60. atomization

Sugar, spice and everything nice,

That’s what little girls are made of.

Salt, mud, shadow and blood,

That's what whole humans are made of. 

What happens when we try to keep our imperfections, flaws, and ‘dark’ aspects hidden? It certainly impacts us personally, as strengthening the mask of what societal and cultural conditioning deems acceptable drives more human fullness into the shadowy unconscious. 

But it also harms the collective when we try too hard to be good. Everything that we can’t tolerate within ourselves, because we learned that to reveal those parts of ourselves would lead to losing love, acceptance and belonging, becomes something that can only exist outside of ourselves - out there, in them, in the other. 

What is initially exiled for the sake of social cohesion, rather than strengthening the bonds between social bonds of human creatures, actually causes them to fray and become more tenuous. 

I was reading Jung for school and found myself fixed upon a few passages which speak to this concept. The first was pointing out that with the advancement of increasingly secular, rational, ‘science-based’ worldviews, some western cultures have conflated God with the government. Not necessarily in efforts to create a fascist theocracy (though, yeah, that too), but that the people have somehow assigned power or responsibility to the State to care for their / our well-being. 

I relate to this, having grown up in the United States in the 90’s, when the education system introduced and reinforced the idea that the government was an idyllic, egalitarian, fair and balanced system which operated based on the will of the people. I believed as a child that if everyone did their civic duty and participated in systems of government at local, state, and national levels, that collectively we would choose the ‘right’ ideals, vote for the ‘right’ people, and overall co-create a harmonious society (for the most part). I genuinely thought (because it’s what I was taught) that the government was responsible for ensuring everyone had equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

But entities do not experience happiness… humans do. I do. You do. Individuals do. Happiness is an emotion and quality of being that exists in our sensorial, creaturely bodies. It is not the domain of a hierarchical structure created to maintain and distribute power in a very specific way. 

In plain speak, it should be a ‘duh’ that the man isn’t responsible for our well-being. Yet, as a white woman raised in North America, I naively believed this to an extent (and yeah, my privilege is showing). 

Jung wrote this in 1957, but it still hits: 

The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of human to human. It strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa. 

• The Undiscovered Self (p.300). 

Entities, especially the state, have no intention to promote mutual understanding - that is simply not their function. I get that, I guess. But what shook me in this reading is the next line about striving for the psychic isolation of the individual, because it is that which supports the consolidation of the state. 

Psychic isolation. It makes me think of social media, each of us calling out to the world from our tiny little stages and isolated soapboxes, which create a compelling illusion of being connected, of being seen and heard, but in truth, are part of yet another entity, which also doesn’t promote mutual understanding but thrives in polarization and activation of human beings. 

Upon these tiny soapboxes, each one can rant, rave, and rage, and perhaps feel as though they are connecting to ‘their people,’ sometimes at the expense of plugging in more deeply to the living, breathing bodies around them. I might even go so far as to say that participants contribute to their own psychic isolation, by building a gilded cage which reinforces the persona, the carefully crafted face selected to show to the masses. This is dangerous, because the stronger the mask becomes, the more our multi-faceted interior fades into the shadow - the forgotten place, or the long bag we drag behind us. 

In this atomization Jung speaks of, we might also lose our capacity for nuance, for holding the tension of multiple truths coexisting, for learning how to open to those who are decidedly different from ourselves. Nicely ensconced in the echo chamber of our own information bubble, we do not have to stretch ourselves to find common ground with the other, to see them also as human, just like us. 

Maybe this seems basic to you, and in a way it does to me, too, but it’s also a revelation. For years, I’ve heard people say that what drew them into my orbit was my honesty, authenticity, and willingness to be seen in my messy human-ness. It is very often my ‘imperfections’ that create a thread of connection or build a bridge between us. 

I’d like to say very clearly here that even though I do my best to show up and tell the truth, I still have ALL KINDS of gremlins living in my shadow - and always will, I suspect. But, like those who have been drawn to me, I am also attracted to those magnetic beings who wear their mixed bag of gold and gremlins on their sleeve. 

Jung points out that we needed more of this in 1957, and we probably need it even more now. Shadow work (being willing to look at our gremlins) isn’t about self-deprecation, nor is it about fixing ourselves, but about integrating and holding the fact that we all, always have two wolves within us. There are and always will be forces in the Universe which want to devour us, and there is and always will be, within us, a devourer. 

Recognition of the shadow, Jung says, leads to acknowledging our imperfection, “and it is just this conscious recognition and consideration that are needed whenever a human relationship is to be established… human relationship is based on imperfection, on what is weak, helpless, and in need of support - [that is] the very ground and motive for [inter]dependence.”

It feels vital to note that our shadow is not JUST gremlins; it is not only our weakness, greed, anger, judgment, hate, lust, hunger, sadism, and whatever else we might lump into the ‘bad’ category. 

The shadow is also golden. The parts of us that were perhaps too big for the containers which held us in the earliest years (our flair for drama, wild exuberance, unabashed eroticism, powerful intellect, ferocious warrior energy, you fill in the blank) also may have been dismembered, surgically excised and shoved into the recesses of the unconscious. Every time we deflect a compliment, are we simply throwing it in with the gremlins, banishing the truth of what’s been spoken to the realm where we hid our genius? 

I think about how hard is has been for me in the past (and sometimes still, even now) to open my heart to receive the magnitude of gratitude, love, praise, or positive reflections that sometimes reach me from someone else's voice and heart. In some ways, in my decade of pouring my creativity into social media, I kept my writing self - NO, my WRITER SELF - in the shadows. 

I laugh as I say that, because she is definitely both gremlin and gold. She is sugar, spice, a lot of things nice, and also salt, mud, hunger and blood - and all of her - and all of you - is welcome here. 

Once again, there’s no tidy ending here… just a musing, mulling, contemplation of where we find ourselves - atomized, psychically isolated, dragging a bag of gremlins and gold behind us, hoping we cross paths with others who want to bravely bare the contents of these bags of burden - gently, slowly, willingly, together - and hope that in doing so, we start to break the spell of modernity which has us in a trance - the spell of isolation and separation.