Rejuvenation

The spring equinox has at last arrived. It is the traditional start to the new year in many ancient calendars, competing with the winter solstice for the honor. The trouble with the solstice option, at least in northerly regions, is that, while the days do start getting longer then, those subsequent days are awfully cold. It’s… well… winter, and flora is still dying (or at least slumbering).  With the equinox we finally get a break from the cold. Green buds start to pop. There is a rebirth of life. It’s a natural pick for New Year’s Day. (Ancient calendars that tried to incorporate lunar as well as solar elements sometimes opted for the first full moon after the vernal equinox.) The time was commonly marked by festivals akin to the Anthesphoria, the Greek celebration of Persephone’s return from the Underworld for a 6-month stint above ground thereby making her mom Demeter happy enough to cause spring to spring. A hint of the old springtime New Year’s Day from the pre-Julian Roman calendar remains in the names of the months: e.g. “December” means “10^th month” even though since 46 BCE it has been the 12^th.
 
The whole theme of new life and rebirth at the equinox is all very cheery, at first, but it can’t be separated by thoughts about old life and death. After all, it’s not our new life and rebirth in particular, is it? No matter what date you choose to mark a new year, it’s still the notch mark of another year, and each of us gets only so many notches. This limitation has long been irksome to many of us, but in recent years researchers and entrepreneurs with credible credentials have undertaken to do something about it. Do they have a shot? Can we get a new springtime for ourselves? If it is possible it probably won’t happen in time for me. As for the reader… how many notches have you so far?
 
Former CNN bureau chief Chip Walker writes about the surprisingly well-funded efforts of several key personalities to extend life – more importantly, to extend or even renew youth – in his book Immortality, Inc. Among them are former Apple chairman Arthur Levinson who founded Calico corporation in 2013 with hundreds of millions of dollars from Google and hundreds of millions more from big Pharma investors. Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI) was founded soon after by J. Craig Venter, whose sequencing method for DNA had been key to the completion of the Human Genome Project. HLI, too, attracted serious funding from Silicon Valley investors. Then there is MIT’s Raymond Kurtzweil, who has written conventional books on health (e.g. The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life: How to Reduce Fat in Your Diet and Eliminate Virtually All Risk of Heart Disease), but is best known as a transhumanist, who foresees a blending of biology and AI technology so that the boundary between them blurs into insignificance. What they have in common is a view of aging as the core problem. Modern medicine long has treated its symptoms, but they want to slow or reverse the process itself.

So far, the remarkable rise in average life expectancy (globally and nationally) over the past 150 years has come from reducing the risk of dying early from accident or disease. But a 90-year-old in 2022 is much like a 90-year-old in 1872. The modern ones are not more youthful; if anything on average they are sicker because ill seniors are more likely to receive medical treatment today and so survive longer. Annual new cases of age-related illnesses from osteoarthritis to dementia climb each year. In countries with high median ages (e.g. Japan) adult diapers are a bigger market than baby diapers. Life expectancy rises, but aging itself continues – and ultimately the reaper can be kept waiting at the door for only so long. Human cells simply stop dividing (or at least stop dividing healthily) after a certain point, so there is an upper possible limit to human lifespan, calculated by most scientists to be about 130, though in fact no one is known ever to have lived that long. But what if this could be changed? Is some sort of genetic reset possible that, at least in principle, would allow humans to remain young and vital for two or more centuries? (Point of interest: holding steady other current risks, such as accident and murder, in the absence of aging and age-related diseases the average lifespan would be about 650 years.) Walker tells us about the scientists working hard to find out.
 
How are they doing? Calico’s website is https://www.calicolabs.com/. Perhaps the reader can glean more from it than I did. There seem to be some pharmacological studies in progress that are promising. If so, given the nature of the industry there are sound commercial reasons for the firm’s coyness about them, but this also makes it hard to do more than guess at what they might be.
 
Despite the talent and money invested in these and other longevity projects, I suspect (once again) that any fruits will be too late for me. It’s not too outlandish an idea, however, that they might have some eventual success. There is one mammal that can survive 215 years without obvious deterioration thereby showing such a thing is possible: the bowhead whale. It spends its life in arctic waters. I doubt that would work for a human though. Besides, even if it would I’m chilly just thinking about it. 
 

Bob Dylan – Forever Young

The Price

It’s 2022 and much of the world is, as usual, at war. Hot spots include (but are not limited to) Ethiopia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Myanmar. A nasty civil war in the Central African Republic has left (according to reliefweb.int) 63% of the population in need of humanitarian assistance. Fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has (largely) abated for now though territorial questions remain unresolved. (Also unresolved – more dangerously since two nuclear powers are involved – is the border dispute between China and India.) In addition there are numerous terrorist insurgencies that might not quite rise to the level of civil wars but nonetheless cause ongoing casualties, as in Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, DR Congo, et al. Ukraine dominates the news at present as it struggles to fend off a far larger power.
 
The US is no stranger to wars, having been at war 226 out of its 246 years. 1.2 million Americans have died in them. A two-decade-long one ended last year. (I don’t intend to discuss the nature of the ending.) I have nothing but respect for the military personnel who deploy to those wars. The politicians who send them there, not so much. Even in the most ill-considered (by politicians) military actions the troops who fight them make the point to their opponents that it is costly to engage the US military, and they thereby defend their country every bit as much as those who fight in more necessary conflicts. Some interventions are in fact necessary, but most have been questionable at best. American power is limited, and there is danger not just to the troops but to the homeland from overextending it however tempting it might be in light of tragic images from war zones – and never more so than when facing another nuclear power.
 
I was 11 years old when the Tonkin Gulf Resolution “began” US participation in the Vietnam War in 1964. (In fact there were already 23,000 troops on the ground officially acting as advisors.) I was 20 when US troops withdrew in 1973. Saigon fell two years later. Conscription ended in 1973, so my student deferment had outlasted the draft. Other members of my family weren’t so fortunate. It was the first televised war, which had much to do with the shift in public opinion about it between 1964 and 1973. It was a magazine article that shook me the most however. On June 27, 1969 LIFE magazine published The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll. The article contained the names and photos of 242 Americans killed in the week of May 8 – June 3. It was an average week in 1969. I urge a look at it. 33 of those pictured were 19 years old. 16 were 18 years old.

I am not offering an opinion about the wisdom of direct intervention in any regional conflict now underway. My opinion counts for little in any event. I only can hope that those who do have authority in these matters revisit those pages from 1969 and ask themselves how many more faces like these they are prepared to sacrifice. Perhaps it’s the right thing to do. But it’s something about which they (and we) should be sure.
 

Tiny Tim’s 1968 rendition of Irving Berlin’s 1914 song Stay Down Here Where You Belong

Soundtracks

Friedrich Nietzsche: “Without music life would be a mistake.”
 
Few new vehicles have CD players as standard equipment. They are regarded as obsolete. The automakers just assume that everyone can link to the car's sound system via a smart phone full of favorite MP3s, and that these plus a Sirius radio subscription are enough. Neither my pickup truck nor my car (both 2021 models) has a CD player, and I refuse to pay a monthly fee to listen to the radio. I do not collect MP3s on my phone or on other devices. There are a couple of local free commercial broadcast stations I find congenial, but when playing music of my own choice I generally prefer full albums to an out-of-context mish-mash of tunes. (When reading, I also generally prefer full novels to a chapter from this book followed by a chapter from that book.) A deeper dive into an artist’s work can be rewarding; OK, after a few full hearings of an album I might start skipping a track or two I don’t much like, but not every time even then. For this preference, a CD format is perfect. Besides, there are plenty of Best of… CDs for when I am in the mood for a more anthological playlist. So, a little over a month ago I bought a little portable CD player for $50. It plugs into the auxiliary jack in the console, which lets it use the car's stereo speakers. It's a small thing, but I actually missed having a player in my car.

Portable player

Anyway, having entered my car to drive to a local diner for lunch the other day I removed a fairly recent CD (Dorothy’s 2018 album 28 Days in the Valley) from the player and replaced it with one by the Animals. 15 minutes later I parked the car, entered the diner, and sat at the counter. The diner plays an oldies channel for background music. In one of those odd moments of synchronicity that statisticians tell us are to be entirely expected, The House of the Rising Sun by the Animals began to play. Apparently noticing my quizzical expression, a waitress decades younger than myself asked, “What?” Instead of just saying “I played this in my car 10 minutes ago,” I instead (influenced, I suppose, by the age spread) commented, “I try not to consider the implications of the fact that I know the lyrics to 50 and 60-year-old songs.” “I do, too,” she said, “because I hear them every day. Actually, I like them better.”
 
Presumably the young lady meant better than contemporary music. That might have been a case of humoring the old guy for the tip, but perhaps it was true. It is no surprise that I find the current Top 40 virtually unlistenable. It’s my generational job to disdain contemporary popular music as my parents (and grandparents) disdained mine. (I do shirk many of my other generational duties, however, such as standing in front of my house and yelling at kids to get off the lawn.) The surprising thing, though, is how many young people agree. Music sales tell the tale. Ted Gioia, a songwriter, worried about the trend in a recent article in The Atlantic titled, “Is Old Music Killing New Music?” Gioia reports that old music now accounts for a whopping 70% of the US music market. The market for new (defined as the past 18 months) popular music is actually shrinking both as a share and in absolute numbers. “The 200 most popular tracks account for less than 5% of total streams,” he notes. He adds that they account for an even a smaller percentage of songs actually purchased. This would have been unimaginable in the 20^th century when the top 200 at any given time dominated sales

There are many reasons proffered by analysts for why the appeal and cultural impact of contemporary popular music have diminished steadily over the past 20 years. I don’t pretend to have expertise in the matter, but many people who are in the industry have speculated about it. Correct or not, this article by Benjamin Groff is pretty representative: 10 Reasons Why Music Sucks So Hard Right Now.
 
In truth, I do like a number of contemporary bands, e.g. Dorothy, Rival Sons, Halestorm, et al. But, while these groups are certainly successful, they are not chart toppers. They offer new material but they have classic rock sounds, and rock is now a niche market that hasn’t put a new album in the Top Ten (based on annual sales) in a decade. It’s a big niche, to be sure, but still a niche. Youthful fans of new rock are ardent but a minority.
 
As for the old music that still sells so well, I’ve come to appreciate it more than (strangely enough) I did when it was new. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the popular music back in the day, and even took it far too seriously in the way that teens do: not just the arcane poetry of Dylan but the lyrics and sounds of the Stones and Joplin and others, too. Yet, I didn’t imagine it had staying power. I figured that, like Nehru jackets, it would be here and then gone. My sister was always more in touch with the Zeitgeist than I was. I remember her saying to me sometime in 1969 that we were in a golden era of popular music when sounds and songs were being created that would last like the standard songbook then being sung by the likes of Frank Sinatra: they would be part of the repertoire of future bands. I didn’t believe it and said so. I was wrong. Sharon, as usual in such matters, was right.
 
Contemporary music forms a soundtrack to our lives. Nothing takes me back to a moment in time as readily as a song that was in (and on) the air at the time. I can’t hear White Room by Cream without a part of me re-experiencing being 17. It seems to me this must still be the case today, so perhaps the naysayers are underestimating the lasting impact of contemporary popular music after all. Will current 17-year-olds decades from now be carried back to 2022 by Smokin’ out the Window by Silk Sonic? Will septuagenarian Glass Animals be filling arenas the way the Rolling Stones still do today? Will Gayle sing ABCDEFU from a wheelchair as Peggy Lee did Fever toward the end? Maybe. If Sharon were here she’d tell me.
 

A Few Seconds Each of 100 Songs from 1969

The Replay Button

Thanks to freezing rain during the previous night, the streets in NJ were skating rinks yesterday morning and the trees were encased in sparkling crystal. Unsurprisingly, the weight of the ice brought down tree limbs that severed electrical wires around the state. My power went out at 9 a.m. (I have a well and an oil furnace, so my heat and water go off with it.) I cozied up by the fireplace to wait it out. The outage was minor by the standards of such things. After two hours, JCP&L crews working in the ice reconnected a line somewhere and my lights popped back on. When they did I experienced a momentary sense of déjà vu. This is remarkable only because it has been years since my last sense of it. In my youth it happened with some frequency. This turns out to be normal. In most ways normal human brains hiccup more often as they age, but not in this one. In this one way they get more stable. The decade of life in which healthy people most frequently experience déjà vu is 15-25. Occurrences decline thereafter and all but disappear in seniors in the absence of medical conditions (e.g. epilepsy) or psychoactive drug therapy.

The Britannica Dictionary defines déjà vu as "the feeling that you have already experienced something that is actually happening." (The reverse experience – the feeling that something familiar is strange and alien – is called jamais vu.) There are several non-mutually exclusive explanations for the phenomenon. I choose to discount the paranormal ones though some people do not: an MD in Psychology Today, for one,  writes, “There are situations that are glitches in time when the rules bend and the mystery takes hold.” I think it rather more likely the glitches are in us, not in time.
 
Sometimes we really have a trace memory of something very similar to what we are currently experiencing. This was likely the case yesterday. I’ve sat before many fires in my life, and the woodsy area where I live typically loses power several times per year – usually briefly but sometimes for days. In other cases “dual processing” may be involved. The human brain processes sensory data on multiple levels at once and most of those levels are not conscious. (Hence we usually can navigate across a room successfully even when we are mentally preoccupied and not paying conscious attention.) A time lag can occur between non-conscious apprehension of one’s surroundings and the upload of the same information to our conscious awareness (processed in separate parts of the brain), in which case we may seem to experience an event twice – in a sense we do. The lag is miniscule but apparently noticeable. This can be more pronounced in cases of extended déjà vu called déjà vécu (“already lived”). One elderly British gentlemen with the beginnings of dementia has a chronic case of it; he gave up watching television because he said he always already knew what would happen next. He, of course, could not describe the show before turning it on, so this looks like a processing error rather than paranormal precognition. Another possibility (again, not mutually exclusive with others) has to do with the way we retrieve memories. Our memories are not stored all in one place but are scattered here and there. When we recognize some item as familiar, a mechanism in the hippocampus assembles those other bits and pieces of the memory into a sort of holographic whole. It may be possible, however, for one element to trigger that sense of familiarity even in an otherwise novel environment. Speaking of déjà vu in epileptics in particular, Dr. Alan Brown of Duke University’s Department of Psychology & Neuroscience commented to an interviewer, “My belief is that a pre-seizure déjà vu experience is triggered by spontaneous activity in that area of the brain that handles familiarity evaluations.” This may be the case among neurological normies too.
 
Whatever the real explanation may be, the term “déjà vu” is not appropriately used in the context I’ve heard it twice this morning: with regard to current events. This is a flawed use on many levels, as politically infused terminology usually is. The speakers, of course, meant that history was repeating itself. It isn’t. Max Beerbohm: “History,” it has been said, “does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.” Analogies made by armchair historians always should be treated cautiously, as should “lessons” supposedly drawn from them. As examples, arguably the two World Wars taught opposite lessons. The first was to exercise restraint lest a limited regional dispute spiral out of control: Austria’s problems with Serbia were not worth a world war. The second was to nip aggression in the bud lest it spiral out of control. In truth the two cases were different. The cases are always different.
 
As for current world events, I won’t add to the din of “analyses,” most of which range from bad to very bad. I just know that calling it déjà vu is calling it something it is not. I’ve heard it all before. I’ve heard it all before.
 

John Fogerty - Deja Vu (All Over Again)

 

On Not Being Caught with One's Pants Down

A young friend of mine who regards me as an uncle sometimes has thematic parties. Once she hosted a formal tea party, not as a legitimate thing but in irony. On that occasion she asked to use my mom’s old teacup collection and some of my CDs of ‘40s-era music. The most recent was a “dad party” in which everyone dressed as older men and told stale jokes. For that one she asked to borrow my red suspenders. I wear suspenders (of various colors) entirely un-ironically.
 
Suspenders (in some places called braces) may be antiquated in fashion terms but they are surprisingly recent historically. One can’t very well speak of suspenders without first talking about what they suspend (or brace). Pants/trousers predate suspenders by millennia. (Terminology note: in colloquial US English all trousers are pants but not all pants are trousers, for “pants” also include such things as pajama bottoms and some undergarments.) Yet, even pants, while ancient, are not quite as old as one might think. Prehistoric people in colder climates did cover their lower bodies, but they tended to do it in pieces. Ötzi the Iceman, for example, had leggings and a waist vestment. Pants as a unified garment seem to have been invented at the same time as the domestication of horses, mostly likely on the Eurasian steppes. They are eminently suited for horseback riding. Ancient Greek artwork depicts Scythians and other horse warriors (including Amazons) in pants. The oldest surviving pair of trousers are more than 3000 years old. They were found in western China; the style and workmanship indicate a long established sartorial tradition.
 
Pants soon caught on among non-equestrian northern ancient barbarian tribes, notably the Germans, since they were more comfortable in cold weather than anything… well… breezier. Mediterranean cultures rejected the garments for a long time. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 CE, the Roman Emperor Honorius took firm action from his home in Ravenna by banning the wearing of pants – pants being Germanic attire. In China, however, trousers were in continuous use from ancient times by both sexes, especially but not exclusively among the working class, and usually were worn with a robe. After the fall of Rome, pants in the West as male attire increasingly replaced other garments even in southern Europe, particularly among peasants and laborers. By the 15^th century they were nearly universal in European middle and upper class circles as well. Thereafter, the styles and lengths varied widely over time as fashions came and went. Breeches that ended just below the knee held sway in the 18^th century, but after 1800 full length trousers became fashionable. Middle class women in Europe and North America started wearing them (some working class women always did) in the late 19^th century as sport and casual wear and did so with increasing frequency in the 20^th century. (I have photos of my grandmother in riding breeches in the 1920s and my mom in jeans in the 1940s.) They became common business attire for women in the 1970s.
 
Pants, for all their practicality, have one drawback – at least for those with waist measurements similar to (or larger than) hip measurements. They can fall down. Belts are the oldest answer but are not a perfect one. I speak from experience as someone with a body shape that, in order to keep pants in place, requires 1) cinching a belt so tight as to hurt the kidneys, 2) constantly hitching up pants by hand, which is awkward or impossible when both hands are full as when moving a sofa, or 3) wearing suspenders.
 
Suspenders seem an obvious idea to supplement (or replace) belts, yet we don’t have any evidence of them prior to the 1700s. That isn’t proof they didn’t exist, but if so they weren’t mentioned in literature or depicted in art. In the 18^th century they were simple cloth strips tied to buttonholes in pants. Intended to be no more visible than garters, they were worn under shirts. (Suspenders are still sometimes worn under shirts that don’t tuck in such as sweatshirts or polo shirts.) These originals weren’t very comfortable. In 1820 Albert Thurston came up with an improved design made of tightly woven wool that attached with leather loops. (You still can buy these.) They could be worn over shirts (they pretty much had to be if the shirts were tucked in) but still were expected to be under vests, jackets, or coats. (As always, these fashion considerations were a middle and upper class concern; workers wore whatever was practical however was practical.) Suspender design continued to improve throughout the 19^th century; the products became more elastic and adjustable. In 1894 suspenders with metal clasps were invented, so they could be used on any pants – not just those tailored for them with buttons or buttonholes.
 
In the 1920s and 1930s suspenders worn openly over shirts developed a sort of cachet. Gangsters and private detectives are often depicted with them in films of the ‘30s and ‘40s. After World War 2 their popularity faded but they never went away entirely. For some body types they are, as mentioned above, practical – and, yes, my young friend is right that it’s a body type common among older men. Some wearers do not have this body shape challenge but simply like the look. Suspenders sometimes turn up in women’s fashions too, e.g. the Annie Hall phase in the ‘70s.
 
As for me, I just like keeping my pants up as a favor to myself and to the world at large – and yes I wear suspenders with a belt. I drive with a spare tire in the trunk, too. Redundancy is safety.  

A few years ago

A few months ago

 

 

Randy Newman – Pants

 

Rue the Day

Last week I stumbled upon a podcast with an interview of Richard Gideon, author of Power of Regret: An in-depth look into the psychology of regret, its benefits, and how to break free from guilt. The discussion was interesting and tangentially related to Carl Jung, some of whose writings I was revisiting (see previous blog), but I had other things to do. So, I logged off – but not before ordering the “book” off Amazon. When it arrived it proved to be little more than a pamphlet that, at 22 pages, uses the term “in-depth” generously. However, if an author can say what he wants to say in that number of pages, I suppose there is no reason to yammer on for more.

We all have regrets. Some people claim they don’t, but they do. Yet, I understand what they mean when they say this. They mean they’ve made peace with their regrets. Some have simply forgiven themselves. Others, more philosophically, recognize that in order to accept who we are right now we must accept everything good and bad that got us to this point; everything in life and nature is so interconnected, after all, that one element cannot be changed without changing the whole. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do things differently if real life, like video games, had do-overs from various save points. But even this would require remembering having done it wrong the first time. Those things we would do over are still fairly called regrets. There is nothing to be gained by wallowing in them however. Making peace with them is the focus of Gideon’s publication.
 
Regrets come in three main flavors. The first are simple misjudgments that ended in embarrassment, harm, or financial cost. They don’t have a moral aspect. (I regret not having bought Intel stock in 1971 and Bitcoin in 2009.) The second involves a failure of character in our own eyes though not necessarily a violation of ethics. An example would be rudeness to a friend or parent just before he or she (for unrelated reasons) dies. While unpleasant, mere rudeness is not unethical per se, but a person still might feel regretful and guilty about it in the case mentioned. The third are actual moral transgressions that may or may not be criminal: betrayal, theft, assault, or worse.
 
We start accumulating regrets early, but by middle age we usually have a substantial stockpile. Back in 2016 the insurance company Allianz conducted a poll on life regrets. There were as many regrets of omission as commission in the answers. Some answers:  failure to quit abusive relationships sooner; failure to prepare children for independence, which is very much a first world problem; working too much; saving too little; clinging to grudges; not achieving more; spending too little time with children and with parents; and failure to be more daring. Men and women give similar answers with two notable exceptions. Women are more likely than men to express romantic regrets (44% vs 19%) while women are less likely than men specifically to regret divorce (27% vs 39%). Those two may seem to be in contradiction, but they are quite different: the former are mostly about what-might-have-been while the latter are about what-actually-was.
 
Gideon’s tips on letting go of the past are obvious, but are not wrong for being so. Put things in context, he advises, such as your age and level of experience at the time of the regrettable incident. Find the positive, e.g. the lessons and personal growth from the event. Remember that there is a reason that even under the law most crimes have statutes of limitations for prosecutions. We all are fools, jerks, and violators sometimes, and none more than those who insist they aren’t. There comes a time to give yourself a break over the past. “Stop being cruel to yourself,” Gideon says. “Accept you’ve served your sentence and let go of the guilt.”
 
So, remember but move on. If we don’t we’ll regret that too.

 

Edith Piaf – Non Je Ne Regrette Rien (No, I Regret Nothing)

Jung Minds

Prompted by a discussion about Carl Jung on an online book chat group to which I belong, I retrieved The Portable Jung from one of my bookshelves this week for a revisit. The content is thoughtful, erudite, intelligent, and insightful. I can see, however, why Freud grew frustrated with Jung and broke with him. (Freud tended to take philosophical differences personally.) In the section on Synchronicity, for example, Jung shows himself far too ready to credit claims regarding ESP, astrology, and other paranormal phenomena without questioning whether anything might be flawed about the researchers’ methods or data. It’s hard not to visualize the more skeptical and materialistic Sigmund rolling his eyes.

 
Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious is less flaky in own writings than is often portrayed by others. It is little more than an acknowledgement that human beings are not born as blank slates (as was asserted by many academics of the time – and our own time for that matter) but that there is such a thing as evolved human nature. Evolutionary psychologists say the same thing in a more straightforward way. Jung’s exploration of myth and mythic symbolism impressed Joseph Campbell (deservedly so) and inspired him to write the intro to this anthology. It is likely however that Jung’s writings about the “shadow self” have had the most lasting cultural impact.
 
The shadow is the part of our personality that we don’t like to acknowledge. It consists largely of those thoughts, lusts, motivations, and desires that violate social norms and (more importantly) our personal ethos. It also consists of positive traits that we have trained ourselves to keep hidden; for example, if our assertiveness was punished when we were children, we may habitually suppress it later in life. To the extent that certain personality traits harm one’s self-image, they may be repressed or (worse) projected onto others. This is not identical to Freud’s description of the unconscious, since some of this is in fact conscious: that’s why the person feels uncomfortable about these traits and tries to deny them. Yet, Jung argued that we all have cruelty and destructiveness (and worse) in our natures. To become psychically whole and healthy we must acknowledge the shadow and integrate it into who we are. This doesn’t mean we should give into destructive impulses; it just means we do ourselves no favor by denying their existence. Unlike the groundhog, seeing one’s own shadow clearly can lead, so to speak, to an early spring. Jung writes,
 
“By not being aware of having a shadow, you declare a part of your personality to be non-existent… If you get rid of qualities you don’t like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter.”
 
Besides, there is nothing praiseworthy or good about any action or inaction if it isn’t a choice – if you have no other option. Jung was a fan of Friedrich Nietzsche in his youth, and one of Nietzsche’s lines was, “I laugh at those who think themselves good because they have no claws.” If you don’t have the capacity to do harm, then it’s not a big achievement to refrain from causing it. If you do have the capacity (including the capacity to enjoy it) then ethical decisions become possible. All that matters in the realm of ethics is what you do when you have a choice, not what you think or feel.
 
The notion of the shadow has entered pop culture. Jeff Lindsay literally refers to the “shadow” of the main character in his Dexter novels (which were adapted to a long-running TV series), but that example is too easy: too on the money. Let’s look instead at a slightly less obvious example: the old cult TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A character named Angel in the show is a vampire that has had his soul returned to him: a soul in the context of the show is a moral compass. Vampires in the show are normally soulless and are therefore psychopaths. They do what they like without guilt or moral twinge. But, as in real life, there are psychopaths and psychopaths. Not all psychopaths are serial killers. Most are law-abiding, not because they care at all about the law or about ethics or about anyone else’s wellbeing, but as a rational choice: they personally just don’t get enough jollies from crime to balance the likely penalties. One can be a psychopath and not a sadist, which is to say one can be nonchalant about causing pain without actually enjoying it. Angel berates himself for all the twisted evil sadistic things he did while soulless. Why? Because he knows the sadism was there in his own human character before he ever became a vampire. Losing his soul just removed his inhibitions against expressing it, but it was there. His whole character arc in this show (and then his own spin-off) consists of re-integrating his shadow self without turning to evil deeds again.
 
I don’t think I’m at much risk of becoming a vampire despite having encountered my fair share of bloodsuckers in life. Also, I gave up most shadow boxing some years ago, though it was a hobby for a while. But then again my claws are not as sharp as they used to be. I still recommend in a general way taking Carl’s advice to befriend the shadow side of oneself. But don’t let it operate the chain saw.

 

Peggy Lee – Me and My Shadow