The Archetype of the Shadow

[David Guyatt]

This thread seems like a good place to broach (and heartily recommend) 'The Archdruid Report' to the forum.

First a quick disclaimer I am not a Druid; I don't know much about Druidism; nor am I inclined to dig into it.

That said, I have followed Jean Michael Greer's Blog since he started it a few years ago. He is North America's 'Archdruid' - but please don't let that put you off. I have stayed with his blog for the very simple reason that most of his weekly posts have nothing whatsoever to do with Druidism. Instead they offer uniformly insightful commentary on the plight of humanity as we enter the decline of the industrial age.

His latest post is no exception. In the context of a constructive criticism of Carolyn Baker's latest book he says: .... psychologically, this might best be described in Jungian terms as a bad case of projecting the shadow". Hence my choice of this thread to draw attention to it. Here is the opening paragraph:

"Of all the fallacies that surround the contemporary crisis of industrial civilization, and have done so much to bring that crisis down on us, the most seductive is the assumption that it’s a technical problem that can be solved by technical means. That’s an easy assumption to make, for a variety of reasons, but it puts us in the situation of the drunkard in the old joke who looks for his keys under the street light half a block from the dark side walk where he dropped them, since under the street light he can at least see what he’s doing."

The rest is well worth reading - as are most of his posts - IMHO of course.

PS
I guess further discussion of the substantive issues it deals with (as opposed to a psychological examination of what underlies them) would be better conducted under a separate category

Thanks Peter. I haven't heard of him before and will now step over and take a closer look. I also very much enjoyed the opening paragraph you quoted.