A Jungian principle, which is going on internally in our psyche, is also going on externally in the world. In other words, the world/social/political issues that particularly concern each of us, that exercise us and agitate us, are mirrored in our own internal struggles.
This principle requires us to be self-aware before we start getting political, and indeed suggests that we need our leaders to be conscious of their motives before they start acting out their unresolved issues in our name. It’s Utopian, I know. But, unlike many psychoanalysts who believe that political action is a “mere” acting out of unconscious issues, and therefore suspect, it has to be acknowledged that many of the most effective and charismatic politicians in the world, on both progressive and reactionary ends of the spectrum, are driven by their own demons, with a drive to seek power over others to compensate for their own sense of inadequacy and impotence.
This concept is the bedrock of my political philosophy, because it highlights one particular phenomenon more than any other, that of projection. When someone is in the grip of an unconscious dynamic, one that hasn’t been reflected upon and acknowledged maturely, and projects all their own shit onto an external person or country, then the resulting polarisation and conflict lasts for generations. Bush’s scapegoating of Iraq and Iran is the most obvious, disastrous example. Underpinned by a Christian Devil-out-there mentality, the invasion of Iraq is psychologically one of the most immature and irresponsible acts imaginable. I’ve written before how the man most responsible for letting this happen without raising the alarm is someone who has a profound knowledge of the realpolitik of peace in Northern Ireland, who has first-hand experience of the compromises and accommodations necessary to stop the demonising and the killing, Tony Blair.
When it comes to the environment, Jungian discourse helps me get a handle on the challenges we face. Although loaded with unhelpful associations, thinking of the issue in terms of masculine/feminine polarities can be informative, or Apollonian/Chthonian, or mind over matter. From the start though, it has to be said that the model only works if it is accepted that each of us has both male and female within us, and that to use the terminology does not imply that if the world was run by women the world would necessarily be any different. It depends on the type of women, in the same way that it depends on the type of men who currently run the world.
And yet, and yet. Put men together in a group or subculture, and their collective values and sensibilities emerge. It’s the same with women. Whether this is nature or nurture is a moot point.
How men organise themselves and relate to each other in a group is enormously important in explaining the state the world is in. Although it may seem ludicrous to compare the two, how men congregate and communicate with each other when they are looking for sex is highly relevant, in trying to understand our de facto rulers, the Washington Republican elite. With one crucial difference: one group is making love, the other is making war. But the instinct is the same – objectifying, taking, hunting, possessing, exploiting, self-aggrandising, ego-boosting, putting emotions and consequences aside in pursuit of pleasure, of control; to conquer, to seek revenge and self-validation and a sense of potency through the submission of others, through notches on the bedpost. It is not insignificant that AIDS started with men having sex with each other en masse – the collective disregard for our sexual health meant that at the time it erupted in the late 70s/early 80s, men were taking antibiotics in a cavalier fashion whenever we got a sexually transmitted disease, and viewed the frequent visits to the clap clinic as an inevitable side-effect, the price paid for the new sexual liberation, for breaking through new frontiers. Until it was too late. And now, sadly, many men continue taking anarchic sexual risks and are prepared to endure the chemotherapy that is necessary to keep AIDS patients alive.
In the same way, in pursuit of the command of the earth’s resources, in the search for power and control and wealth, the side-effects of an ailing planet are seen as inevitable too, the increase in allergies and asthma and skin cancer. Men are amazingly adept at acting first, thinking second, and letting others clean up the mess that they make, and are experts at staying in denial, avoiding the emotional and environmental repercussions of their actions, and refusing to take responsibility.
Of course there are sexual dykes who out-do gay men on the cruising score, but, in the main, lesbians in a group display the exact opposite in terms of archetypal principles – an emphasis on community, support, social stability, nurturing and care, with emotions given priority, sometimes in all their florid excesses. But lesbians were at the forefront of the campaign for justice for the early AIDS victims, and have always been in the vanguard of movements to protect the earth’s resources, in environmental and conservationist campaigns.
Feminist analysis is to my mind largely correct, when it comes to the current state of the Earth’s health, although I am not sure that terms like “Mother” Earth help, as this planet belongs to us all, but the analogy works now, precisely because she is on the receiving end of all this masculine plundering and exploitation. As the US throws its weight around the world and ignores all appeals to look to its own shadow, to start cleaning up after itself and take responsibility for its actions, it is behaving like an adolescent, bullying youth, raging, unthinking and destructive, overtaken by testosterone and a competitive desire to win at all costs. The crisis we face is, to my mind, a crisis of masculinity above all others, heightened by a severe lack of balance between men and women in world governance. Something is seriously wrong with men if we cannot be open to the feminine within, if we cannot learn to value our emotions and our health and home, and be mature enough to look after ourselves and our planet. For its own sake, as a matter of pride and honour, rather than because women insist we wise up.
The earth needs, more than ever, respectful husbanding, and she is being shamefully dishonoured and used like an object, rather than a living, breathing organism.