Confronting Our Shadow
Notes to Pandemic II
Let me be clear. This moment of pause, of hunkering down, going inward will not be easy or necessarily pleasant. Those of us who have had a yoga or particularly a meditation practice know that once we try to get still a lot of things begin to come up. We are faced with those parts of ourselves we’d rather not see or can barely tolerate. As Pema Chodron reminds us, this is known as the path of fearlessness, because nothing is more frightening than taking a long hard and honest look at ourselves, our “stuff.” (But we do it anyways, because as so many masters from Jesus to the Buddha have taught us, liberation and love are on the other side.)
In this case the “stuff” we will come up against is quite clearly not only our individual stuff, it is the shadow of the culture and society we currently live in. Shadows are particularly hard to get at because they are where we have blind-spots. We literally cannot see that there is another way. Thinking about economics and business rather than public health, wellbeing and not dying, are quite startling signals of our shadow. We live in a culture and society in which capitalist economics has been so naturalized that people are more scared to stop working than they are to listen to the data that points to the lives that will be lost if we don’t stop now.[1] Let me be clear I am not shaming or blaming anyone for this. There is good reason to be scared, because this system of unregulated capitalism doesn’t treat people or organizations who don’t "succeed" (or get bailed out) very well. People go hungry, they lose their homes, and worse. But here’s the thing, there is nothing that says that this the way things have to stay.
There is a quote that is now quite famous, “Today it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of Capitalism.”[2] The ways we refuse to deal with Climate Change have already been a quite vivid demonstration of this, but Climate Change is so much slower, less tangible. This pandemic is in my opinion a perfect opportunity to see how absurd the truth of this statement is. In fact, perhaps this pandemic and crisis could be the moment in which we finally acknowledge this for ourselves and start to decide that we don’t really want for business as usual to simply return.
Today many people (including myself!) might want to act like things can just continue with only slight modifications. (This is why I have worked for the last two days to transform my classes into online versions and the University and many other institutions insist that we can all just move to remote work and teaching--or not get paid). To a large extent this is because we are concerned about our work, about people losing jobs, about businesses failing, because we don't deal well with stillness/inaction or the unknown. And I repeat there is no denying it, it will be hard and people will suffer. But I think we might have to start facing the fact that this is not something that we can just ride out and work through (especially not remotely!) with only slight modifications to our daily routines. Not only because the evidence suggests that it will not work and thousands more people will die as a result (examples of Italy and others that are just slightly ahead of us have had to start refusing care to those above 80),[2] but also because the true crises (opportunities?) manifesting through this pandemic may be based on a much deeper disruption or rupture and require much more profound engagement (and transformation).
The system we are currently living in-- business as usual-- is premised on dispossession, on fear, on poverty, on materialism, on white supremacy, violence and patriarchy. Yes, some of us feel reasonably/materially comfortable, at least we have convinced ourselves of that, and we are scared of the unknown. The fact that this comfort is literally premised on dispossession, colonization and the continuous pillage of the earth, and the denial of our interconnectedness to one another and the earth however is always there. One only has to look at the rates of addiction, depression, anxiety-- not to mention poverty, inequality, and other illnesses-- in the “wealthy world” to recognize this.
It is scary to lose income, to not know how we will pay rent, to not know if our business will survive. It is not surprising or evil that some of us are asking ourselves whether all of these “draconian measures” are worth it—will the lives saved be worth the disruption of everything? But I invite us not to be so black and white about it all, because the fact of the matter is that for the majority of people the system that entered into this pandemic was pretty draconian itself.
For me, just as scary as the things mentioned above, is the notion that we have so internalized and naturalized a dog-eats-dog system that we don’t have the faith or imagination to consider that on the other side of this crisis (hopefully one in which we act sooner to lessen the overwhelm on our quite pathetically prepared health system due to decades of privatization, and deregulation), there might not be something different, even better. Again, to be clear I am not blaming anyone who is vulnerable for this lack of imagination; it is a problem of our culture, of this system. And there are no guarantees of course, and there will be a lot of momentum and energy to restore things to what was before, perhaps worse; but if we take this pause more seriously perhaps we can find other ways. Perhaps we can commit ourselves to collectively ensuring that no one will be left to starve, or become homeless, or not receive medical care, because we are capable of something better. History has shown us that in times of crisis people help each other, they come together, they feed, clothe and love one another. This doesn’t mean it will be a new utopia, there will be problems, and new shadow material to face, but that’s the thing about the messiness of our complex reality—good and bad are never completely separable.
I know it is hard to fully surrender. I am also shifting between moments of anxiety, fear and restlessness to moments where I can settle in for this deeper process. I am sure it will be uneven and unsteady, and full of discomfort, but my invitation is to allow the disruption, the pause to more fully take hold of us, with less fear, with the wisdom of those who have gone before us who teach that when we truly pause and look inwards, things get uncomfortable, at least for a while, but then things begin to change.
Let us commit to being in it together.
[1] The reality is that the evidence is quite clear: stopping everything today NOT TOMORROW can save thousands of lives (see https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca, in particular chart 22 about the difference of just one day of more social distancing
[2] Frederic Jameson or Slavoj Zizek, depending on who you ask
Originally published 3/18/2020
