There is a study that I think about a lot- it’s a study on the Maharishi Effect where a certain number of people get trained in transcendental meditation in a given city, and once the number of participants reaches a certain mathematical threshold — like a certain percentage of the population — their meditation sessions have the effect of lowering crime in their city. To me, the nervous system is one touchpoint in the body where politics meets psychology. We already know that people who commit crimes come from more high-stress situations, and we know the calming effect that mindfulness has on the nervous system, as well as on the nervous system of the people around us. How comfortable or uncomfortable people are within their bodies and their lives, and what we do on a nervous system level with our fears, stresses, and anger communicates a certain …”energy”… to the people we cross paths with around our cities. I’ve seen how I’ve been able– on a very minute scale, mind you– to lower the stress in a room VERY SLIGHTLY by remembering my body, and remembering to take a breath and relax my muscles, so I think an extrapolation of that would make sense.
The other way that the health of the individual psyche translates to the health of a society is through projection. This is what I want to be able to fully articulate and spell out one day, but for today, I’m just going to let Robert A. Johnson, the famous student of Carl Jung, describe how projection in our individual psychological field creeps into our culture when we don’t take responsibility for our own shadows, and it is socially irresponsible. If we don’t take ownership of our own shadow, he says, we will continue to see more destruction in society. Johnson was writing these words in 1993, but he could have just as easily been writing them today in 2024:
“To refuse the dark side of one’s nature is to store up or accumulate the darkness; this is later expressed as a black mood, psychosomatic illness, or unconsciously inspired accidents. We are presently dealing with the accumulation of a whole society that has worshiped its light side and refused the dark, and this residue appears as war, economic chaos, strikes, racial intolerance. The front page of any newspaper hurls the collective shadow at us. We must be whole whether we like it or not; the only choice is whether we will incorporate the shadow consciously and with some dignity or do it through some neurotic behavior…”
“…Any repair of our fractured world must start with individuals who have the insight and courage to own their own shadow. Nothing ‘out there’ will help if the interior projecting mechanism of humankind is operating strongly. The tendency to see one’s shadow ‘out there’ in one’s neighbor or in another race or culture is the most dangerous aspect of the modern psyche. It has created two devastating wars in this century and threatens the destruction of all the fine achievements of our modern world. We all decry war but collectively we move toward it. It is not the monsters of the world who make such chaos, but the collective shadow to which every one of us has contributed.”
Johnson, Robert A. Owning your Own Shadow, Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche. 1993, pg. 26.
The author of the ancient Emerald Tablet famously said, “As above, so below”, and Carl Jung famously taught us that the symbology in our inner lives is reflects the symbology in our outer, public lives and in the greater society in which we dwell. Today’s painful divide between left and right in society is the result of two massive institutional shadows. If we can do the work on an individual scale, maybe we can make a tiny difference to the health and stability and wholeness of our local community.