"There is no
consciousness without discrimination of opposites."
~ Carl Jung
In
1965, a broadly published debate was held between two philosophical adversaries
named Arnold Gehlen and Theodor Adorno regarding the nature of suffering and
violence in the world. At one point Ghelen questions Adorno about the
necessity of suffering, incredulous that one would doubt that the aim of human
existence is to emancipate people from all suffering. Here is part of that
debate:
Gehlen:
“Mr. Adorno, you see the problem of emancipation here once again, of course. Do
you really believe that the burden of fundamental problems, of extensive
reflection, of errors in life that have profound and continuing effects, all of
which we have gone through because we were trying to swim free of them—do you
really believe one ought to expect everyone to go through this? I should be
very interested to know your views on this.”
Adorno:
“I can give you a simple answer. Yes! I have a particular conception of
objective happiness and objective despair, and I would say that, for as long as
people have problems taken away from them, for as long as they are not expected
to take full responsibility and full self-determination, their welfare and
happiness in this world will merely be an illusion. And will be an illusion
that will one day burst. And
when it bursts, it will have dreadful consequences.” (Safranski 407-08
italics mine)
Perhaps
24 year old James Holmes who killed 12 and wounded 70 people at a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado
on July 20, 2012 is a current example of what Adorno is talking about—"a burst[ing]
forth with dreadful consequences" in a world that expects to avoid all discomforts in life. Or
perhaps Ghelen is right when he suggests that the aim of human existence is
"to swim free of them [problems]". This controversial debate
addresses not only the issue of "violence" but the larger role that
violence plays in the cosmic scheme of things. Is it possible or even desirable
to end violence? Does violence play a necessary role in human existence? Ghelen
and Adorno hold two very different positions. Let's explore these positions
from a depth psychological perspective.
First off, such "bursting
forths" of violence and public mayhem may be found throughout recorded human
history. Mythically, the perpetrators of such antisocial actions have been labeled
"Trickster" by academics.[1] Tricksters appear in stories and rituals from
every culture as socially disruptive characters who might defecate in public, engage
in inappropriate sexual liaisons, deceive without shame, or commit felonious
acts of violence and other lawless exploits. The trickster's demeanor covers a broad
continuum--ranging from slapstick comic to homicidal-rapist, with many variations in between
those two extremes. Paradoxically tricksters are also frequently portrayed as
cultural hero/heroines--pulling the rug out from under the established order so
that something revelatory and innovative might appear in its place. One such
character in popular American culture is The
Joker, Batman's
archenemy appearing in comics, television shows and movies. The Joker is a highly
intelligent homicidal psychopath,
always smiling during his antinomian escapades.
He, like most tricksters, is a strange concoction of despairing anomie mingled
with manic extroverted energy, [2] which is how James Holmes was described just
before his violent outburst in the Colorado movie theater as it premiered The Dark Knight Rises. In fact some sources
reported that Holmes told the police, as
they arrested him without a struggle, that he was Batman's nemesis, the Joker.[3]
In the comic books, Joker makes it
clear that he will never kill the Batman because the caped crusader is the
necessary counterweight that keeps the Joker animated and thriving. Batman
stands for complete law and order, while the Joker stands for lawlessness and
chaos. Neither can meaningfully exist without the other. This is an archetypal
pattern that can be traced back to ancient Egyptian mythology. The Egyptians
imagined two contrasting deities named Isfet
and Ma'at who personified the cosmic drama between chaos
and order. Isfet represented injustice, evil, chaos and “socio-political unrest, forming
the necessary counterpoint to Ma'at who personified justice, harmony and socio-political law and order. The two Gods
formed a complementary and paradoxical dualism that kept each other and the
cosmos in balance. According to Maulana Karenga in his book,
Maat: The Moral
Ideal in Ancient Egypt, the role of the Egyptian pharaoh
was to destroy Isfet in order to attain
and maintain Ma'at (71-73). In the Batman
comics Gotham City is
like Egypt, a dwelling where people are trying to carve safety and cultural
order (Ma'at) out of terror and chaos
(Isfet). The Batman (Bruce Wayne) is
akin to the pharaoh working incessantly to attain and maintain law and order.
As a boy, Bruce Wayne's parents were killed by the forces of evil, and Wayne
grew up to become the Batman, a wealthy corporate billionaire who developed
personal discipline and technological inventions to secure an orderly existence
in Gotham by subduing all disorder and instability. In both the Egyptian and
Batman mythologies there is no possibility of one without the other. As with
Aristotle's notion of a great plot, there is no drama without conflict. A
similar idea is found in the Hebrew Bible
and Hesiod's Greek Theogony where primordial Chaos is a murky void from
which night and day, light and darkness and all created order emerge.
Similarly, the Chinese yin/yang symbol portrays light and dark swirling (like
gas or air) together as the primeval elements of creation from which all order
emerges and returns. Even the secular Freud eventually identified Eros and death to be the two most basic instinctual constituents of the
human psyche, locked in a perpetual struggle for obliteration or civilization.
Freud writes:
After
long hesitancies and vacillations we have decided to assume the existence of
only two basic instincts, Eros and the destructive instinct...The
aim of the first of these basic instincts is to establish ever greater unities
and to preserve them thus--in short, to bind together; the aim of the second
is, on the contrary, to undo connections and so to destroy things. In the case
of the destructive instinct we may suppose that its final aim is to lead what
is living into an inorganic state. For this reason we also call it the death instinct. (Standard XXIII. 148)
With this background, let's return
to the opening words of the debate at the point where Ghelen incredulously asks
Adorno if he actually believes that all humans "ought" to go through
problems reflectively rather than strive to create a world where we
can “swim free of” all problems. Adorno argues that avoidance of problems will
not make things better, but will actually bring about the opposite effect,
resulting in what he calls “dreadful consequences”. Adorno believes that
struggling with problems and overcoming them is the ultimate source of all real happiness. Similar to the struggle
between the Egyptian Isfet and Ma'at, Adorno believes that life
presents each individual with experiences of "objective despair"
(chaos) which have the potential to be
turned into "objective happiness" (order) by taking " full
responsibility and full self-determination". If humans do not personally
or collectively enter into the grappling match between order and chaos, "their
welfare and happiness in this world will merely be an illusion." In other
words, if we humans were to live
in a problem free world, the resultant "happiness" would be illusory
and superficial. But then Adorno adds the troubling conclusion: Whenever humans
do succeed in temporarily eliminating the struggles of existence, providing discounted
happiness--such happiness "will be an illusion that will one day
burst. And when it bursts, it
will have dreadful consequences.” In other words, externally bequeathed
happiness that is not achieved through personal effort is always ephemeral, and
when real life (problematic life) catches up, the consequences will be
"dreadful"--not just disappointing, but dreadful--filled with terror,
fear, and what Mel Brooks called "high anxiety"!
Let's consider this from a depth
psychological perspective, psychologically--particularly with regard to the
Colorado theater massacre perpetrated by James Holmes, as well as other acts of
mind boggling social violence in the media these days. Ours is a culture
obsessed with law and order, justice for all and equality without discrimination--and
I concur that these are all virtuous and worthy goals. I am not for one second
denigrating these righteous and humane intentions. Justice and order (Ma'at) are always noble and desired goals
for any civilized culture--however, when viewed myopically, as the sole aim
of human existence, we set ourselves up for increasing disasters and dreadful consequences. If, as Adorno suggests, problems are required
in the cosmic and psychological pattern of human development, then our efforts
to eliminate them entirely sets us up for equilibrating and compensatory consequences
that may be devastating. The attempt to eliminate all madness and
disintegration from human existence is tantamount to making a bowl of plastic fruit
that will never decompose. Everything appears perfect, until one is actually
starving--then the happy artifice becomes a nightmare. Let's now apply this to
the extreme situation of James Holmes homicidal appearance at the theater. What
are we to make of this horrific
"problem"? What are we to do about
it, or with it?
Law enforcement agencies, journalists,
and politicians on both sides of the ideological aisle immediately made this
horrific act a "problem" about guns, mental health, better security,
political legislation, functional parenting, school bullying, moral values and
101 other important yet secondary literalisms. While all of these are legitimate
concerns, perhaps the deeper unseen problem is our lack of comprehending the
nature of cosmological and psychological development. External solutions provide
comfort, for a time, but they do not grapple with the "objective
despair" that permeates the individual and national psyche in the wake of
these unimaginable atrocities. A more psychological solution would find our politicians,
educational institutions, media talk shows, churches, community centers, and
dinner table conversations revolving the kaleidoscope of imagination in order to
"see through" the banal and literal and into the depths of our
individual and cultural soul, or lack thereof. Perhaps these disasters arise
from Isfet or Freud's death instinct in order to equilibrate
our psychological indolence and cultural indifference. In addition to external
solutions, we might also explore the effects of movies, movies theaters, shopping
malls, university educations and culture in general do to the soul. Will we
take this approach? Not likely. And the Joker/Trickster will strike again and
again, doing what tricksters have done throughout mythic history--pull the rug
out from under human stability—reminding us that we live in a cosmos where
chaos and order are always swirling together to facilitate deeper soul-making
experiences. As James Hillmans writes,
after berating the usual solution of "showing more love": "Love...[is]
neither the goal nor the way, but...one of many means of putting our
humanity through a complicated imaginal process” (Re-Visioning 189).
The ambush from a
"trickster" is not meant merely to be managed externally, but to be
explored internally resulting in external results based on such reflections--in
that order. The chaotic trickster exists to present us with "objective
despair" in order to move us along in the soul-making experience toward
real happiness and genuine joy. This developmental aspect of the trickster
archetype is what makes him a kind of "savior". Jung's points this out
by referring to the sociopathic trickster qualities of the biblical savior God,
Yahweh:
If we consider...the daemonic
features exhibited by Yahweh in the Old Testament,
we shall find in them not a few reminders of the unpredictable behaviour of the trickster, of his pointless
orgies of destruction and his self-appointed
sufferings [of human beings], together with the same gradual developments into a saviour and his
simultaneous humanization. It is just this transformation
of the meaningless into the meaningful that reveals the trickster's compensatory relation to the 'saint'... (Radin
196).
This
same trickster/savior paradox may be found in Jesus' frequent violations of the
Jewish ceremonial laws, his associations with notorious tax collectors and
prostitutes, his felonious cleansing of
the temple and his treasonous claim to kingship--resulting in his crucifixion
between two convicted terrorists. Jesus is quoted as saying:
Do not suppose
that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For
I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s
enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me; anyone who loves their son
or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matt. 10:34-37)
Theologians
and ministers often soften these antisocial trickster activities of the
"savior", but in Jesus' day they garnered him the epithets of madman,
sinner, demon possessed and felon--appellations worthy of all savior-tricksters.
Here my point is not to say that Yahweh and Jesus are just like James Holmes,
but rather to suggest that all
psychological and social change arrive via some kind of chaotic disintegration.
Trickster/savior, Isfet/Ma'at, Batman/Joker,
Eros/death always work in tandem in a soul-making universe.
Chaos is not the problem. How we
view chaos is the problem. Chaos is the source of all creativity and psycho-spiritual
transformation. I believe that is what Adorno is getting at when he says he
sees a world that wields “a particular conception of objective happiness and
objective despair”. Without the objective despair, there is no happiness;
without the objective chaos, there is no creativity; without necessary
destruction, there is no development. Adorno’s point is that when we fail to
creatively integrate this dualistic nature of reality into our lives by
attempting to eliminate chaos and disintegration, the destructive experiences
will burst onto the scene in a compensatory fashion. Pushing the hellish nature
of re-creative chaos away from us is like jamming a clown back into the
proverbial jack-in-the-box. Eventually the tension will cause the joker to pop
out and terrify all who are nearby, calling each to examine his or her existential
priorities. Is this a pessimistic view? If we are able to rid ourselves of all
suffering and create a legislated Utopia, yes, I am a pessimist. However, if
chaos is as necessary to this human existence as is order, then I am providing
a very optimistic reminder. If all chaos and suffering exist as part of the package in order to call
attention back to the soul-making endeavor of human existence, then to believe
we can eliminate all chaos is the real insanity. If we have been put on this
planet to conquer all disease and eliminate all chaos, then I am a gloomy
naysayer. But if the basic cosmic pattern is that of perpetually moving from
chaos to order, and then into more chaos and subsequent order, I am a providing
a necessary reminder—that the ultimate and
primary aim of human existence is not to end suffering, but to make soul at
the personal, cultural and cosmic levels. I am proposing a view that will not end
all suffering, but it will help to
end the kind of suffering which results from the illusion of ending all suffering. I am arguing that if this
Colorado event and others like it are unheeded by the psyche, and if we place
all of our energy into “solving the problem” rather than seeing the event as
symptomatic, events like it it will be repeated over and over. Such occurrences
may become pandemic--perhaps even some rogue nation will take on the role of
the World-Trickster as did Nazi Germany in 1939.
It would be appear that the tacit
assumption, of modern Westerners at least, is that our politicians can eliminate
all pain and suffering, creating a society and eventually a world of ease and
abundance from the cradle to the grave. Our television shows are filled with
Law and Order, CSI, hospitals fixing all medical problems, Judge Judy and half
a dozen other court programs distributing perfect justice. We are obsessed with
social justice, fairness, equity, and never hurting anyone's feelings. We have
come to expect our leaders to make us 100% safe and secure all of the time. We
elect politicians who promise to make us free from all possible chaos. Laws
proliferate—from wearing seat belts to whom we may marry, dictating what we can
smoke or eat. There are often noble and good intentions behind such aims, but
when legislated without recognizing the necessary experiences of their
opposites as inevitable and even oddly beneficial, we are inviting Trickster to
show up with a vengeance in order to equilibrate our hubris and arrogance. The
Game of Life will always have two opposing teams, internally and externally.
Our primary goal ought to be to find
the most creative and humane ways to allow for this necessary process of
psychological isometrics to occur. The ancient Greeks did this by creating
the Panhellenic Games from
which our modern Olympics derive. Jung states that most people will look
outside for a savior to correct calamities--to politicians or moralists to
"fix" things, but this is looking in the wrong place. He goes on to
say:
In the history of the collective as
in the history of the individual, everything depends
on the development of consciousness. This gradually brings liberation from imprisonment in agnoia [agnoia], unconsciousness, and is therefore a bringer of light as well as healing.
As in its collective, mythological form, so also the individual shadow contains within it the seed of enantiodromia,
of a conversion into its
opposite. (211)
The role of the trickster in all
cultural myths is to fracture the pervading psycho-social structure--to bring
fragmentation into the logical order by yanking the civilizing rug out from
under us. Trickster's aim is always to overturn the established rules, laws,
order, norms, safeguards and the security of a people trusting solely in the
laws of the socio-political routine founded on human ingenuity--as if the aim
of life were to never experience any distress. Even our medical profession has
become a system that aims at pharmaceutically induced orderliness via drugs --
"keep em flat-lined and unaffected" so they can go to work and buy
more stuff or pay more taxes. The goal of the trickster archetype is to return
us to raw Nature--to creative chaos--to the untidy disorder that precedes new
ideas and attitudes of soul. If we fail to see this event with James Holmes as
a kind of cultural trickster event--as a collective dream (nightmare) with
myriad symbols and a plethora of images for us to gather insights from--such
incidents may escalate in frequency and scope. The next Joker may not toss a
smoke bomb into a theater while wielding an assault weapon, but a dirty
radioactive bomb into a shipping container, or launch a nuclear missile into a
major urban center.
Lastly, let me state clearly
that I am neither justifying nor excusing Holmes' or any other heinous acts of
violence. I am not minimizing the unimaginable losses and grief of the
families. I lost a son to war in Afghanistan and know the reconstructive hell
of the trickster pattern. I am not asking people to stop seeking justice as
they perceive justice, or to cease seeking cures for deadly diseases or the end
to war. Our aim as humans, in my view, is to love and care for others--to bring
healing and order to life. However, I am asking that we look more deeply into
the significance of cultural and personal tragedies. If Adorno is correct, then
this "bursting forth" in Colorado may carry a revelation from the
unconscious—that life is comprised of "objective
happiness and objective despair", and that "as long as people have problems
taken away from them... their welfare and happiness in this world will merely
be an illusion. And will be an illusion that will one day burst. And when it bursts, it will have dreadful
consequences.” If we continue to deny or ignore the necessity of
problems by numbing ourselves with distractions and by insisting on creating
utopian external solutions—then we can expect greater and greater compensatory
nightmares to get our attention. If the pain of ordinary events does not call
us to reflective soul-making, the pains of extraordinary events will escalate,
forcing us to do what we must do for our psycho-spiritual development.
[2] This is a state of
mind officially designated by modern psychiatry as "Dysphoric Mania". In this state a person may feel
depressed and hopeless, while feeling activated and energetic at the same time.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/dysphoric-mania-james-holmes-mixed-mania-bipolar-disorder_n_1836744.html)
[3]New York Post. July 20,
2012 by Kate Sheehy.
http://nypost.com/2012/07/30/redheaded-hooker-says-theater-gunman-james-holmes-copied-her-with-hair-dye/
