Dear Bill & All, Many years ago Carl Jung identified the component of the human psyche which contains both the "dark side" and also rejected positive values. He called this the "shadow." We all have one, and share to some extent a universal human shadow, a part of what Jung called the "collective unconscious." It corresponds exactly to the boogeyman Bill writes about. Another aspect of the behaviour of the unconscious that Jung noted is the tendency to "project" onto others aspects of our own unconscious that we do not own the existence of.
One of the great tragedies of life today is that we have this knowledge but do not make sufficient use of it - virtually any hatred directed towards another race, belief system or culture has its origin in shadow projection. It happens both on the individual level and on the collective level. We can look back with horror at Nazi anti-Semitism and with disbelief at the excesses of the McCarthy anti-communist era and still not see that the current excessive fear of terrorists, anti- American attitudes and all the rest are the same stuff. For anyone that's interested there is a wonderful book called "Owning your own shadow" by the great American Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson (good name!:-)) that should be compulsory reading for everyone in power on this planet. The positive news here is that we often consign to our shadow our capacity for doing exceptionally good things simply because it's too scary to draw attention to ourselves in that way. So working with our shadow through any kind of consciousness raising technique can help us to be both better musicians and better people all round. One of the great things about this forum is that it brings together people from all over the world with a shared interest - that in itself is consciousness raising because it's much harder to categorise another nation as "them" when you feel you know intelligent, interesting and caring people who live there. Long may it continue! Best wishes & a happy new year to all, Denys ----- Original Message ----- From: "bill kilpatrick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jon Murphy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Lute List" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 3:34 PM Subject: Re: Happy New Year > dear jon - > > had some friends around for dinner last night and had > to listen to varying degrees of "yanqui go home" from > everyone, my nearest and dearest included. after a > while i stopped contributing to the conversation and > began to think about the nature of evil - relative and > genuine - and just how necessary it was for people to > have a boogeyman in their lives. i'm not all that > anxious to have anyone but us in the driver's seat but > whenever the united states was mentioned i pretended > they were talking about communist china or russia or > the koran-thumpers of iran ... how about a foreign > policy based on domestic practices from one of the > african countries ... ? - it helped pass the time. > > i don't think the u.s. will ever stop supplying aid to > those who need it but i'm afraid it will never ... i > mean never, ever, ever - be perceived as anything > other than an ill-defined and highly suspicious plot. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
