What Can We Own?

Some processes for understanding what's at play.

I’ve read three books recently that have been helpful in understanding some of the current political dynamics we find ourselves facing—dynamics that are so bizarre, they feel archetypal. In fact, fans of Carl Jung would say they definitely are archetypal. In Analytical Psychology, which is the transcript of what’s referred to as the Tavistock lectures, a series of talks Jung gave in London in 1935, he describes the psychology of the mob, explaining: “As a rule, when the collective unconscious becomes really constellated in larger social groups, the result is a public craze, a mental epidemic that may lead to revolution or war or something of the sort. These movements are exceedingly contagious—almost overwhelmingly contagious because, when the collective unconscious is activated, you are no longer the same person. You are not only in the moment—you are it.”

Morris Louis, “Gamma Delta, 1959-1960,” Whitney Print Shop, from $30

At one point, Jung discusses a prophecy he made well before WWII, explaining: “The archetypal image which the moment requires gets into life, and everybody is seized by it. That is what we see today. I saw it coming, I said in 1918 that the ‘blond beast’ is stirring in its sleep and that something will happen in Germany. No psychologist then understood at all what I meant, because people had simply no idea that our personal psychology is just a thin skin, a ripple upon the ocean of collective psychology.”

These lectures deserve many newsletters, but I’m offering these brief quotes now for anyone who feels like we’ve been gripped by a long influenza—and doesn’t understand what has us by the throat. When will the fever dream break? When will enough of us wake up, shake off this stupor, and come back to our senses?

Now, I’m sure many of you are screaming, but I am awake. I hear you. I see you. And it’s not enough. Because yelling at the other guys keeps the polarity intact. Instead, we need to break the spell; we need to understand the underlying dynamics and walk each other back. I do feel like this is already happening, and it needs to continue: May we gather as a wave instead of continuing to crash into each other. We don’t have time for “I told you so,” or “What’s wrong with you?” or getting even.

The other two recent reads that provide essential perspective for this time are Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson’s Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts and James Kimmel’s The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World’s Deadliest Addiction—and How to Overcome It. (Kimmel and Tavris are both joining me on upcoming episodes of Pulling the Thread, stay tuned for more.)

In Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me), Tavris and Aronson outline Dissonance Theory, which explains why we ground down in our beliefs despite evidence that we might be wrong. In short, being confronted with dissonant ideas—ideas that run counter to our own self-perception—is too psychologically difficult to reconcile. We must be right; they must be wrong. They also explain that the walk down the pyramid of our own integrity is a slow meander and not a quick slide: We betray our own values iteratively, self-justifying as we go, until we can no longer see how far away we are from our own ideals. We go from someone who has unyielding ethical spine, to someone who trades-off our values to “get things done,” or because its expedient, etc. As they write, “Self-justification is not the same thing as lying or making excuses. Obviously, people will lie or invent fanciful stories to duck the fury of a lover, parent, or employer; to keep from being sued or sent to prison; to avoid losing face; to avoid losing a job; to stay in power. But there is a big difference between a guilty man telling the public something he knows is untrue … and that man persuading himself that he did a good thing. In the former situation, he is lying and knows he is lying to save his own skin. In the latter, he is lying to himself. That is why self-justification is more powerful and more dangerous than the explicit lie. It allows people to convince themselves that what they did was the best thing they could have done. In fact, come to think of it, it was the right thing.” While some of the hypocrisy we see on full display right now is actually cynicism—people know they are being hypocritical and don’t care—some of the hypocrisy can be attributed to dissonance theory. We can’t accept things about ourselves that are not consonant with our own self-regard and so we double-down in confirming that our choices and decisions are correct.

Kimmel’s The Science of Revenge is different, but equally revelatory: It’s a theory that seems so obvious, in retrospect, that it’s hard to understand how it’s not more accepted and understood. He argues that the desire for revenge is an addiction—following the same brain routes and processes as any other dangerous substance—and when left undiagnosed and untreated, its underlying pathology becomes devastating for all of us. He argues that a desire for revenge is the motivating force for many of our most violent, current political leader(s) along with those who commit mass shootings—he offers vengeful manifestos as proof—it also maps to the behavior of the most horrific killers in history: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Genghis Khan, and more. A thirst for vengeance goes all the way back to the the first murder, the story of Cain and Abel.

Most of us do not have revenge addiction that would drive us to physically harm other people. But we all participate in its milder variations: We want justice that works out in our favor and confirms how we feel about ourselves and the world. We are all susceptible to cognitive dissonance and self-justification: We want the other guys, the guys who have harmed us or gone astray in our eyes, to get their just deserts, to pay. We want karma to play itself out and ensure we all get what we deserve, meaning, of course, that we are found righteous. None of us want to take any responsibility for the terrible quagmire we find ourselves in today—though we all feel some certainty about who is responsible and who is to blame. I’m not suggesting that that’s entirely wrong, per se—I have ideas about who is responsible as well, and who the real “conflict entrepreneurs,” to quote Amanda Ripley, are. But I am suggesting that we are all participating in spiking the fever of the collective by refusing to own any part of it: There’s a bit of accountability for every person to take; some must take more.

Here’s Tavris and Aronson in Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me):

Of all the stories that people construct to justify their lives, loves, and losses, the ones they weave to account for being the instigator or recipient of injustice or harm are the most compelling and have the most far-reaching consequences. In such cases, the hallmarks of self-justification transcend the specific antagonists (lovers, parents and children, friends, neighbors, or nations) and their specific quarrels (a sexual infidelity, a family inheritance, a betrayal of a confidence, a property line, or a military invasion). We have all done something that made others angry at us, and we have all been spurred to anger by what others have done to us. We all have, intentionally or unintentionally, hurt another person who will forever regard us as the villain, the betrayer, the scoundrel. And we have all felt the sting of being on the receiving end of an act of injustice, nursing a wound that never seems to fully heal. The remarkable thing about self-justification is that it allows us to shift from one role to the other and back again in the blink of an eye without applying what we have learned from one role to the other. Feeling like a victim of injustice in one situation does not make us less likely to commit an injustice against someone else, nor does it make us more sympathetic to victims. It’s as if there is a brick wall between those two sets of experiences, blocking our ability to see the other side.

One of the reasons for that brick wall is that pain felt is always more intense than pain inflicted, even when the actual amount of pain is identical. The old joke—the other guy’s broken leg is trivial; our broken fingernail is serious—turns out to be an accurate description of our neurological wiring.

So how do we overcome our own neurological wiring? How do we contend with the pathways in our brain that give us a dopamine hit when we get “justice,” a.k.a. revenge? One of the only ways is through conscious action: Recognizing what we’re up to and then stopping the cycle before we perpetuate pain by projecting our hurts onto other people. In his book, Kimmel outlines a process for forgiveness—specifically forgiving those people who have wronged you—acknowledging that the person who wins in this action is actually you. Tavris and Aronson make a case for responsibility and self-reflection, arguing that you don’t need to slide down the integrity pyramid if you keep yourself honestly tethered to your own integrity, checking yourself (hard) every day.

In his latest book, Living with Borrowed Dust: Reflections on Life, Love, and Other Grievances, James Hollis, a.k.a. my favorite Jungian writer, describes the process of self-examination a friend of his in Texas undertakes. Hollis writes:

“I consider his honesty and strength of character, such that he can be honest in looking at himself, to be exemplary for the rest of us. The healing of our split souls, and our split nation, begins with humility. Here is how he addresses himself: ‘The country is deeply polarized. The divisiveness is frightening to people on both sides. We are all struggling to find out what we can do to heal the wounds. For the last decade I have struggled with the fact that politics and political discussions bring out the worst in me. I don’t want to be the way that I am, but I see the following in myself:

• I have become aware of how attached I am to my beliefs and values.

• I find it difficult to listen to opposing views with an open mind.

• This confidence in my personal opinions leads me to a sense of arrogance and self-righteousness.

• The arrogance and self-righteousness lead me to contempt and anger at those who disagree.

• The anger and contempt can destroy my sense of well-being and equanimity.’”

That’s it. That stops the cycle. Refusing to perpetuate anger and contempt—however well-deserved and justified you may feel it to be—helps. It is a piece of work we can all do, that we can all own. Keep in mind that if you keep that anger and contempt moving, if you make someone else “bad” for inspiring your own discomfort, you will move into cycles of self-justification to maintain consonance with your own self-image: That person gets worse so you can be better. You are catching yourself in a trap, a trap that becomes increasingly difficult to escape. May we all resist.

Because I can’t resist, here’s a bit more Hollis to wrap it up for this week. In Living with Borrowed Dust, he writes: “We need to remember that not everything gets healed, that justice is not always the outcome, and that the work of healing may take a lifetime. This means we may have to live with matters unresolved, with injustice reverberating in our splintered bones, and the discrepancies between what we wish for our lives and what is achievable are often very great indeed. Accordingly, we all have to live with loss and treasure what we can wrest from it. We have to live with disappointment and savor how blessed we are. We have to live with unachievable desires and be grateful for how they helped us move more fully into life and its struggles.”

It’s not lost on me that I’m sending this on Yom Kippur: Whether you observe, or not, in the Jewish tradition, this is a day for fasting, abstaining from work, atoning for where we’ve transgressed the bounds of our own integrity, and seeking forgiveness from ourselves, others, and God.

Amen. See you next week.