Deepak Chopra on Obama and the Palin Effect
source: http://www.chopra.com/node/1064
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- Christof
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Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin’s pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.
She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision...
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- groups:
- Politics, Election 2008
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- tags:
- Politics, Barack Obama, Election 2008, Sarah Palin, 2 more
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drsvehla
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I share Chopra’s objections to Palin’s candidacy, and his dismay over the nasty smear operation currently conducted by McCain, Palin and company. For me, what is most heart wrenching and infuriating about the marriage between the neoconservative ideology and the Christian rightwing is the way that its proponents have deliberately deepened the schisms in our society, with inflammatory rhetoric and antagonism. The qualities that Chopra attributes to Palin—small town, family values, patriotism, for example-- can be seen as a catalogue of the painful divisions that currently cripple our society. This is the effect of black and white, either-or, us and them thinking.
Chopra’s evocation of the “shadow” in the American psyche is an important insight, and he issues a challenge to Americans, to acknowledge and move beyond the anger, hatred, and fear of “the other” that has been relegated to the shadow of our cultural psyche, and embrace a finer vision of self and country. But I think his essay unconsciously illustrates the problem of the shadow in a way that is crucial for all of us to understand. The shadow is collective, shared. When you claim the light for yourself or for “your side,” and say that the darkness belongs exclusively to the other person, position, or party then you are participating in a way of thinking that creates and reinforces fundamentalism. Although I am also opposed to McCain and Palin, the “shadow” is not Palin, or Palin’s alone, nor is it exclusively Republican, small town, NRA, or prolife. When we are capable of seeing what we despise in others in ourselves, we will be part of real change.
- 3 years ago
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drsvehla
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TouchArt
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B.S.
- 3 years ago
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TouchArt
