This Is Me Getting My Ass Kicked...

Me at Krakatoa mid-eruption. Me on the beach with the tsunami coming in. Me at Chernobyl catching some rays. Me being pissed on by Republicans. 

Where do you draw the line between unavoidable catastrophes and man-made destruction? It's all gone fuzzy. There's man-made as in individually, and man-made collectively. Man-made as in planned and intended and man-made as in unintended, or collateral, damage.

Unconsciousness is a hard thing to get your head around. And unconscious intent, wanting something and not knowing you want it. I've been there, though it wasn't so much unconscious as a shadow personality you want to get rid of but can't, semi-integrated with your "real" self. 

My shadow self wanted to suffer, to go through some wrenching experience and come out the other side shot of grief. I wanted it to be the way it used to be, before a sense of loss became a part of my life. Firstly, you can't get there. You are already changed forever.

Secondly, you don't want to get there. You are, potentially at least, a better person because of it: more compassionate, kind and emotionally complex. How does all this play out in a collective sense? I don't know. But I'll bet a bundle there's a collective, repressive unconscious. 

Not archetypal stuff but a level or two up from that, a shared version of what I just described, a group of people in flight from themselves, irresponsible corporate actors. What would it look like if there were a doppleganger version of Disney World based on Dick Cheney's psyche?

Shudder. The thing that has changed is this, simply and undeniably: our ability to destroy stuff, meaning we can now wreck the whole world. We aren't programmed for this possibility. We are programmed for the power version of a budget constraint which isn't there.

Not anymore. We are way too powerful for our own good, strange as that sounds. This is the objective, to integrate that awareness into our collective consciousness and have it play out in our behavior. The whole of humanity needs to go in for analysis. I know, I know. 

Dick won't have it, but couldn't we try? We bring our kids up with Disney World and then shunt them off into Cheneyland. If Cheneyland is our dark side, so be it, but we need to own it and integrate it or it'll be some petty tyrant running things from behind the curtain. 

Back with the curtain, Toto! The Dicks of the world must have their due.