God and the Unconscious

If there were an agent, a participant in your life, who knew every action you performed, and every idea you thought; who could bring about your success or failure; who cared about you, even loved you; whom you loved and respected deeply, or at least you knew you should; who never communicated with you directly, but whose messages you could receive and interpret in dreams; whose ways were mysterious to you; and whom you could petition mentally, often successfully, what would you call that agent? A deity? A demon? Or your own unconscious?

Whichever you might choose to call Her/Him/It, you would be right. As Carl Jung said, internal or external, it really doesn’t matter. It makes no difference at all. Consider this: Your unconscious is completely inaccessible to you (else it wouldn’t be your unconscious); you believe in its existence only because authorities in psychology have convinced you to, because you have no direct knowledge of it. Year by year scientists are discovering more and more intelligence in your unconscious that you cannot access—sometimes quirky, sometimes genius. Your unconscious possesses qualities that could have been ascribed only to God in generations past. The ancients, for example, believed that innovative ideas came from a goddess, or a muse. Today we ascribe our creativity to a secret part of our minds. Either way, we can’t talk directly to the source of our ideas. We have to beg and tease and cater to Her whims.

Whether Her accomplishments are the work of an Unconscious operating in my head or a God in another dimension no longer concerns me. It’s about semantic fashion as much as any notion of what’s “true.” Once called God; now called the Unconscious, it’s our support, our strength, our hidden reality. Experientially, God and the Unconscious are in the same category: influential power that exists outside our direct perception.  I want to call Him “God” instead of “the Unconscious” because saying “the Unconscious” all the time is awkward and “God” is easier to type.  And sounds nicer, more personal.

I may have, by now, offended both believers and atheists. But think a little more. None of the qualities you love about God are threatened or changed if you allow someone else to call the same force in our lives by a different name: God, Yahweh, Shiva, Krishna, Allah, Christ, Jah, The Unconscious. Allowing us to call the same power by different names costs you nothing. We might talk about differences in policies, or creation myths, or proscriptions, but the idea of a God is something we all have in common. You cherish stories about your deity that are different from the stories cherished by other denominations, but a sensitive listener will hear the underlying truths that we all share. Those truths are just as meaningful when we interpret them in the context of the Unconscious. That notion is certainly not original with me.

If you’re still having trouble, read Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces, or anything of Carl Jung’s that catches your fancy. And there are many other resources out there that address the idea.

And if you are still having trouble, or even angered, then perhaps you are not a monotheist after all. That's okay. You might find Spinoza's Ethics to provide an interesting, different view. 

Now to stretch the powers of God just a little beyond mere psychological explanation, please consider allowing Him the occasional miracle, in theory. This is not as great a stretch as you might imagine. The Unconscious wreaks wonders. To speak about it as if capable of outright miracles is not that unreasonable. Many do believe the Unconscious to be capable of miracles. And if we are using the term “God,” speaking about Him as performing paranormalities (I made that word up) is downright respectful.

You may fear this as the thin edge of the wedge, a sneaky way for me to get all religious and spooky, but I promise to keep my head. I just want to talk about God without stirring up narrow loyalties and animosities.

I am only just beginning.

Bad Guys, Good Guys, and Just Plain Guys

We imagine that the world is at war across many battlefronts: Muslims vs. Christians, blacks vs. whites, rich vs. poor, Hispanics vs. Anglo Americans, cops vs. civilians of color. But wait! Not all Muslims are terrorists; not all blacks are criminals; not all poor people are lazy thieves; not all Hispanics are drug smuggling rapists; not all white people are racist killers. Not by a long shot.

The real war is between the sociopaths and the compassionate. We can define sociopaths (or psychopaths, depending on whom you read) as those who choose to hurt others for reasons of their own satisfaction without remorse. Some will step on the fingers—or bodies—of others to climb the ladder of success. Some will commit hate crimes.

Any introductory course in economics will explain how the circulation of a dollar creates many times the value of that dollar. The rich person who squirrels away a billion dollars, taking it out of the reach of the economy, is injuring the economy, a sociopathic act. The poor person who decides to improve his economic standing by committing armed robbery is a sociopath. The cop who shoots a black driver because she doesn't like his attitude and the black sniper who targets white policemen (or anyone) are sociopaths. The Muslim mass-murderer is a sociopath.

Martha Stout, Harvard psychologist, claims that one in 25 of us is a sociopath. Others say one in 20. More important than the exact ratio is the fact that there is a ratio. This ratio crosses all races, all nations, all religions, all economic classes—in short, all accidents of birth.

Once life choices are made however, we might expect to see higher concentrations of the remorseless in certain careers and social groups. Politicians often seem to put personal gain above conscience, as do the super-rich. Perhaps the police force attracts more than its share of sociopaths. Some experts say the media does.

But consider this: The ratio of one in twenty-five means that twenty-four out of twenty-five in any population is not a sociopath. Twenty-four out of twenty-five Muslims are not sociopaths. They might hate the European Crusader, but they are not murderers. Surely every African American is justifiably distraught over police shootings of blacks. Some may be angry over every shooting, even justifiable shootings. They may fear, dislike, even hate police; but twenty-four out of twenty-five do not resort to harming or killing others as a remedy. Some raise their voices; some protest in the street, some fume at home; but conscience stays their hands. Cops may be frustrated by crime. Many may be prejudiced, even racist. But to the majority, hurting innocent people is an inconceivable response.

On a hectic freeway it may seem that the majority of drivers are out to get each other—but count! For every jerk that weaves through traffic and endangers others you will see twenty to twenty-five well behaved drivers.

For the first five years of my teaching career I worked in a most unruly environment. Our junior high school was on a corner, and on each of the other three corners of the intersection was a housing project. I broke up a fight every week. The classroom was loud, and none of the classroom management strategies offered by the pundits made a difference. Sometimes it was overwhelming, but at those times I stopped and stood still. I looked at each student in turn, searching for the well-behaved, and I found a lot. Just one or two youngsters were whipping up the rest of the class to bedlam. I began calmly thanking each well behaved student, and gradually the classroom settled down and isolated the troublemakers.

It is also essential that we distinguish the instigators from the followers. The followers may be the True Believers described decades ago by Eric Hoffer, but we need to identify and defeat the aggressors who choose to advance their cause by harming others. To defeat them we do not set out to kill or injure innocents: that is their way. Pitting one sociopath against another does not defeat either one, but validates and strengthens both. A sociopath does not mourn another sociopath. We will never “save” a sociopath, but must struggle instead to win the hearts of the non-aggressive majority of the population.

At the other end of the empathy-spectrum there exist the compassionate, another minority. Between the two minorities lies a wide no-man's land of people who can be persuaded to action in either direction, depending on the skill of the recruiter. Not bad guys, not good guys, just guys.

The weapons of the conscience-free are fear, deceit, hate, and violence. The tools of the compassionate, if they are to remain compassionate, are wisdom, love, understanding, and nurture. This is the most important thing I have to say, all else is just a careful definition of terms. It is important because while the sociopaths are waging a very successful campaign, too many of the compassionate are doing little more than wringing their hands—and it is time to engage.

We stand by and allow the middle population to wrestle the evil-doers to the ground and lock them up—a necessary evil—but we must be much more active and much more creative. It's hard for some whites in the middle population to let stand unedited the sentiment “Black lives matter.” But if we are compassionate, why can't we say, “Yes, black lives do matter”? This is not the occasion for touting that white lives or blue lives or all lives matter. Of course they do, but is that the thing to say to a wounded person?

Let’s find ways to commit kindness—not just to random individuals, but to the groups that appear to oppose us. Let’s find the loving hearts of all people, and recognize them. Surely there are tens of thousands of creative people who can conceive of kind ways to win over those who are as yet uncommitted to either violence or kindness.

The compassionate rich will find ways to re-insert their wealth into circulation in a more creative way than to simply give enough to charity in order to catch a tax break.

I have yet to hear a public official openly thank a peaceful demonstration for restraint and good behavior. Sometimes, when a tragedy occurs, good behavior will be mentioned, but I am talking about thanking demonstrators for no reason other than that they deserve thanks. If I am mistaken and peaceful demonstrators have received thanks, it has not been loud enough or perhaps the media have chosen not to report it. Why not take out large print ads or make public service announcements of thanks in the media? Or if officialdom will not, why not the clergy, or a true philanthropist, or you and I?

The important task is to recognize and reward nonviolent and compassionate behavior, especially among our opponents. The immediacy and wide reach of information provided by technology makes it possible for us for the first time in history to recognize that we—all of us in every segment of the population and every contentious group—all of us have a common enemy and a common, but unexpected, solution.

And perhaps an evolved person or group of people could work to motivate other evolved and empathetic people.

This is my first step.