Tackling Evil

My experience yesterday on my way back home for the reason suggested in my previous blog has set me thinking again about the mysterious nature of the human psyche and its possibilities for both good and evil and the associated problem of how we should deal with the evil in our lives. But quite by accident and much to my surprise, ( Jungians will probably say by serendipity) during my lunchbreak, whilst I was browsing through my office computer on the latest additions to the blogs of those fellow bloggers I am interested in, my eyes strayed upon a printed copy of an article on precisely the same subject, buried amongst the piles of loose papers at the base of the computer screen! I had intended to file that copy for my own records but for one reason or another failed to do so. It was an article which I had written in another blog on 20th November, 2009! Here it is, with my ubiquitous typos corrected whilst I was reading it again:

I did not not have a great deal of time last night because of a social engagement and went to bed early. I only had time to read a short article by Lilianne Frey-Rohn called "How to Deal with Evil". It was part of a collection of essays in a book with a rather long title" Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature" edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrahms (1991). The book showcases the views of various psychologists and other writers of a Jungian bent. Frey-Rohn was one of them.

 

Frey-Rohn thinks that whilst it is possible to transform evil into good, it requires man's "highest virtues" . He warns us that in the attempt to deal with this "numinous and dangerous opponent in the psyche", we must be most careful so that we will not be destroyed by it! To him, there are a number of ways of dealing with the problem of evil. One is to draw a circle around it and declare that it must be "sublimated" or "suppressed". Another is to make common cause with it and help our blind will realize it, as suggested by Nietzsche. The two approaches seem directly opposed to each other. Whilst the first tries to contain and divert it, the second gives our instincts full reign. Freud advocated the first method. In his later writings, he advised us that the patient's reason must be engaged and be trained or educated to accept reality under his "reality principle", by strengthening the Logos against the powers of Ananake (ominous fate) . Nietzsche took the opposite view and advocated a Dionysian affirmation of the world and a passionate amor fati so as to allow full expression to our animal-like desire for power, which he thought had been suppressed by the slave morality preached by the Christian religion for centuries. But to Frey-Rohn, both methods are one-sided. Both lead to a "dissociation" between "conscious good and unconscious evil". Too much morality strengthens evil in the inner world. Too little morality promotes a dissociation between good and evil.

 

Frey-Rohn prefers to follow William James in looking upon spiritual health as the state of harmonious unity of the human personality  or "completion of human personality". James thought that a precondition for attaining such harmonious unity is the "unconditional acceptance of the dictates of the unconscious self" but Frey-Rohn adds, as a Jungian, of "the acceptance of the transpersonal", despite the risk that one can never be sure whether the "inner voice" is the voice of God or that of the Devil. The Jungian experience shows that there is no guarantee that an  individual can meet the challenge nor is there any "objective" criterion about what is "right" in each situation because it is something very "individual". Frey-Rohn says that "the archetypal shadow leads into the utterly 'unknown.' " It is like an experience of the "God-image" itself, in all its sublimity and depth, including its good and evil. To her, such an experience "transforms" the whole man, including his inner "adversary" (his demon), and not just the "ego" part of his personality. This is a path fraught with risk and danger. A message from the unconscious is not eo ipso to be equated with the voice of God. Therefore "mere surrender or blind faith in the unconscious powers is no more satisfactory than a stubborn resistance to the "unknown". Just as an attitude of complete trust can be the expression of childishness, so an attitude of critical resistance can be a measure of "self-protection". We must always be careful about how much of the "dosage" of poison to accept: not too much, nor too little. We are as likely to be blinded by the power of light as to be overwhelmed by the power of darkness. The danger of "inflation" can occur in either direction.

 

Frey-Rohn endorses Jung's view that the "shadow" (both personal and archetypal) is "the moral problem par excellence". We must be "painstakingly aware" of what we do and what actually happens to us. Jesus once said to a Jew working on the Sabbath, "If indeed thou knowest what thou does, thou art blessed; but if thou knowest not, thou art cursed, and a transgressor of the law". The same counsel is given by Socrates,(!), except that this principle is now applied to our psyche, which, to Frey-Rohn has potential for both good and evil. However, this is easier said than done. We must simultaneously accept the values rejected by our ego and also recognize the value of good within our psyche ie. become conscious or "aware" of the unconscious conflict between the two within our own psyche. This means that the moral demands previously based upon unconscious acceptance of values imposed by tradition or dictated by our "instinct" must be supplemented by our " individual" subjective "reflection" and "conscious" acceptance, that the rights of the ego are given as much weight as the rights of the society or God and also that the rights of our instinct are given as much attention as the rights of our reason. This may be experienced as a "civil war" between the two opposite and apparently irreconciliable and "incompatible" impulses within ourselves. But if successful, the "conscious conflict between good and evil takes the place of an unconscious dissociation. As a result, unconscious instinctive regulation is supplemented by conscious control."  If so, we shall be able to estimate more accurately the effect of our conduct on other people and become aware of the powers of our shadow and perhaps even be able to restrain it. The "secret" of a better adjustment is, curiously, to insist less that we shall be "good", to give up and ease a little away from our wish to be "nothing but good" and to "allow evil a certain right to live". Jung pointed out that the disadvantages of the lesser good are balanced by the advantages of lesser evil. Contrary to the general opinion that consciousness of the shadow "constellates and strengthens evil", experience has shown that the opposite appears to be true. A conscious knowledge of our shadow is a "necessary" requirement of responsible action and hence of the lessening of the shadow's darkness. To Frey-Rohn, what is true for the individual shadow is even truer for the collective shadow. She says: "Consciousness of the archetypal shadow is essential not only for individual self-realization, but also for that transformation of creative impulses within the collective upon which depends the preservation of both individual and collective life." The reason is that "The individual cannot detach himself from his connection with society; responsibility towards oneself always includes responsibility toward the whole." She thinks that what the individual consciousness struggles for and is able to transmit will benefit the collective because the archetypal adversary which the individual encounters in his personal struggle may presage and anticipate the collective moral conscience.

 

How to reconcile the two apparently contradictory impulses towards good and evil within the human psyche? Only by raising them to a higher level, by transcending them! The freer an individual is able to discard hard and fast principles, the readier he is to sacrifice his ego-will, the better are his chances of being emotionally grasped by something greater than himself. If so, Frey-Rohn says, the person will "experience an inner liberation, a condition--to use Nietzsche's phrase--'beyond good and evil'" We must be prepared to abandon our habitual and ingrained habits of thought and emotional attitudes and simply "trust" in the curative powers always already stored within our psyche, provided by nature before their suppression, repression and distortion by our early life experience and by our "education" and "socialization". It's a "resurrection" following a "crucifixion". The ego-will then becomes one with the will of God. She says, "acceptance of sacrifice is the sine qua non of salvation. A transformation takes place in the symbol of both good and evil. Good loses some of its goodness and evil some of its evil. As doubt of the "'light" of consciousness increases, so the "darkness" of the soul appears less black. A new symbol emerges in which the opposites can be reconciled. She thinks of the symbol of the cross, of the Tai Chi Tu and of the Golden (Lotus?) Flower. To her, the emergence of such a symbol often brings a new understanding of the conflict, a neutralization of the opposites, and a transformation of the "God-image."

 

Frey-Rohn thinks that "evil" may "attack us in the form of illness, external disorder, inner emptiness, or a shattering invasion from within of an immoral demand" but evil can also prove to be a means of healing too: it reconciles us with the central core of our being, with the self, with the image of the God-head. "Whoever attains such reconciliation will not only feel open to the creative, he will also experience again the tension of the opposites--this time in a positive manner--and so he will finally recover his powers of decision and action.".

 

She concludes with a poem from Rumi, a 13th Century Persian mystic poet:                

 

                                 Put what salve you have on yourself.

                                 Point out to everyone the disease you are.

                                 That's part of getting well.

                                 When you lance yourself that way,

                                    you become more merciful and wiser.

                                 Even if you don't have some particular

                                    fault at the moment, you may soon

                                    become the one who makes that very act

                                    not notorious.

 

It seems  to me that everyone is agreed that man is not just evil. Nor is he just good. In the same way that we possess certain intrinsic good, like our desire to help and to nurture other life., we also possess certain intrinsic evil, like our desire to be violent,  aggressive and to dominate others or otherwise to act unjustly against others. The problem appears to be that we tend too easily to polarize things in our mind into a simplified hermeneutical model of oppositions of black and white, of good and evil, of light and darkness, of above and below, of self and others, of "we" and "they" and push towards either extremes of the two poles. We try to maximize what we think of as good  and minimize what we regard as evil for ourselves and our group. To me, the greatest evil is not so much the "intrinsic" evil in us as our stubborn refusal to see the world in a different light and to insist that our partial and necessarily limited and simplified model of the world is the only model of value and in doing so, do violence to others's views of and their right to live in the same world in their own way. Worse, we think that our own view is the most "perfect" or the "best".  To me, therefore it is not the intrinsic evil within our psyche but our megalomaniac, solipsistic,  narcissistic and insolent desire to be "perfect" which  is the greatest evil. Paradoxically, this particular form of "secondary" evil stems precisely from this insistent, inordinate, unwarranted desire to be "perfect" or from this presumptious desire to become God! Only if we give up this desire to turn ourselves into God will the natural good within ourselves be given a chance to do its own job, along with the natural and intrinsic evil within us.

If we accept that there is intrinsic evil in ourselves and learn to live with it instead of resorting to the primitive psychological defence of "denial", and through such denial, deprive ourselves of the chance to work on it, then only can we have any hope of improving, but only improving, not attaining "perfection". The only realistic hope we should strive for is to be "better", never "perfect". Evil cannot be all bad if it can be turned into an instrument towards the achievement of whatever good we are capable of, given our natural limitations, by reminding us of our intrinsic and congenital "imperfection". The principal evil is therefore our stubborn refusal to admit our imperfection, our refusal to admit that we have feet of clay, that we are made of dust and will return to dust, that we are part of the animal kingdom which in turn is part of the natural world, which is neither good nor evil! Once we are able to admit that and to accept that as part of our intrinsic nature, then evil will no longer have that iron grip upon our soul! Then only shall we have the chance to be finally free! We shall then be free from our own worst enemy, our "self" and the "illusions" created by that benighted "self".  Then only shall we have transcended our "self"! That to me, is the ultimate liberation which all philosophers and sages have sought to teach throughout the ages!