Hello and welcome to rewilding philosophy, your newsletter about ekophilosophical health for our times. As some of you know, I have started exploring how to integrate magic into my life as a form of knowing differently. While it’s been a slow process overall, I have frequently been drawing tarot cards.
(who writes a wonderful newsletter by the way) recommended a practice to me: draw one single card and stick with it for some time until the resonance fades. The card I recently drew was the shadow. I have never been particularly interested in shadow work, so when I drew the card, I didn’t have an immediate reaction and almost shrugged it off. However, the description included a book recommendation, which I followed. And that’s where the rabbit hole began.Carl Jung described the shadow as the unconscious part of the personality that houses repressed and often darker traits, which the conscious mind does not recognize or accept. It can include both negative aspects like selfishness and aggression, as well as positive qualities like creativity and intuition. The way those shadows manifest is through psychological projection, where we attribute our own undesirable traits to others. For example, if we suppress our hedonistic side that loves indulgence and excess, we might harshly judge indulgence and excess in others. I will say more about this below. According to Jung, integrating the shadow is crucial for our individuation, which is the process of achieving self-realization and psychological wholeness, and involves acknowledging and assimilating these hidden aspects into the conscious self.
Jung also extended the concept of the shadow to include collective shadows within cultures and societies, which can manifest in social and political issues. For example, a society that prides itself on values such as freedom and equality might repress its history of racial discrimination and inequality, resulting in unresolved tensions and conflicts. This collective shadow can lead to systemic issues such as institutional racism and social injustice, which persist despite the society's proclaimed ideals.
While Jung brought attention to the shadow to our WEIRD world, many indigenous cultures have been aware of the shadow for I don’t know how long. Many have found ways to integrate the shadow through holistic practices deeply embedded in their spiritual, social, and communal traditions.
According to the American Jungian analyst and author Robert A. Johnson in “Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche”, the shadow will always show. It can either play out unconsciously. Or we can find rituals and practices for the shadow to play out without actually playing out. According to Johnson, the shadow can’t distinguish between a real act and a symbolic one. He gives the example of being annoyed by guests who have overextended their welcome.
“If I do my shadow upkeep after having difficult guests, I will not land my shadow on some unsuspecting stranger. I have to honor my shadow, for it is an integral part of me; but I don’t have to push it onto someone else. A five-minute ceremony or acknowledgment of my shadow accumulation after my guests depart will have satisfied it and safeguarded my environment from darkness.”
An example of the collective shadow is around our so-called progress. As Johnson notes, “Researchers estimate that in an average family household, twenty-eight servants would be needed to accomplish only one part of the work that is taken care of by our mechanical aids. What a wonderful age! But its shadow appears, inevitably, as boredom and loneliness—the exact opposites of the efficient society we have made. On a global level, we have escalated war and political strife to equal our visions of Utopia and of a Brave New World.”
The shadow is not just a part of us - individually or collectively - that we suppress, but also something that always already exists. Something we can’t escape. According to Jung, the ego and the shadow come from the same source and exactly balance each other. It’s an ontological primitive. To make light is to make shadow; one cannot exist without the other. Johnson says that the more refined our conscious personality, the more shadow we built up on the other side.
“To make a work of art, to say something kind, to help others, to beautify the house, to protect the family—all these acts will have an equal weight on the opposite side of the scale and can lead us into sin. We cannot refuse our creativity or stop expressing ourselves in this way; yet we can be aware of this dynamic and make some small but conscious gesture to compensate for it.” Robert A. Johnson
I find this especially relevant in the context of work around regeneration, sustainability or GameB - work that aims at improving our ways of life. According to these ideas, the more we try to do good, the more the other side of this will show up, if we don’t integrate our shadow.
We can interpret some of the things happening in the world, as exactly this shadow playing out in how things get better AND worse. For example, over the past few decades, the global poverty rate has significantly declined, but at the same time, economic inequality within and between countries has increased. The adoption of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, has been growing rapidly, but at the same time, energy consumption and related carbon emissions have increased.
I wonder how much we are unconsciously also creating what we don’t want while we pursue what we do.
One of the areas where I see this play out in my own life is in my very minimalist wardrobe, in which I basically wear the same thing every day. I have a very strong hedonistic side inside of me. I would say my “natural inclination” - if there is such a thing - is hedonistic. It’s also materialistic. I love things. Because this combination is in stark contrast to the values I want to live by, I limit myself. At the same time, it feels like the more I try to reduce, the more I want. I therefore have to find ways to give the side of me that loves indulgence and access an outlet. Lately this has been crafting. Most of the time, it’s obsessive reading. I am currently experimenting with meditation techniques. I also love to accompany people who go shopping (because they actually need something).
In “Existential Kink”, Carolyn Elliott suggests to let the desire that motivates the negative pattern be fully known and satisfied, because “then we're free to move beyond it and create something new”; “in dropping your resistance and negative judgment, you bring yourself fully into resonance with practical reality.”
For me that would mean that instead of denying my hedonism, I learn to not only accept it, but Elliott would suggest, to rejoice, enjoy and “get off on it” (therefore the title of her book).
For people who are in this liminal space working towards social-ecological justice, in which we try to be “better” and create a world that is “better”, there is likely a strong shadow (if I take the theory to be true), unless we find ways to integrate it.
One reason I chose the shopping example is that I see this pattern play out frequently in the debates around degrowth, sustainable lifestyles and even in private conversations around sustainability: a denial of our hedonistic side. Hedonism and a regeneration don’t go well together - or so we assume. Approaches such as “pleasure activism” by Adrienne Maree Brown or as I have described HERE overcome these seemingly polarities.
In “Meeting the Shadow” by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams write that if we don’t address the shadow, we become stuck and run in circles.
To meld the paradoxes between the light and shadow, the good and the bad, is how we become unstuck.
The task then is not to fight harder against degenerative practices, such as big oil, but to find practices and rituals that help us to embrace the paradox.
“A culture can only function if we live out the unwanted elements symbolically. All healthy societies have a rich ceremonial life. Less healthy ones rely on unconscious expressions: war, violence, psychosomatic illness, neurotic suffering, and accidents are very low-grade ways of living out the shadow. Ceremony and ritual are a far more intelligent means of accomplishing the same thing.” Robert A. Johnson