December 1, 2025: The Projection-Objection Syndrome

If a tree grows in the forest and there is nobody there to sense it, does it leave a mark?  Hoonōs

The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.  Carl Jung

Very few people love others for what they are; rather, they love what they lend them, their own selves, their own idea of them.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If one runs into a brick wall, there is a certain sense of objective reality.  There will be subjective interpretations by the bruised one as well as others who know about the event, but the wall occupies an objective place in space—as individuals do.  Because perception is a subjective interpretation does not mean that’s all there is.  Nonetheless, those interpretations tend to masquerade as having an objective existence. That is a problem.

When I was 22, I stumbled upon a realization that most of the problems we had in my parent’s household was that we had been projecting an ideal upon each other and reacting to the failure of each of us to live up to that ideal (briefly addressed in the September 2025 post).

Pretty dumb on all our parts as we did not see the humanity through this veil of projection.

Armed with my realization, I decided to apologize to my siblings and parents.  I did so without expecting anything (i.e., layering even more projections on them or me).

I wasn’t sure my mother understood, but she was nice.  My siblings had a look like I had fallen on my head.  My father teared up. Interesting as he was not prone to such a show of emotion. I asked about the bruise on his left arm. He said he had fallen because of blacking out. Dad was a semi-controlled drunk, though he managed to keep a job. I asked if the fall was drinking related?  He said he had recently decided to stop drinking. I did not believe it but shrugged it off.  Two weeks later he died of a hemorrhagic stroke after a brief hospitalization.  I asked the doctor if alcohol could have been involved, especially if he had abruptly stopped drinking. The answer was yes.

I realized I had stopped one form of projection but had assumed another.  It was a kind of two-steps forward and then backwards.

Psychologist Carl Jung noted that men tended to project the ideal woman onto women and women tended to project the ideal man onto men.  Then they go sideways when the other does not live up to the ideal. A bit of a self-created briar patch.  My take is that bumper-sticker sayings like “happy wife, happy life” or “happy man, happy clan” are an attempt at subjugation, not an attempt at collaboration because control eliminated the need for an objective view.

Parents do this to children, children to parents. Teachers do it to students, students to teachers. Employers to employees, employees to employers. Voters do it to elected officials, elected officials to voters.  Pick any dyad and projection is at work a lot more than we tend to recognize.

My humble opinion (seriously on both humble and opinion) is that we even created God in our own image and then object mightily when this “God” leaves us stranded.  That’s not a god to me. That’s us projecting what we think “God” should be doing and then objecting when “God” doesn’t do it.

Welcome to the projection-objection syndrome.  The syndrome does not mean that projection or objection is always invalid. It means they are mostly unconsciously used as a defense mechanism, the kind that obfuscates instead of clarifying.  Understanding this counts as a revelation.

A lot of revelations can happen that change mind and behavior but leave a lot of other revelations and projections still to be realized.  Revelations have many layers and even if they seem to become consciously recognized, it may not be long before change comes along and requires new learning.  In other words, there is little about learning that permanently solves problems.

Sometimes the question of real change is not about learning to never do something in error again but learning to remember the error.

In beings incarnate, there are antecedents, behaviors, and consequences.  Separate life forms are connected to and independent from each other.  And the degree of difference is not static, even if it seems so in a lifetime.

Freedom doesn’t mean without consequences.  Discipline doesn’t mean without consequences. Those consequences can tangle us up big time.  Untangling will take time. And if we don’t have enough time? That may not be hell except as projected by us onto us as much as it means we have not yet gotten it right. Not yet getting it right is far afield from an eternity in hell. Eternity is, after all, a time designation.  Perhaps we have an eternity to practice?

Personally, I’m not very patient, which I define in some cases as a nod to slow learning. Taking an eternity to get it right seems a bit slow. But, I’m going for functional creativity with a dash of irreverence.  I’m not going for perpetually falling into a hole and needing to climb out or perpetually ascending a pedestal only to fall off.

If there is going to be projection-objection, I prefer it like I do in buying a lottery ticket: the incredible feeling of great hope followed by a dismal outcome.  It can be fun to blame “God” for giving me hope and then dashing hope again and again.

We’ve got paint-by-numbers manifestos, easels, and paints to change space into stuff.  But we are always creating more space whenever we create stuff. And since stuff is a bit of a taskmaster, even if it’s good stuff, I’m learning (off and on) to use that space to breathe. Good breathing and sitting in the space aren’t going to hurt as long as it’s as safe a space as possible.  That might just be what is meant by observing the sabbath.