2005-01-09T16:14:00.000-05:00

Recommended Reading
Re: Worship of idols by Christians today.

"The world is deeply divided, theologically and philosophically, between the opposing claims of democracy and patriarchy. The question seems to be, "How much freedom and authority shall be allowed to women?"

"The extreme Taliban answer was, and is, "None!" In the American "democratic" state the answer has softened since the nation's founding but, to date, continues to be, "Some, but not much!" Authoritative patriarchal religious groups such as Roman Catholicism, Protestant Biblical Fundamentalism, Mormonism, and Islam quietly deny to women within their ranks many of the freedoms granted them under the United States Constitution.

"There is a serious movement among these groups, now that we have a morally naive President in the White House, to make changes in the Constitution designed to reduce the few freedoms and authorities that women have gained. There is a similarly serious movement within the Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Communion, pushed by the extreme patriarchalists among us, to return to a more patriarchal day. They bristled when women were allowed to be ordained; they went ballistic when they learned that gays were being ordained.

"They have, I believe, brought the 'worthship' (worship) of the false god "Masculinity" into the very core of Church life.

"The following assumptions and commentaries are offered as a basis for four assumptions:

1. God is God, "wholly Other, and One." Gender specific pronouns are
inappropriate when speaking of God, but if used for convenience because we have
no pronouns for God, they must be understood as non-genderous, and non-sexual. In speaking of the Trinity, the use of "Father" and "Son", does not indicate
gender, but relationship. To speak of God as, "He," is simply heretical, and is
unfortunately understood by children as truth. Most people carry this heresy
with them all their lives in their common speech, and that becomes an enormous
barrier to understanding the relationship between God and humanity. It is the
root of the anthropological heresies, and fictions, of "masculinity" and
"femininity."

2. God is not male. God has no genitalia, and therefore has no partner of
an "opposite" sex. God is not masculine. "Masculinity" is a fiction and a
self-deception by the human male as he finds himself in the historical setting
of a patriarchal culture. It leads him think and act as if he were destined to
control women. Mythologically, masculinity is the result of the biblical "curse"
placed upon the Man by God to rule over the Woman. Historically, it is the
discovery of paternity, as opposed to the primitive understanding of female-only
parentage. Soteriologically, male control of women ended in Jesus.

3. God is not female. For primitive people, God seemed female. We have
their stone carvings, and myths, of "Goddesses" in evidence. But God is not
feminine. Women, for our prehistoric ancestors, were the only apparent human
providers of new children for the community. As with masculinity, femininity [carries] a corresponding fiction that women are weak, addled, and destined to stay at home for domestic tasks, and ruled by men. At "The Fall," motherhood, instead of continuing to be thought of as an attribute of God, became a patriarchal assignment from men who had suddenly learned that they were fathers of the children women were bearing. Men took upon themselves the honor (and the
misconception) that they were the sole human source of human life.

4. Men and women are made in the image of God. To look at a woman is to see
an image of God. To look at a man is to see an image of God. To look at
either is not to see God, but an image of God. In their bodies they "image" God
equally. God is not better represented in one sex than in the other. Because
masculinity and femininity are both self-deceptive (i.e., poses by a man or a
woman to appear either superior or inferior, dominant or deferent), neither
masculinity nor femininity can be an attribute of God. God does not represent himself or herself (darned pronouns again!) deceptively to humankind. Back to the beginning: God is God! Masculinity is every patriarchal society's favorite false god. Femininity is a subset within patriarchy of the same heresy.

Unchangeable patriarchal- type leaders are, in my book, the most well-intentioned, but also dangerous persons in the world. That would include people like the Bishop of Rome, and James Dobson of Focus on the Family. They put the worship of Masculinity
before the "worthship" of the Lord Jesus.
[CONCLUSION] "I say this not to be offensive, even to those gentlemen, but to follow the logic of my argument. The worship of idols is still going on among Christian people."

1/1/05

article by Rev. Robert G. Hewitt

forwarded by Adonna Bowman

Executive Director,

Office of Disciples Women

Disciples Home Missions (DHM)

"Equipping Disciples for Christ"

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

www.discipleswomen.org

www.dreamonsisters.com

THE SHADOW IN ORGANIZED RELIGION

2005-01-09T12:37:00.000-05:00

"Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions were politicized and taken over by the Powers That Be (PTB). For Christians this happened under Constantine, when bishops became part of the power structure of the Roman Empire.
When this happened religions became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.

In religions supported by PTB, spirituality and radical response to grace could not be encouraged nor affirmed because these led to too much individuality and autonomy, splashing too high or too vigorously, and therefore threatened the status quo. Mystics were always suspect as "out of control," either ignored. silenced, punished or in earlier times, put to death. The history of religion has many instances. "Heresy!" was the quick harsh charge for anyone who challenged the status quo.

Of course, religion's omnipresent defenders are swift to point out the many comforts it provides for the sick, the weary, and the disappointed, the least, lost, last and lame. . .
True enough.
But God/dess is not simply a therapist. The Divine Mystery does not dawdle in the comfort zone or merely provide hospitality!
If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords, confront the Tremendum Mysterium in the desert or deep forest, on the mountain tops. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, risk the depths of the strange, befriend the shadows of running waters.

How limiting, how insulting to think of God/dess as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the "comfort" of artificial pools, where official intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment which we are taught to revere.

A longing for the Divine is intrinsic in Homo sapiens. For all we know it may also be innate in squirrels, dandelions, and diamond rings, as well. We approach the Divine by enlarging our souls and illumining our minds. To expedite those two things may be the mission of why we are here..
Well and good.
But such soulful activity runs counter to the aspirations of commerce and politics. Politics is the science of domination, while persons in the process of following God's light are notoriously difficult to control. Therefore, to protect its vested interests, politics usurped religion a very long time ago. Kings bought off priests and clerics with land, adornments and endorsements.

Together, they drained the shady ponds and replaced them with fish tanks. The walls of the tanks were constructed of ignorance and superstition, held together with fear. It was not important that the farm-bred fish understand anything or even know what they were doing.
After the tanks were in place, nobody talked much about soul anymore. Instead, they talked about spirit.

Soul is hot and heavy, messy and sensual. Spirit is cool, abstract, detached, cognitive. Soul is connected to the earth, its waters and gases. Spirit is connected to the sky, concepts of heaven and talk of transcendence. Out of the earthly gases springs fire. Firepower. Empowerment.

It has been observed that the logical extension of all politics is war. Once religion became political, the exercise of it, too, could be said to lead sooner or later to war. "War is hell." History unwaveringly reveals the political uses of belief for control, domination, and oppression: war against soul. Thus religious belief too easily propels us straight to hell.

Every modern religion has boasted that it and it alone is on speaking terms with the Deity, and its adherents have been quite willing to die--or kill-- to support its presumptuous claims. (a.k.a. kill abortionists for Christ, a.k.a., the blending of "religion" and politics in Ireland or Bosnia, a.k.a. Islamic terrorists, a.k.a. American fundamentalists who won't even talk to other Christians, or Catholic conservatives who have it Right and view "Liberalism as a Sin"). Note:

The explosion of religious extremism in the past nine years since this was written is notable. Not every silty bayou could be drained, of course. The soul-fish that bubbled and snapped in the few remaining ponds were tagged "mystics." They were regarded as mavericks, exotic, scary, inferior, to be avoided. If they splashed too high, they were thought to be threatening and in need of extermination.
The fearful flounders in the tanks, now psychologically dependent upon addictive "spirit flakes" and upon their assigned and adorned leaders had forgotten that once upon a time they, too, had been mystical.

Religion is nothing but the attempt to institutionalize mysticism, to make it "safe" for others and PTB. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to being institutionalized. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Organized religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been diminished, teflon-coated, suppressed or killed.

The function of professional theologians is to demystify religion, to make it sane, rational and believable, while at the same time, to affirm a special class of persons to function as intermediaries of understanding and grace between the Divine and common folk. When they graduate from the seminary they cannot talk the language of the people, but they are filled with concepts of their teachers and academicians. They have become fish farm management staff.

"Concepts create idols; only wonder understands anything." --Gregory of Nyssa in the Fifth Century.

Organized religion has become, by its protection of the status quo, a paramount contributor to human misery. Organized religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it has become a cyanide to genuine spirituality, to the soul required to renew society, to the development of radical discipleship. A spontaneous "Amen" or "Alleluia" is out of place in the great majority of white churches in our world. We can attend church hundreds, even thousands of times being assured we are doing our Christian duty, while never having to hear or listen to the pain or the loneliness of the person next to us in the same pew.
_______
These notes, adapted and enhanced, are from a novel by Tom Robbins, pages given to me by a friend long ago and lost for awhile. I have not been able to local the source.
--Paschal Baute, 1995

Fundamentalists (all faiths) are READY TO KILL

2005-01-04T13:47:00.000-05:00

(Olivia Ward, continued, from The Toronto Star)

"But as the first decade of the second millennium reaches the halfway point, the reverse is true. In major religions there is a resurgence of fervent faith, sometimes to the point of violence, as intolerance rises along with determination to impose age-old standards of morality.

The flight to the margins, although proportionately small, is powerful. It is influencing the political agenda of governments in ways that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, threatening Western-style democracies and dampening hope for worldwide peace.

"Everywhere there is an explosion of passionate religious movements," says Peter Berger of Boston University, author of The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. "It happens at some periods, like the Crusades. Contrary to expectations, it's a very religious world, and always has been."

Berger and others who study trends in religion call this a time of "fundamentalism," a term once coined to describe an American movement begun by religious intellectuals a century ago. They wrote a doctrine of Protestant "fundamentals" to counter a new liberalism in Christianity, and the word became identified with stern puritanism. But it is increasingly used to identify religious extremism today.
"
In most major traditions there has been a resurgence of very aggressive, passionate religious movements, because people are feeling uncertain," Berger says. "And when you're uncertain, you're more aggressive."

Karen Armstrong, a British former nun and leading chronicler of fundamentalism, agrees. Those who embrace it, she says, are mainly motivated by fear in a world in which the moral ground is shifting at record speed.

"Fundamentalists have no time for democracy, pluralism, religious toleration, peacekeeping, free speech, or the separation of church and state," she writes in The Battle for God.

"Christian fundamentalists reject the discoveries of biology and physics and insist the Book of Genesis is scientifically sound ... Jewish fundamentalists observe their revealed law more stringently than ever before, and Muslim women, repudiating the freedoms of Western women, shroud themselves in veils."

Furthermore, Armstrong says, Buddhist, Hindu and Confucian fundamentalists are prepared to fight and kill in the name of religion, and "strive to bring the sacred into the realm of politics and national struggle."

"With such dramatic and inflexible beliefs at stake, those who flee to the margins of religion inspire equally strong reactions, ranging from outrage to uncompromising devotion. . . ."

--from The Toronto Star
Article by Olivia Ward
January 2, 2005

See The Star article for the rest. The entire article is worth reading and meditating upon.

Religious Extremism on the Rise

2005-01-04T13:32:00.001-05:00

The Toronto Star
www.thestar.com
Jan. 2, 2005. 01:00 AM

Religious extremism is back
Moral ground is shifting at record speed
Followers are motivated by fear, expert says
by Oliva Ward, FEATURE WRITER

"In Britain, a popular play is closed down when Sikhs attack a Birmingham theatre that features a scene of violence in a temple. In the Netherlands, an activist filmmaker is shot and stabbed to death after producing a documentary on the abuse of Muslim women.
Meanwhile, an American president calls his anti-terrorism campaign a "crusade," and declares that "God wants people to be free." And Israeli settlers insist that leaving their land goes against a God-given right.

"Religious extremism, once believed a dying phenomenon, is back with a vengeance, symbolized by the shattered and blackened World Trade Centre towers. Videotaped threats by religiously focused militants are as commonplace as they are chilling to millions throughout the world."

Go to Star site for rest of the long article. www.thestar.com

Why Learning About Our Blind / Shadow Side is Useful, Important and Vital, for self and for others.

2005-01-04T07:24:00.000-05:00

The more one denies the Shadow Self, the more ready one is to find fault in others. The more we hide from or refuse honest feedback from others, the less we know & understand ourselves.
None of us know ourselves completely. Besides being our own best friend, each of us is our own worst enemy. We all lie to ourselves and are far more self-centered that we can probably ever realize, particularly those of us who are convinced that we are not self-centered.

Whatever is incomplete or unfinished in our own development is bound to be projected on others with whom we will react according to our script which casts others into specific roles. I have several in my own extended network of family and friends who--out of touch with themselves--very much need to find fault in others.

The more I am sure that my "map equals the territory," or "my thermostat is where it's at," rather than realizing that my map only represents the territory, the more I am likely to have conflict and misunderstanding with others, all the while being sure that it is the others who are at fault.
The ability to be objective about oneself and accept criticism about oneself from others may be the single most important skill in communication and human relations. Everything else hinges on this.

The greatest delusion of the human race is people thinking they can avoid confronting the unconscious and solve the problems of life by the "face" or "mask" they put on for others, creating a righteous exterior, that is, by being "good." Sadly, this delusion is held by most of our religious leaders today, and we shall not even mention political leaders.

According to Freud, the penalty for repression is repetition. Painful experiences not dealt with are unconsciously repeated. We do not quite realize that we are repeating ourselves, because the very diversionary schemas we are repeating keep the fact of their repetition from awareness. On one hand we really forget that we have done this before, and the other, do not quite realize that we are doing it again. We can see this pattern easily in others but not in ourselves. The self-deception is complete.

The diversionary schemes we employ to hide from ourselves and from our own motives are extensive and well-mapped. Little has been added since the time of Freud although we understand now how the family is the matrix of dysfunction much better. We now understand that love itself is never enough, and whatever the unfinished business parents have refused to face in their own development or marriage is handed on to the children like a hot potato. Adult children repeat the same/similar script/scenarios.

There are some people who must be right, who in any conflict situation, are convinced that others are wrong. They are often very closed and easily defensive. They cannot believe that others can see them differently than they see themselves. They usually learn only from the hard knocks of life, but often do not learn easily or well, since they carry a stubborn blindness concerning themselves into every new relationship, remaining defensive and very protective of their public "ego."

An Ego-Protective Inventory has been developed and is currently being researched to measure this tendency. It has been found frequently in business executives.

Until we confront and befriend our Shadow, we will continue to live with the illusion of virtue and righteousness. We remain vulnerable to the sabotage of marriage, family, career, love and important friendships. When befriended, our Shadow can turn out to be 95% gold.
Unless honesty with oneself is valued more than being "good," secure, successful or accepted, more than any other virtue, one is destined to a life of self-deceit, full of hidden ego-inflation, programmed for self-sabotage.

Tools for understanding the Blind/Shadow Self are:
Dreams, Journaling, some movies, drama, fiction, Shadow workshops, courses or books on the Enneagram, psychotherapy, personality profiling, group work or spiritual direction or guidance where feedback is welcome. © Paschal Baute, 1984

Discussion, anyone?

Introduction

2005-01-03T09:40:00.000-05:00

We need a way to understand the prevalence of evil in the world as well as our persistent ability to often sabotage our own best efforts. Many of the new spiritualities assume that if we only stay with Love and ignore all the shadow side of life, this is all that is necessary. Love will overcome Fear and Hate and all negatives. Maybe so. I find good and sincere people sabotaging relationships, outside their awareness.
Even the Apostle Paul said: "I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and find myself doing the things I hate." In the same paragraph, Romans 7, Paul called this tendency his unspiritual self: although the will to do what is good is in him, the performance is not.
I know from my own life that I have not paid enough attention to what Carl Jung calls the Human Shadow. The Shadow is the hidden part of our personality. It consists of the characteristics, impulses, programs, scripts, and psychological games that are not welcome in our conscious life. The Shadow self includes the pervasive ways we hide from ourselves and from our motives.
The Shadow is not only personal, that is, the result of my individual life, but cultural. Jung proposed that there were archetypes, a sort of story-template that guides our conscious minds. The hidden program shapes personality in many ways. I am taught what is right and what is wrong. What is unacceptable, for example, sexual desire for a celibate, then goes into the shadow where it becomes more powerful.
Our Western Caucasian culture relegates a great deal of our feeling function to the shadow, so it is not proper for men, at least, to be forthright with feelings, either positive or negative.
Our spiritual task is to not be afraid of what is in the shadow, but to welcome it, embrace it, see it as a valuable part of ourselves, and learn to integrate this. When this happens we are more whole, less scared of the interior life, also more humble as it teaches us what is common to our humanity.
In marriage, for instance, it usually takes more than a few years to realize how different were the families in which we and our spouses were raised, with different assumptions and expectations about almost everything. We are only in the past few years discovering how differently we are programed from the time we are labeled blue and pink in the hospital nursery.
The dangerous persons are those who assume because they are so sincere, they cannot be wrong and further, should not be questioned. The most dangerous today are those who believe that "God" is on their side. Their righteousness with God gives them the permission to judge others as further from God than themselves. The gift of faith has become an hidden idol.