Shade One of The Seven Shades of Darkness

 [The Devil][The Victim][The Enforcer][The Vortex][The Strangler]

[The Cavilier]  [The Conjuror]

 “For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?” – [Kahlil Gibran]

In every single waking moment we make simple choices that empower either a higher or lower reality for our lives. Much of the associated thinking taking place without our knowing.

 This section is about the many reasons we in those moments consciously or unconsciously choose to walk the lower path—the path that takes us into the proverbial valley of the shadow of death. It therefore explores the reasons why many live desperate, destructive and uninspired lives.

 The word desperation literally means being de-spirited (or dispirited—also meaning depressed or spiritually broken) and implies that one is “not coming from the spirit”—spirit being our life essence. It can also be described as the devil within us holding us back from who we potentially can become. It also is the same devil that created the greatest evil in human history, Hitler, brought to power in 1933 after the great depression had left the German people dispirited, allowing those with evil inclination among them to flourish.

 This is as in any other evil circumstance where evildoers seek to vanquish whatever good there is in the world. But specifically, our own devil is the part of ourselves that prevents us from reaching our full human potential within our own very limited lifetime.

To be de-spirited can be equated with death. At least spiritually in that those who are desperate become depleted of their life essence. And ironically, devil is lived turned around. In a strange twist of semantics, the word can be implied to mean the opposite of living itself—that it is a force against life and the constructive living of it.

Jung described evil as the failure to meet the Shadow—and I would suppose, specifically to meet The Devil that masks our desperation within. By the shadow Jung implied the aspects of our personality we prefer to deny, or that we do not wish to think about. By it he also does not infer that the shadow itself is evil, but rather the failure or refusal to meet or acknowledge it.

As mentioned before, evil being live turned around. One therefore can make a similar deduction about its meaning. In this regard an important distinction we must make is that the devil referenced in this section is not necessarily the one that is external to oneself—as a Hitler was. Except that by avoiding the destructive aspects of our natures, we can unconsciously become devilish – or evil – forces unto ourselves.

Notwithstanding how we have just defined it, desperation usually is associated with feelings of frustration resulting from our unsuccessful attempts at controlling the direction we want our life to take. And particularly when circumstance forces us to live from paycheque-to-paycheque in desperately having to make do with what little we may have to get by. And yet in this effort not to make the ends meet. This therefore does not afford one the luxury to go within—to in this way come from the spirit.

So while feeling sorry for our circumstance may be our right – and beyond that may even be very justifiable – it nonetheless does not allow an opportunity to align the forces of mind that will help create a better future realty for ourselves.

Nevertheless as a rule one’s relative level of desperation has very little to do with whether one is materially wealthy or not.  It instead is about how one perceives one’s personal worth, irrespective of one’s finances or possessions. For instance it is reported that America is the unhappiest nation on earth although they are materially the wealthiest. On the other hand one of the poorest, Nigeria, is said to have of the highest levels of relative happiness.

The above claim is according to World Health Organisation findings or the relative metrics which purportedly points to this. While this statistic is not given as a credible measure to prove any significant point, it nevertheless does strongly suggest that one’s relative sense of personal worth has very little to do with one’s monetary accumulation—or at least should not. In any event, one’s apparent happiness – or not – should indeed be considered a shallow measure. Nigeria perhaps aptly illustrating this point in that it also is rated one of the most corrupt nations on the planet.

From your perspective, what do you prefer: happiness or being in integrity with oneself and those around you?

Irrespective of what you may answer, an interesting revelation from the above is that Nigerians are the biggest confidence tricksters in the world, and that American’s are by far their preferred target market—the  Nigerians referring to them as moogoos (meaning big fools or suckers). Based on this example the irony of this dichotomy is incredibly poignant, it is that the wealthiest of all nations in fact appears to be more needy than one of the poorest.

This is not meant to be a barometer to judge the relative virtues of one society over another, except to conclude that there appears to be a definite causal link between acquisitiveness and happiness. However despite this apparent connection, the levels of desperation usually are higher amongst the ‘perceived’ poor in very materialistic societies. This therefore being more reflective of capitalist dynamics and how societal values are shaped because of it.

And notwithstanding the above there most definitely are a great many Americans who certainly are living incredibly fulfilled and apparently happy lives. Perhaps even more so than the average seemingly happy and content Nigerian.

Though I want to restate a very important point: it is that in my opinion the apparent levels of happiness of any society or individual is a very shallow measure.

Note though that I use apparently and appears quite often in this topic. This is because the appearance of happiness (or the resignation to be happy regardless of circumstance) often becomes the only substitute for those who feel they have very little power to affect the outcome of their lives. Hence what appears to be happiness often merely is the surrender to fate or circumstance, thus to be happy regardless of the desperateness of one’s circumstances. One can almost conclude that in such circumstances, the appearance of happiness – which indeed may very well be true happiness and not merely a façade – may in fact be a protective measure against the reality of one’s predicament. 

Though, as evidence of a causal link between happiness and the means at one’s disposal, in another study into happiness done in South Africa – a country with the highest disparity between rich and poor – an interesting finding emerged. It is that the supposed relative rate of happiness (as per the metrics used by the researches) progressively increased from those who had absolutely no means, to those earning just more than a thousand dollars a month. After that a stabilisation was observed with no perceptible increase related to increased income.

My suspicion though is that this stabilisation figure must be significantly higher in the United States where acquisitiveness is the primary driver of perceived self worth. Despite the relative contentment with the state of one’s current finances, what must be the case in a society where one’s sense of worth is reflected by one’s possessions is that those with much means in all likelihood would not be happy with the state of their lives if they are to have any less in the foreseeable future. That is even though they currently may have much more than they would need to sustain themselves extravagantly for their entire lifetime.

The dependency on capital for acquisition of goods and services as espoused by the capitalist ethic therefore appearing to be the primary factor driving the resultant higher levels of dissatisfaction amongst citizens living in such societies.

However, do we then blame capitalism for this societal affliction?

To a large extent, yes.

It is because modern technological capitalism – particularly as practiced in the United States – thrives on our sense of brokenness for it to then be exploited to achieve its economic ends. Therefore our sense of dissatisfaction with oneself provides an excellent opportunity for some or other commercial fix that may temporarily relieve its symptoms—for it to again be fixed very soon after, perhaps in this way providing an ongoing opportunity for financial gain.

Though more often than not will leave the victim of circumstance as broken as before, if not perceptibly worse off in having taken the supposed remedy. This large-scale promotion of our dissatisfaction has been worsened with the advent of modern media, particularly television, with the wholesale marketing of “the numerous reasons why we ought to be dissatisfied with ourselves”, and how it can be cured by the respective advertised product.

The above is so principally because the “American Dream” itself has become skewed.

The dream specifically being the ‘attainment’ of happiness; the ‘pursuit’ of happiness being a right enshrined in the American constitution considered to be on par with the right to life itself. But the modern day interpretation is that it implies that happiness is a commodity that somehow is for sale, the consequence of this interpretation being that the attainment of personal accumulation for personal accumulation sake is the all important end goal. This in itself being a unfortunate bottomless pit which can never be fulfilled.

What the dream ought to have been is the attainment of power. But not self serving egoistic power, but rather the power to impact the greater world one interacts in positively to so be a positive contributor to humanity. That’s even if such power to influence only extends as far as one’s immediate surroundings; for example by merely having a positive influence over one’s children. However this critical power which will have a ripple affect on the future course of humanity in one way or another, is one a great many nowadays are increasingly abdicating for the attainment of worldly pleasure.

Despite the above concerns I nevertheless am of the opinion that capitalism is merely a man-made mechanism that only is as good – or bad – as the society that utilises it. After all it was founded on the assumption that humankind is essentially good and that we tend to engage our livelihoods for the betterment of all society and that humans are not primarily motivated by greed. Thus notwithstanding its floors, society would not have developed as it had without commercialism over the ages, while modern capitalism certainly has created incredibly many avenues for individual expression.

Though unfortunately in having set us free from the chains of feudalism, inadvertently also creating an opportunity for our own mental enslavement as well. This simply is because the landscape of our lives has as a result become far more complicated. And that in today’s world much higher levels of personal responsibility are required to successfully navigate its tumultuous terrain with.

While one can endlessly debate this issue, in my view capitalism’s primary weakness – but in it also its primary strength – is that it is subject to the unpredictability of human nature. Therefore one of the reasons that the devil has become so prevalent in it is that we are for the first time in human history, coming to terms with our unique and individual power to affect the greater world around us.

Humankind therefore is coming of age, and it can be compared to an adolescent struggling to assert himself in an unknown world that he is yet to fully master, but is forced to experience on his own, often by learning from bitter mistakes.

Similarly humanity has to a significant extent forsaken the fear mongering gods of their childhood, replacing them with a new god of personal empowerment. So indeed we are coming of age. But also increasingly replacing the god of our parents with the god of mammon and its insatiable shiny allure; believing that this is to have true power.

Though money and all that it can acquire is in-and-of-its-own not the all-consuming devil. Rather that the devil emanating from it only flourishes when we never seem to have enough of it.

 That is irrespective of how much we may already have.

© Newton Fortuin – 2006