In Defence of The Dark Side

In Defence of the Dark Side

Can Light exist without Darkness? Are you tired of Being Nice and not rocking the politically correct boat? Are Sanity and Mediocrity synonyms? Do you long for the raw experience of unadulterated reality?

Feeling down? Fatigued? Depressed? Anxious? Do you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder? Does your eight-year-old son climb the walls, persecute female classmates and ignore his teachers instructions? Does your 80-year-old grandma get up at three in the morning, wander through the streets collecting trash and refuses to let the health care worker in? Welcome to the world of mood altering drugs! With a handy flick of the prescription pad, your family doctor can prescribe a vast variety of anti-depressants, tranquilizers, sleeping pills and stimulants. We have Prozac, Valium, Haldol, and Ritalin and if they don't work, we can always find some alternative medicine to cure your disposition.

Occasionally, I think we live in a society where feeling happy, positive, confident and relaxed are the only socially acceptable moods. Oh yes, you can mourn the passing of a pet and take three days off to bury your father. Tears are permitted, if not required, under these circumstances. You are even allowed to get angry when some idiot cuts you off on the freeway or the boss refuses your request for a raise. However, you better be careful how you express your discontent or how long you maintain a negative mood. As one of my friends commented, "We are only supposed to feel happy or blah these days."

1>
P C Mood Swings
Are we oppressed by social standards of emotional coolness and politically correct mood swings? Do you ever long for the expressiveness of bi-polar manic-depressives or resent the psychiatric bias towards healthy, well-adjusted mediocrity. Is sanity supposed to be boring? Are unhappy, agitated people candidates for psychotherapy, support groups, drugs or a combination of all three? Perhaps, there are good reasons to feel anxious, disturbed, and down right depressed. Maybe we ought to be sad or mildly enraged about the horrific realities of our world, the ignorant and cruel way people treat themselves, their families and each other! It is conceivable that we have good reason to be frightened and angry over the state of the world. However, in spite of environmental degradation, the loss of the rain forest, child poverty, homelessness and billions of land mines littering third world countries, people are supposed to pursue the elusive chimera of happiness. Its one of our inalienable rights!

The problem with having an inalienable right is theoretically, nobody has the right or even the capacity to estrange; transfer ownership of; turn away, or divert you from enjoying your right! In other words, according to the American Declaration of Independence, you have a right to pursue anything, which could make you happy. I suspect this peculiar American right has encouraged the denizens of North America to believe happiness or the pursuit thereof is not only desirable but also obligatory. This would fit my thesis that feeling down, depressed, or miserable is not only a bad thing for the individual, but is down right anti-social. One song goes, "Nobody knows you when you're down and out." It appears that nobody likes you when you're depressed and sad, either! One of my psychology professors said, "no one is more depressing than a depressed person," and that might explain why I feel obliged to avoid company when I cant put my happy face on. It also might explain why most of the people I know say," I'm fine" or everything's "OK" when it is obvious that Chicken Little was right.
This is not to say that people don't bitch, or complain or even wine. The human race will always have its resident gang of "Ain't It Aweful-ers" and there are always those who are willing to take up the banner of social & political reform. The trouble with the former is that some people actually enjoy dwelling on the dark side . (I'm not sure if they actually feel bad. They seem to take so much pleasure in telling me about How Awful this and that and the other thing are.) As for the latter, from the time when Ogg challenged Opp for leadership in the seasonal Mastodon Hunt, political Want-ta-bes have relied on some degree of social discontent to support their demand for power. However, when it comes to actually experiencing a moment of real anguish the majority of us appear woefully unprepared.

Experiencing the Real
By "Real, I mean those moments which thoroughly engage our attention, move our spirits and excite our emotions. Such moments have a lasting effect on our perception of self and our understanding of life. They can transform a person and deepen her understanding of what it means to be alive. The one rule about a real moment or experience is that it is not an entertainment or a diversion. To truly experience the dark side is to be caught up in horror, terror or sorrow. Consider the effect on a child who learns about death by seeing her puppy run over by a truck. The child may be comforted by another puppy, but that moment of fear, pain and grief will teach her how vulnerable and transient life can be.

Aristotle wrote that the purpose of tragedy is to purge the heart through horror and pity! In its purest sense, tragedy gives us a sense of how precarious, fragile and precious life is. Tragedy awakens the soul and gives birth to compassion, empathy, and the most tender of all feelings, pity. I'm afraid that pity is rarely understood in our feel good, diversion minded culture. William Blake wrote, "Pity has a human face". It is that face gazing tenderly at the grief, vexations, and trials of the human spirit that touches the heart. Pity dissolves the artificial barriers of ego, race, nationality and gender. It enables us to see the strangers face as our own. Tragedy, fear and horror are primary instructors in the classroom of human experience. Tragedy opens the doors of compassion and sensitivity. Fear teaches us about courage and through horror we learn to reject the inhumane and the cruel. That's not to say we find these experiences desirable or pleasurable. I certainly don't.

1
The Nice Person's Trap
Like most of the human race, I generally avoid pain or anything, which makes me uncomfortable. I would prefer to live in a world where everyone was nice, where nasty things never happened to good people and where the good guys always win. Like my mother and mothers before me, I want my children to be happy and to enjoy their lives. I want everything to go smoothly, to please the people I interact with, and to avoid the dark side of human experience. My prejudice against this aspect of life once caused me to fall into the nice persons trap of denying negative thoughts, emotions and impulses. I prided myself on never loosing my temper and expressing myself in a kind and considerate fashion. I remember one episode where a supposed friend berated me in public for something I didn't do. I responded by becoming calm and inquiring about her feelings. I apologized for being the source of her distress and ended the episode amiably. Another friend who watched our interaction was amazed by my forbearance. She told me later, that she really expected me to get angry and cut my accuser down to size. I felt rather proud of my self-control but years later, I realized my habitual pleaser reaction had robbed me of an opportunity to assert myself. One of the problems with always acting nice or putting things in the best possible fashion is that you loose touch with your deeper feelings and fail to cope with real rage or profound hurt.

Gertrude's Story
"Gertrude is such a nice girl," confided one neighbor to another. "Why, just the other day she offered to weed my garden."
"She certainly is. Its a shame about her parents though".
"You're absolutely right! Did you see her father yesterday? He was so drunk he could barely climb the stairs!"
"Oh my word, yes and her mother! I understand that the woman never sobers up! I've yet to see her without a glass of wine. She may act lady like, but I know different!
"They certainly don't deserve as nice a child as Gertrude!"
" You're absolutely correct, Agnes!" Martha clucked and shaking their respective heads the pair moved on to other subjects of neighborly concern.
The subject of their conversation, Gertrude, was indeed a very nice child. Polite and well mannered, she never neglected her responsibilities. She kept her mothers wine glass full, the dishes clean and maintained the stock of aspirin, her parents so often required. At 11, she was an accomplished cook and shopper. She knew how to keep her younger brothers and sister quiet when mom had a sick headache or when their father went into a rage. She never argued (it wasn't a lady-like thing to do, said her mother) and she never told tales out of school. She knew that what went on at home was family business and family business' should stay in the family and not be shared with anyone else!
Gertrude was a fairly intelligent girl and almost always finished her class assignments. According to her teachers, she was a bit of a dreamer and could have done better if she kept her mind in the classroom. However, their attention was generally taken up by more disruptive students (such as her brothers) and pleasant, polite, helpful Gertrude was generally overlooked in the over-crowded class rooms of her elementary and secondary schools. When Gertrude turned 16, she got a job in a local bakery. According to all reports, she was very good with the public and only too willing to work overtime. If her schoolwork suffered, nobody mentioned it, after all Gertrude was never an outstanding student and it was taken for granted that she wasn't college material. Although her fathers death in a single car accident after the pubs closed was no surprise to local authorities, Gertrude's mothers subsequent decline into genteel alcoholism followed by her mysterious demise gave the neighborhood a juicy subject for several months.
However, people agreed that Gertrude had done her best to nurse her mother, look after the house and protect her siblings. Unfortunately, in the case of her brothers, nothing she did could stop their "wicked ways and nobody was surprised when the younger of the two had to leave town after he got an under-age girl in trouble. The older brother followed in his fathers footsteps and was eventually jailed for drunk driving causing death. Gertrude was a little luckier when it came to Jasmine, her sister. Jasmine was a real looker and a model agency snapped her up as soon as she came of age. Rumors flew about the kind of drugs Jasmine was on and whether her emaciated look was all that healthy, but everyone agreed that Gertrude had done everything she could.
When she was 25, Gertrude took over management of the bakery and took a course in accounting. She met William, a fellow student who planned to set up an accounting agency. They had a quiet civil wedding and eventually produced three children, Susan, Jessica and William Jr. Gertrude acted as a part time secretary and office manager in Williams business and continued to be the quietly helpful, pleasant, self-effacing woman everyone took for granted. Her house and garden were immaculate; she was a volunteer at her children's school and seemed to overlook her husbands philandering. However, when Gertrude turned 45, her husbands pregnant girl friend made it clear that she (the girl friend) was not about to have an abortion or an illegitimate child.
At first, Gertrude did not take his request for a divorce seriously. She had spent her life doing what he and everyone else wanted of her. She raised his children, cared for his home, provided free labor at his office and had been understanding when it came to his sexual needs. Never once had she complained, argued, been demanding, or over emotional. Faced with the disintegration of her family and her life, Gertrude did what any pleaser confronted by the dark side might do. She sent her youngest child, Will Jr. off to a friend's house, carefully prepared an elegant dinner for William, his girl friend and her and liberally laced the mashed potatoes with strychnine. Her farewell note said, "I only wanted to make everyone happy, I'm sorry."

1
The Perils of Pleasing
A casual observer might believe Gertrude had known nothing except the dark side of life and to a degree they would be correct. Her life was not joyful or particularly meaningful. Some of us might even describe it as mediocre and superficial. One of the more problematic qualities of being nice is that the person you pretend to be depends on social clues and the approval of others for self-validation. The Pleasers of the world rarely learn how to make their own choices or identify their deeper yearnings. They are simply too dependent on the opinions, feelings and desires of others. Such subservience not only robs a person of her volition; it encourages manipulation and abuse from less ethical types.

A sympathetic person might believe Gertrude's murderous response to her husbands rejection was simply an example of the straw that broke the camels back. Such a person might argue that Gertrude was an innocent victim of temporary insanity or battered wife syndrome and could not be held accountable for her actions. However, that would not take into account, her primary coping technique. Somewhere, deep in Gertrude's psyche, she had effectively banished the reality of her own dark side through assuming the mask of a nice person. In her make believe world, she firmly believed this mask was her real self. She deluded herself into believing that the nice, polite, helpful and understanding face she wore was all there was to her. Gertrude had walled herself away from her natural anger, frustration, aggression and possessiveness. She denied the negative, destructive impulses of human kind and cultivated the good woman or martyr theme in life. For her, feeling angry or wanting to murder someone was indistinguishable from doing it. Her mothers training, her need to avoid her fathers rage and deny her husbands infidelity ill-prepared her to cope with personal hurt, fury, or human vindictiveness.
All her life, Gertrude had pretended to be the ideal good person and such people don't feel nasty towards others. They don't want to yell, hit out, complain, or throw dishes at their mates. They are naturally calm, sweet, obliging and self-effacing. They over look the shortcomings of others and rely on denial, self-obliteration, and pure unadulterated niceness to make their way in life. When these techniques failed Gertrude, her repressed, but never quite banished, stockpile of frozen hurt and anger unthawed. This led to her quietly and politely eliminating the source of her problems, taking her husband, his mistress and their unborn child along with her.
I'm quite sure that the majority of us are unlikely to resort to strychnine to resolve a marital disappointment, however, how willing are we to admit to an occasional murderous impulse? So often nice people grin and bear it, transforming latent rage into tight-lipped silence. Denying our grief, disgust and sense of outrage by pretending everything is just fine, many of us seem to think that denial will make everything go away or that the dark side is just a momentary inconvenience in our modern and progressive society.

1
A Remedy for The Negative
How many of us believe a new car, a better job, a slimmer figure or a shopping spree will solve our problems, dispel our grief and attract an accommodating mate? More progressive types might enter the therapeutic merry-go-round, searching for the right therapist, counselor, new age religion, or dietary regimen to shield them from the unwelcome encroachment of the dark side . What is the source of our escapism, our collective flight into affuenza? What encourages the mad swirl of twentieth century consumerism, the modern religion of get it while you can and ignore the consequences to savings accounts and global resources? Why do we need so many things? Why so many TV channels, action dramas, computer games, and kitchen gadgets? Are people trying to buy their freedom at the shopping mall and their peace of mind from the pharmacy? Perchance material goodies, therapeutic technology, new age thinking or medical intervention can protect us from the haunted shadow land of personal loss, physical pain, and emotional emptiness. Maybe we can pretend nasty things don't exist, don't bother us or only happen to other people. Perhaps the head in the sand technique can banish the dark side and enable us to live forever in that blessed realm where bad things don't happen to nice people.
I wish I had some facile answers to these and the other Great Questions of existence. I like the romantic ideal of they lived happily ever after or the notion that good will always prevail over evil. I don't particularly like that aspect of myself which enjoys Clint Eastwood westerns, takes vicarious pleasure in cop shop dramas and fantasizes about getting even with my ex-husband or blasting my son in law. Periodically, I long to apply hot irons to the tongues of politicians and blow up multi-national business corporations. I am not sure if is the natural caution of cowardice or the moderating influence of rationality which rein in my impulses. I have no way of defining or analyzing my own dark side . No matter how deeply I probe its depths, it refuses to transfer ownership of its secrets to my rational mind. However, I believe this dark , gloomy, chaotic and irrational aspect of our collective psyche is as necessary to our lives as is the oxygen upon which our lungs depend.

1
Survival and The Dark Side
The Dark Side originally catered to the survival needs of human beings. Our hunter/gatherer ancestors needed protection from the elements, shelter from the cold, a stable supply of food, the nurturing of the family, and the protection of the tribe. The dark side warned them about the potential danger of strangers, the animal who saw you as prey, the need to placate the angry gods of storm and fire. It encouraged our forefathers and mothers to extend control over the wilderness, to force nature to adapt to their needs, and protect their own. Fear was and is, its major motivation, fear of the unknown, fear of the dark , fear of being abandoned and rejected by the people whose very presence ensures ones survival. The need to be accepted, to be included, to see oneself as significant and valuable emerged out of the shadows of an unknown and threatening reality. However, as critical as our physical needs are to our survival, no comprehensive listing of human requirements has ever been compiled. Human beings are more than the sum total of their material and social desires. For example, a child needs to play, to indulge in the kind of fantasy that predates vocational strivings, or social roles. Human creatures need to be intellectually stimulated, to be of service to others, to feel special and desirable. I suppose scientists can reduce such exigencies to biological or genetic predisposition. However, knowing why you need something certainly doesn't explain how you achieve it or even what will grow out of it. The dark side in its role as motivator and educator tells us what might happen if we fail to explore and experience our inner lives. It reminds us of the reality of our fragile and vulnerable lives. Sometimes it produces monsters and psychopaths; its hand can be detected in wars and riots, in political corruption, in our fascination with criminals, addiction to horror movies and attraction to Steven King novels. It is never pleasant, and rarely welcome, however in its darkness the light of our collective and individual spirits shine the brightest.

The Shattering of the Soul