Proceed with Passion

Chapter Eight: Nations Confronting Their Shadow

91 Chapter Eight Nations Confronting Their Shadow I will never apologize for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are. — George Bush Sr. They are forgetful that the darkness called night is always present, Sunlight is the guest. — Stanley Moss, The Bathers Because God had chosen America as the construction site of the earthly paradise, nothing was ever America’s fault. — Lewis Lapham Most students can pretty well apprehend when issues are being presented in a biased manner, glossed over, sentimentalized, or sanitized. For better or worse, they have come to distrust politicians and media spokespersons. In fact, for many thinking students, the whole process of public and civic discourse is suspect. It’s hard for them to care for their schoolwork when they sense that they are not being told the truth. Consequently, when teachers pass along various bromides to low income students about the successes of democracy in America, they tune out. Most inner city students see with their own eyes how little regard the government has for their neighborhoods and their plight. “Separation of powers” may be a wonderful topic for a civics discussion, but the separation of power that these students experience has to do with the rich separated from the poor, the CEOs from the workers, the “old boy” power structure from the ghetto dwellings. These separations All those years we spent jubilant, Seeing the trifling, cowering world From the height of our shining saddles, Brawling our might across the earth As we forged an empire, I never questioned . . . It seemed so clear – our fate was to rule. That’s what I thought at the time. But perhaps we were merely Deafened for years by the din Of our own empire-building, The shouts of battle, the clanging of words The cries of victory. – Aeschylus, The Persians Proceed with Passion 92 not only disengage students from their social studies classes and their schools, they also disengage their parents from the election process.The adults don’t vote because the system does not work for them, and this atmosphere pervades the neighborhoods where their children grow up. If teachers want to involve teen students in social studies and contemporary civics classes, they should begin by confronting some of the unpleasant realities of contemporary society. Such classes might, for example, look at the shadow side of history. A psychologist might suggest that in these classes we would “own our shadow.” Dr. Carl Jung provided us with a profound insight about human beings and society, stating that “the ego is what we are and know about consciously; the shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know” (Storr, 212 ff). According to Jung, when we are all born, we have not separated out what is acceptable or unacceptable. Life teaches us these lessons, which vary from society to society. Jungian writer Robert A. Johnson explains: “We are all born whole but somehow the culture demands that we live out only part of our nature and refuse other parts of our inheritance. We divide the self into an ego and a shadow because our culture insists that we behave in a particular manner” (5). In other words, some “bad” characteristics hide within the shadow as well as some “good” characteristics. Consequently, we gain an orderly way to behave in a given society while we lose some levels of diversity, creativity, and ecstasy. Jung himself saw the shadow in these terms: “By shadow I mean the negative side of the personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide, together with the insufficiently-developed functions and the contents of the personal unconscious” (Storr, 87). Furthermore, it is not only individuals who are prisoner to the shadow. Nations as well repress their negative characteristics. They do this mostly through the psychic mechanism which Jung referred to as “projecting the shadow.” The shadow is also often projected on others. An examination of those attributes which a man most condemns in other people (greed, intolerance, disregard for others, etc.) usually show that, unacknowledged , he himself possesses them. Jung continues with a passage thatis crucial for educators to pass on in the classroom. The passage reveals the essence of this chapter and of a great deal of American history: 93 Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone...