Jordan Peterson and the Collective Shadows of Western Civilization

A Jungian shadow is an unconsious blind spot that can have a will of its own, usually malevolent, or at least animalistic and wild, unconcerned with the needs of others. It can be shared by a whole culture, beyond individual unconsciousness.

The shadow of leftists has been unearthed by Jordan Peterson, although many right leaning people are also aware of it. It is the existence of malevolence, pleasure in domination, greed for power, betrayal, freeloading, relinquishing responsibility/blaming others for hardships and one's personal character inadequacies, objectifying, animalistic lust, in people who should be at the top of the "hierarchy of being oppressed". In everyone, in fact, including the leftists. There is a naivete in leftists who see the world in tribal terms, in good guys vs bad guys terms, or oppressors and oppressed, and are surprised when evil comes from within their own ranks or the ranks of the (previously) oppressed, without or prior to systemic support. They realize it too late, before the guillotine comes down, or as they're picking rocks in the gulag, or as they enter the gas chambers or facing the firing squad (when their liberal neighbors collaborated in their being sent there), or as their wife leaves them with most of their assets and children. JP has an exercise for his students, to have them imagine what it would be like to be a concentration camp guard. But it would be just as useful for them to imagine being a republican farmer, without labeling that person as racist and ignorant. To see what motivates that person that is not just fear or hatred. Or to imagine being the pedophile or the rapist. To see their humanity, their unmet needs for intimacy, for sex, for connection, and also for domination and power. There is an evasion of this latter in NVC (a very liberal invention), which says that real malevolence or domination is an epi-phenomenon, that it is really fear or some strategy for getting genuine benevolent needs met. The Jungian model on the other hand says that the malevolence comes from the shadow when it is not integrated into the individual or collective consciousness (I'll talk about what integration looks like in a future post), so one can be possessed by this force. It is still there when it is integrated, but under control. The malevolence and lust for power of the rapist is matched by the malevolence and lust for revenge of the lynch mob, as they both are possessed by this shadow.

One could say that the left has mostly masculine shadows, whereas the right has mostly feminine shadows. A part of masculine sexuality is dangerous when not integrated. It wants to fuck without concern for the experience of the other. It wants to express power, sometimes violence, through sex. When integrated it can be a source of pleasure for the other as well as oneself, creativity and productivity. Supposedly "the meek shall inherit the earth" can be translated also as "those with their swords sheathed shall inherit the earth". Note the phallic symbolism. The benevolent masculine (which is also obscure to the left) is about using intrinsic gifts in service to family and community, but this comes with a hint of danger, with an integrated animalistic shadow lurking underneath. Great suffering comes to those men who can't be of service and be appreciated for that. And the left is blind to this suffering, thinking that men are just like women and need safety and comfort and nurture to the exclusion of challenge and a matching of gifts to community needs. The left is also blind to the fact that hierarchies are not just about power and freeloading, but also about competence and skill and wisdom.

Just as the shadow of leftists is more conscious in rightists, the shadow of rightists is more conscious in leftists. They recall the witch (really healer women) burnings, the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement and oppression of black people, the disrespect for feminine intuition, nurture, body wisdom and deep connection in favor of impersonal reason, the domination of nature, the crucifixion of Jesus (not as a pre-ordained event, but as the oppression of a social revolutionary trying to evoke feminine values), the destruction of cottage and home-based industries (sometimes a domain of women), sex trade of women who lead miserable disempowered lives. The attempt at consciousness of these things, combined with the unconscious leftist shadow can lead to rage and a projection of that shadow unto men, or white people. It's not just the unconsciousness of historical events, but the unconsciousness of current events. The gnawing feeling that our Faustian civilization (to use Oswald Spengler's term) is destroying our soul, the feminine, nature and we are complicit by the work we choose, by the products we buy, by pieces of our mother earth we carve up to own and extract resources from (instead of receiving gifts from and stewarding), by how we see the world and live our lives.

Jordan Peterson shows hints of being aware of this shadow. He mentions how good he is at dancing (a collaborative enterprise with females). He mentions mystical experiences that can happen through music, sex (as a way to divine connection, not just as a gratification of a biological itch), prayer and dance. He is even aware of the mystical experiences that can be stimulated by Ayahuasca (DMT) and Psilocybin in his discussion with Ben Shapiro, who exemplifies the right. Ben Shapiro on the other hand is (almost) completely oblivious to feelings, mystical experiences and the possible awakening to the Feminine that drugs can induce, though he is aware of the mystical branch of Judaism (the Hassidim), but only in an intellectual way.

Also, JP is aware of collective guilt, which is another sign of a shadow operating. When one shines light on the shadow, the guilt evaporates, to be replaced by compassion for all involved, and a desire to make things better. SJWs on the other hand are using the collective white and male guilt/shadow as a weapon to silence whites and males.

These two shadows can oscillate back and forth into prevalence during the life of a culture, perhaps even as one culture embodying one shadow dies and another embodying the opposite shadow is born. Such might have been the case with the death of Tribal civilizations and the rise of the Judaeo-Christian culture. It almost was able to integrate feminine values with Jesus, but it didn't quite make it. Fear of collective cultural death due to an extreme in either of these shadows can itself be a shadow. What emerges when these shadows are integrated, with the collaboration of the left and the right could be a new culture. Like what happened in The Dark Crystal, when the Mystics and Skeksys were united. Integrating these shadows within ourselves is a prerequisite to integrating them as other people from the opposite side of the political spectrum.

And what happens to those who point to other people's collective shadows? They are usually killed. I'm thinking here of Jesus, Gandhi, MLK, Medgar Evers, Oscar Romero, and the historically nameless numerous female healers who perished by fire.

Here is what L. Cohen had to say about all this:

Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my secret life
It's lonely here,
There's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
But love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold
It's over, it ain't going
Any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future
It is murder

There'll be the breaking of the ancient
Western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing
You'll see a woman
Hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets
Coming round
Tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
And the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
it is murder

and here is what JR Tolkien had to say (does Gandalf integrate Shadow, or merely slay it?):

Durin's Bane