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S, If you have not yet seen this, and have
sufficient time, do
read as it is an excellent and eloquent view of our
situation.
hbdragon
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 10:42
AM
Subject: OT: fwd ; Archetypal view of the
conflict
-
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 6:50 PM
Subject: FW: Is the United States Government Suffering from
Archetypal Possession?
Forwarded by a friend, this looks at the
Bush/US/Iraq scenario from an archetypal standpoint. -
Jeffrey
---------------------------------------------------------------------
An
archetypal analysis of how the country came to stand at the brink of
war.
By Carol S. Pearson
If I was frightened of my
neighbor because he had guns and I knew he did not like me, I could not
simply declare the need for a preemptive strike and kill him. If I had
actual grounds -- say, he had threatened me -- I could go to the police and
seek protection or go to court and try to get a restraining order. In either
case, I could not say: "Help me or I'll kill him."
If I actually did
kill him -- however fearful I was that he might someday kill me -- I would
be the one treated as a criminal. It is likely that I would be convicted and
sent to jail or executed.
Why?
No law on earth -- for
individuals or nations -- allows you to kill people because they have
weapons and do not like you. Self-defense requires imminent
danger.
How does the above example differ from President Bush's
doctrine of a preemptive strike? How is it different from his going to the
United Nations and saying that if it does not act, we will attack Iraq by
ourselves?
If we should have learned anything from inventing and then
dropping nuclear bombs, it is that whatever we do, others will want to do,
too. One might even think of this as a kind of karma--what you put out comes
back at you.
It is fairly obvious that once some countries have
weapons of mass destruction, other countries will want them, including those
run by ruthless dictators. They want them for the same reasons we
do.
So, if the U.S. decides that it can strike preemptively, then
every other country can--and in some cases will--as well. Many countries
have good reason to believe that we do not like them. Indeed, our president
has even publicly named countries he regards as evil. In addition, he has
treated our allies and the United Nations with disdain. It seems to me that
it is only the fact of our military might that allows the president to
presume to bully the world.
Won't other countries seek to arm to the
teeth if they think that at any time we might attack them? It often happens
that the bully who kicks sand in the other boys' faces gets beat up when
they band together against him.
Figuring this out is not rocket
science. The logic that all this inevitably will come back to haunt us seems
to me obvious enough--and it seems to be obvious to most of the rest of the
world, too.
What is happening here?
Reductive Thinking and
Archetypal
Possession
--------------------------------------------
Archetypes
can possess people -- and whole nations, as well. When this happens,
individuals and nations stop thinking straight and just live out the plot of
that archetype's story. Given enough fear, the Warrior archetype can possess
almost anyone. And when it does, the whole Warrior way of thinking kicks in.
We have been hearing it from President Bush.
It goes like this: We
are the good guys. They are the bad guys. When we defeat them, the world
will be a better place and we will be Heroes.
This makes for a good
cowboy movie, but it is lousy foreign policy.
Sam Keene, in Faces of
the Enemy, shows how normally reasonable, caring people, if they are
frightened enough, will be willing to go to war whether or not it makes
sense to do so. Part of whipping them up to kill is to present "the enemy"
as less than human, avoiding any empathy with how the other side sees the
situation.
For a brief time after 9/11, we had the opportunity to
move into a more complex understanding of the world and our own role in it.
While grappling with incredible grief and determining how to care for the
families of those who died, the U.S. appeared to be open to learning from
the event--even trying to understand why many people around the world hate
us.
However, in his public statements and speeches in the aftermath
of 9/11, Bush told an archetypal story that shut that sort of thinking down.
He explained the situation simply, giving only two reasons that others might
attack us militarily or philosophically: Either our detractors hate freedom
or they are evil. And he demanded that the rest of the world choose sides.
Other nations were to be with us (and thus good) or against us (and thus
evil).
Unfortunately, for many Americans, thinking stopped there. The
fact that most people accepted this archetypal and reductive story is not
surprising. People look to their leaders for guidance, especially when they
are frightened. Thinking in a more complex way about the world, moreover,
feels much more vulnerable than retreating to the comfort of a well-worn
story, especially a story that reassures us that the problem is entirely
them, not us.
Others who understood the folly of Bush's reductive
thinking (or lack of thinking) shut up. After all, how can you say that the
Emperor is naked when everyone is raving about the quality of his new
suit?
Warrior Story, Outlaw
Behavior
------------------------------
As I have reflected on
this, I have come to think that although Bush used the Warrior/Hero story as
the myth to make meaning of post-9/11 reality, his own behavior seems more
Outlaw than Warrior. He seems to have a disdain for the law, acting as if he
and, by extension, we are above it.
Domestically, think of his
"election" amidst scandalous irregularities, his refusal to release funding
allocated by Congress for projects he does not personally favor, and the
"reverse Robin Hood" nature of his tax policy (robbing from the poor to help
the rich).
Internationally, his threat to take vigilante-like
military action against Iraq if the UN does not do his bidding was
anticipated by his pulling the U. S. out of the Kyoto and ABM Treaties, his
boycott of the Human Rights Conference, and his insistence that U.S.
soldiers be the only ones in the world who cannot be tried for war crimes by
the World Court.
The implication is that the president and the United
States can live outside the law and do whatever they please.
It is,
and has been, critical that Congress and the American people reign in Bush's
Texas cowboy tendencies. How can we demand that Saddam Hussein abide by
international agreements when we do not do so ourselves?
In
Search of a More Adequate
Story
----------------------------------
So what archetypal story
can we use to make meaning of the world in which we live and take right
action?
Not the story of the Innocent, I'm sure. It will not help to
pretend that the terrorists are not dangerous, that Saddam Hussein is not a
tyrant, that petty dictators all over the world are not gaining access to
weapons of mass destruction, or that the politics within the United Nations
are not Byzantine. Similarly, it is not useful to exaggerate the U.S.'s or
Bush's culpability or to underestimate our national
vulnerability.
The Magician story may help. People influenced by the
Magician archetype tend to envision the world the way they want it to be and
seek out partners who share that vision, staying flexible and open to making
the most of any avenue toward the realization of these goals. From the
Magician's point of view, if we want peace, we need to live a story that is
about peace, not war. If we want peace, it is important to understand the
world as it appears through others' eyes, and it is necessary that we learn
to be peaceful ourselves.
This would require us to face our own
Shadow. In Jungian psychology, the Shadow is that part of us that we do not
want to see in ourselves, so we project it onto others who we then blame or
judge. Typically, people do not notice their own Shadows--but others see
them.
When Bush says that Hussein has used weapons of mass
destruction before, and so could again, I remember that the U.S. is the only
nation to have dropped nuclear bombs on another country. In the context of
the time, it was certainly an understandable thing to do. However, the rest
of the world would be right to use the same logic against us that Bush is
using against Hussein--unless we show some sign that we have learned from
the experience and integrated the full horror of what we did into our
consciousness.
Within the Magician archetype, it is only when people
face their Shadows that they come into their full power. By way of
illustration, I refer you to the novels of Ursula Le Guin. Her stories are
not just good fiction. They provide advice for powerful and courageous
living. In her Earthsea Trilogy, we follow the journey of Ged, a great
Magician who has inadvertently done harm, through his magic releasing a
monster into the world that he then must track down. When he finally finds
this monster, he addresses it as Ged, his own name. In confronting his
Shadow, Le Guin says, he makes himself whole. He becomes "a man who, knowing
his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than
himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the
service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark."
Enlightened
Leadership and Care in Choosing the Stories We
Live
---------------------------------------------------------------
Our
nation is facing very difficult decisions and needs to think wisely and
deeply, and avoid self-deception. To understand a complex world, we have to
understand our own moral complexity.
Am I saying that if the U.S.
government changed its attitude, we would never again have to resort to
force to counter oppression anywhere in the world? Unfortunately, I do not
think we are at that point -- at least not yet. But it does mean that we
would fight only as a last resort to protect ourselves or others from a
threat that is immediate. In the meantime, not only would we take every
opportunity to find peaceful means of settling differences, but we also
would invest in the technologies of peace as heavily as we now invest in the
technologies of war.
Eventually, we do need to find a way to put the
nuclear genie back in the bottle and contain the spread of other weapons of
mass destruction. That can happen only with a major change in consciousness
and leadership. What we need now is a leader of the stature of a Nelson
Mandela who could help the moral authority of the United States equal its
economic and military might. In the meantime, it behooves all of us to
refuse to get sucked into a cycle of fear, blame, and reprisal so that we
can become as peaceful as possible.
In my lifetime, the Berlin Wall
came down, the Iron Curtain fell, and segregation in the U.S. and apartheid
in South Africa ended. When consciousness changes, social structures can
change rapidly. Someday, it will be possible to have peace on earth--when we
heed the wisdom of all the world's major religions and learn to love,
understand, and forgive one another.
A Call for
Dialogue
-------------------
All stories that allow us to see reality
more clearly can help us think clearly enough to avert disaster. Whether or
not you agree with my analysis, I urge you to speak out. This is our
country. We have both a right and a responsibility to make our voices
heard.
This is why democracies tend to prevail. At their best, they
are true learning systems, hearing and integrating diverse points of view
and thus acting in a more considered way. But if we let intimidation shut
down dialogue--if we remain possessed or entranced by a destructive
archetypal story--we lose our greatest strength as a
nation.
Carol S. Pearson
For another view, go to:
RECKLESS ADMINISTRATION MAY REAP DISASTROUS
CONSEQUENCES
By US Senator Robert
Byrd
Senate Floor Speech -
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