You might think that someone who is incapable of cruelty is a higher moral being than someone who is capable of cruelty, and I would say, and this follows Jung as well, that that’s incorrect, in fact it’s dangerously incorrect! Because if you are not capable of cruelty, you are absolutely a victim to anyone who is!
I’ve often thought that part of the reason that people go to watch Anti-heroes and villains is because there’s a part of them crying out for the incorporation of the monster within them. After all, it’s what gives them strength of character and self respect, because it’s impossible to respect yourself until you grow teeth!
It’s only when you grow teeth and realise that you’re somewhat dangerous, that you might be more willing to demand that you treat yourself with respect and only then that other people do the same thing!
That doesn’t mean that being cruel is better than not being cruel. What it means is that being able to be cruel, and then not being cruel, is better than not being able to be cruel. Because in the first case, you’re nothing but weak and naive, and in the second case, you’re dangerous, but you have it under control.
A big part of practicing martial arts is to concentrate on exactly that as part of their philosophy of training.
It’s like, we’re not training you to fight, we’re training you to be peaceful and awake and avoid fights. But if you happen to have to get in one, you’ll be able to respond with confidence and with any luck and this is certainly the case with bullies, with any luck a reasonable show of confidence, which is very much equivalent to a show of dominance, is going to be enough to make the bully back off!
So the strength that you develop in your monstrousness is actually the best guarantee of peace! This is partly why Jung believed that it was necessary for people to integrate their shadow, which he said was a terrible thing for people to attempt, because the human shadow, which is all those things about yourself that you don’t want to realise, reaches all the way to hell!
What he meant by that was, it’s through an analysis of your own shadow that you can come to understand why other people are capable, and you as well, of the sorts of terrible atrocities that are characterised, let’s say, in the 20th century!
Without that understanding, there’s no possibility of bringing it under control!
When you study Nazi Germany, for example, or you study the Soviet Union, particularly under Stalin and you’re asking yourself, well, what are these perpetrators like? Forget about the victims, focus on the perpetrators and ask yourself do you ever have daydreams or imaginings about being those dark souls now and then?
The answer is they’re just like you and I, and if you don’t know that then it just means that you don’t know anything about people including yourself! It also means that you have to discover why they’re just like you, and believe me that’s no picnic! That’s enough to traumatise people, and that’s partly why a lot of people don’t do it!
It’s also partly why the path to enlightenment and wisdom is seldom trod upon!
Because if it was all a matter of following your bliss and doing what made you happy, then everyone in the world would be a paragon of wisdom. But it’s not that at all. It’s a matter of facing the thing you least want to face.
In the story of King Arthur, where the knights go off to look for the Holy Grail, which is either the cup that Christ drank out of at the Last Supper or the cup into which the blood that gushed from his side was poured when he was crucified. The stories vary, but it’s basically a holy object, like the phoenix in some sense, meaning that it’s essentially a representation of transformation.
It’s an ideal!
So King Arthur’s knights, who sit at a round table because they’re all roughly equal, go off to find the most valuable thing. The question is of course, where do you look for the most valuable thing when you don’t know where it is?
Well, each of the knights looks at the forest surrounding the castle and enters the forest at the point that looks darkest to him.
Now that’s a good thing to understand because the gateway to wisdom and the gateway to the development of personality, which is exactly the same thing, is precisely through the portal that you do not want to climb through. And the reason for that, it’s actually quite technical, this is a Jungian presupposition too, is that there’s a bunch of things about you that are underdeveloped, and a lot of those things are because they’re things you’ve avoided looking at, because you don’t want to look at them!
The bottom line is there’s parts of you you’ve just plain avoided developing, because it’s hard for you to develop those parts! So it’s only by virtual necessity that what you need is where you don’t want to look, because that’s where you’ve kept it!
So when you see these stories of the hero journeying to unknown lands of terror and danger, that’s what happens to you. Only it’s an inner journey, symbolised by an outer storyline.
It happens to you all the time, you’re in this little safe space, like The Hobbit in the Shire, and then there’s a great evil brewing somewhere, and you can no longer ignore it, so off you go into the land of terror and uncertainty. And like Frodo it’s better to go on purpose rather than accidentally, because at least you can be somewhat prepared.
If you face it voluntarily, your body activates itself for exploration and mastery. But if you face it involuntarily, even the same size threat, then you revert to prey mode! You’re frozen, and that’s way, way, way more stressful!
Then you have a better chance to stay on top of things, and your little trip to the underworld might be a few minutes long instead of a catastrophe that produces post traumatic stress disorder and knocks you out for four or five years, or maybe you never recover!
So, one of the things you need to do if you’re going to be a human being, is to prepare yourself to be useful in the face of death.
Now that’s a subject for a whole other essay.
Gary King
Against The Grain.