As a psychotherapist, I’ve spent much of my life helping people get along and trying to learn it myself. Now, watching this brutal war in Ukraine I’m derailed seeing destruction again coming from dictators and other human beings. Why do we have so many cruel leaders gaining power over us?
Leaning heavily on my elbow today, I believe I am staring at the shadow of humanity, the underpinning of the psyche that we seem to want to ignore or deny. After all, we all want to be happy. So, the dark side of our nature is often unknown to us until it appears through a crisis or in some unexpected way. Now we see it again, in war. Will a crazed man push a nuclear button?
Yesterday, on a lovely afternoon walk with a friend, a car screeched by us with two young men in it. They rolled down their windows, shrieking and shouting with no real words. My buddy muttered, “yeah, that is what we are talking about …” What will it take for human beings to mature beyond toy trucks and pistols?
Where is all this anger coming from? Why oh why? Make it stop! We had the Trump fighting elections, the vaccine wars separating us, two years of trauma and terror with deaths threatening every breath, and now this horrifying war in Ukraine.
Why? We’ve all got a dark side, some more than others. We’re taught that battle is heroic, and have learned behaviors like blame and rage from our parents and generations of stories, narratives everywhere, the movies, media, family models, churches, and on and on… We imbibe ideas and habits from our “tribes” and culture. Add to that our brain impulses that yell “fight or flight” when we’re upset.
I am honored to witness the human condition in my counseling office. I see that even well-intentioned people simply have not learned skilled communication, how to repair our wounds or what to do with our emotions and anger. We were not taught Relationships 101 in school.
We see it more clearly in our leaders, how we are shaped. Ukrainian president Zelensky, once a comedian, grew up witnessing suffering, responding to it with a soul-deep need to save his people. Putin’s formative years reveal an attachment to the KGB and being militarized, etc. Most of us are shaped by some early influences, so we either rebel, react, mimic, shut down, act, or adapt.
As Swiss psychologist Alice Miller wrote, “All the childhood histories of serial killers and dictators I have examined showed them without exception to have been the victims of extreme cruelty… although they themselves steadfastly denied this. And in this they are not alone. Large sections of society are apparently determined either to deny or to ignore these facts.”
I do have hope that someday a critical mass of insight will enlighten and encompass us, a quantum leap in consciousness will give us more empathy and caring about the common good.
What worries me is that people don’t usually change until they suffer anguish or crisis. Have we hit the bottom of the barrel yet?
It seems like some of histories villains are consumed with resentment and victim hood. Hitter’s speeches are full of victim hood. Trump too. Now Putin. They rage with resentment and a desire for revenge. They appeal to many who feel the same. Many Americans are resentful. They should be. Here in Michigan, we lost our middle class jobs as they were sent to Mexico and China. Their children will never have a middle class lifestyle. No job security, decent pay and pensions. Opioid and sucide by gun are viewed as deaths of despair. Maybe January 6th is the canary in the coal mine. We created this crisis!