eThoughts : January 1, 2008: The Need for Devils: New Year’s Thoughts, Part I

I recently had a conversation with a person—let’s call them Jane—who told me about a series of dreams over a two-week period, all involving the same individual—let’s call them Mary. The common theme was about Jane being victimized by Mary. Jane told Mary about her dreams, but offered a disclaimer, saying she knew her dreams were not really about Mary, they were about her. However, Jane did not offer any further information about why or how she thought it was about herself.

Mary apparently took the disclosure as a need to “villainize,” despite the disclaimer, saying the disclaimer was a ruse, a way of negatively marking Mary—if the dream was actually about something else, then why did the story end with the description of the dreams as opposed to a description about why it was about Jane? Mary’s retort was taken by Jane as being too defensive and too analytical. That in turned sparked a reply by Mary that there had been no time wasted in “villainizing” her once again.

This is a small example on a minor scale of what I think remains our need for villains and victims. Such mini-dramas pale in comparison to the brutalities of terrorism. However, I suspect that such daily practice of vilifying others, as exemplified by Jane’s dream, is a major part of the larger picture of our need for devils.

Why do we need devils, victims and villains? Control is a big reason I think, and that control seems much sharper when we can tell the players apart—who are wearing the white hats and who are wearing the black ones? It may seem trite nowadays to say that as our representations of the good guy/bad guy scenario are so much more nuanced then the representations of 40 or more years ago. But I look at the world and wonder, reminded once again after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan this month, about so many doing so much killing in the name of a vision that so many need killing. Such killings are horrific of course and capture our attention. But the smaller scale creation of devils and the “killing” of them—like Jane’s series of dreams—may not have the impact assassinations or genocide have, but sometimes it is not the big things so much as the build-up of a series of small “killings” that reveal so much about so many.

Whether big devils or a series of small ones, I wonder why we think ourselves so elevated beyond the animal kingdom, when this peeing and polarizing is exactly what we do as well.

It’s a New Year, not that there will be new behaviors, though there will be a lot of spoken resolutions. But I think we should take a moment to clarify and to begin, so many, many years after we were supposed to have diverged from our primate past or—depending on your beliefs—so many, many years after we diverged from paradise by ignoring the word of God, to understand the difference between being vigilant and being paranoid.

In any case, however true change comes about, we can be assured that it will not be just one of us to carry the day any more than it is just one of us that creates devilment. The kind of ascent to heightened awareness beyond villains and victims that has been so much the promise of a Kingdom to come, will require a team. Here’s to that team, to that work, and to our mutual elevation.