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Gaining an enhanced knowledge on the archetypal structures presented by Carl Jung has solidified an alignment with my darkness. The affirmation that I can kill, can torture, can corrupt or resent the very structure of being itself; God, or society, in Jung's mind the Father, has instilled fear in me, undoubtedly. Presentations of abstract formations of these archetypes illustrate the degradation of my society and thus, fear is a black ooze creeping through the canals of my brain, convincing me that conveying my thoughts here may lead my feet steady as I attempt to walk a path of righteousness. 

Warning me that failure to do so may cause a personal degradation of the innermost spirit; this cannot be tolerated as I am seemingly pre-determined to be a hero due to my stubborness, both purposefully and accidentally through my conscious actions and my unconscious values, both incidentally and by chance. As such is the end goal; a comfortable life, a family to love and to despise, to rule and to be ruled by, this amateur writing seeks to detail what my journey has been thus far, and express a lack of understanding of it and what is still to come, yet due to its youthful vigor and inexperience may dictate and demand from you. It wants you to lean in as it whispers its innocuous secrets. Such secrets that may be from the lips of a child who has discovered a menial and irrelevant detail that entertains them nonetheless, or rasps from a decaying soul, a knowledgable guide through the supposed dungeons of the psyche for whom his suffering is welcome to stop at any moment now. For this sage, time has worn him down, whittled and carved him away, indeed providing him the luxury of experience, though  slowly ravaging his body and finally his mind. This is the process of life and death, a system that ensures change; a cycle all are destined to repeat.

My convergeance with the shadow self (1) is certainly ill-defined. It would be unwise to presume I have intergrated fully with it - such presumptions lead to one being certain that they know far more than they do - and so although present and driving my body at times as deftly and functionally as I do, it is by my estimation somewhat controlling and encumbering. Coming to terms with my shadow may indeed be easier for me than for many others. 

1). I will note that I do not yet subscribe to the idea of Freudian, Jungian, or the like, psychology. Due to my lack of knowledge, all flavors seem palletable and I can not distinguish which are most satisfying, or compelling. It may be an elementary distinction but I feel that such catagorization is of little value to me for now, as I know so little to have the audacity to pick a team, or wear a jersey championing one. 

I suspect my difficulty in apprehending the leash of the shadow is lessened due to my exposure to it in my early life. As a child in Providence, Rhode Island, which by my approximation socially, was little more than an imposter of larger scale urban areas ravaged by new age cynicism and packed rat syndrome, I learned from a young age to appreciate the concepts of socialism, which, is a very pleasurable ideology; everyone gets a slice of the pie, not only this, they will all get equal parts. The fine print escapes you as you are offered an idea that is simple to the laymen, palletable and fantastic. Just as the wings of Icarus burned, and he was sent hurling back to the earth upon approaching his deepest obession, so too do the fundamental truths we have discovered about man and his nature as the socialist idea burns the tools of our progression; knowledge, responsibility innately born inside us through the possession of knowledge, and our desire to meet our responsibilities melt before the pretty flame - the socialist idea.

The failure of socialism is not simply in the idea that everyone gets a slice, but the failure to mention that in order for everyone to get a slice, those who may have done more to achieve the creation of the pie will recieve less than the share that is appropriate for their contribution. Psychology definitively knows; and so too might someone who is at least acquainted with their shadow self - because when you have been wronged you briefly consult the shadow to discuss whether retaliation is necessary - that when you perform a good, you can have a reasonable expectation that you will induce further good, often witnessed through causing good for others, or perhaps being rewarded personally for your efforts. Regardless of your motivation, you should reasonably expect this to happen, even though there are obviously times when such decency seems to go unrewarded. For just as evil rewards those who created it with destruction, does justice trend torward rewarding its arbitors with righteousness.

The aforementioned people who understand psychology, philosophy or have an approximation of their shadow self all could know that when your expectations of the world are sufficiently snuffed out, and when what you believe is deserved does not occur that you can expect with ultimately exponential certainty, multiplied infinitely by the ripples the action potentially causes, that the victim can eventually desire the total destruction of the construct that perpetrated this wrong, even if it demands the very end of their existence. Man will take a pie to the face just to have a chance at vengeance.

A distinct feature of those who have aligned their shadow is the initial awareness, and ultimate understanding of the fact that everyone is capable of atrocity. It is a base mistake to believe that Hitler was simply a demon, that he is the single engine of the chaos that ensued. He was not solely responsible for the destruction of his country; that he and a few bad men forced an entire population to hate, hunt and kill the Jew is a spectacularly dangerous idea that displays a worrysome ignorance of history, human capability and the shadow. No, it must be that the German man had a pre-existing hatred of the Jewish man, it is not possible, surely, for this one man, no matter how persuasive and charismatic, dogmatic and hateful, to do this on his own! No matter how dangerous a shadow can certainly be, it is a prerequisite for this sort of destruction that the German population itself own a legion of untamed and volitile shadows, silhouettes of silhouettes, hellbent on destruction. It demands that the German man himself have a personal hatred - thus, a fear and paranoia - for the Jew, but why? What had happened, what sort of mistreatment had the Jew done? Such a thing escapes me; I know not what the supposed crime of the Jew was. 

Obviously and plainly, no supposed crime, except perhaps those of a genocidal scale are sufficient to warrant utter eradication, but I know this; the basic offer Nazi Germany submitted to the entire world was join or die. This desperate desire to cull the supposed imperfections of society clearly illustrated to me the true level of chaos that had seeped into the German being. To think, a totalitarian society, one which fixated on and dreamed of purity, led by a man who bathed four times a day, to maintain his own proclaimed purity, sought to eradicate its supposed sickness; the homosexual, the disabled, the Jew, and in fact all entities that would not meet its standard, and in so doing exposed how filthy, wretched and incurable it had become.

Nietzche eerily predicted the waters that would come by the next century's tide, the death of Christian thought would lead to an era of depression and cynicism. Nietzche supposed this would be the moment of suffering before bliss and peace; that man would face his cynicism and conquer it, become enhanced philosophically and thus able to contend with the fact that man is limited, and he is against a foe he can not best. Locked until his demise, in a battle with the cycle of life itself, through man's own nature as well as earth's. He must concieve of a way to deal with the existentialist dilemma; if god is not real, and it looks like he isn't, then I have no divine purpose, I am but a biological anomaly amidst these other creatures. These idiot creatures, who can amuse, certainly, but not rival me emotionally or intellectually, why would god be so cruel as to leave me stranded amongst morons, trap me here, destined to fend them off by my lonesome, while death through age, poverty, starvation, or violence, and finally the curse of a conscious mind doomed to contemplate its fate, loom over me, ultimately a cloud ink black with the souls of previous victims, ever shadowing me, reminding me that no matter what I do, I will die and this experience will end. This is my estimation of that which plagues modern man.

I was born poor, relatively by the American standard. My mother had left taking my sister with her. My father and I were with each other since my birth. He was a beaten man, one who never evolved from a child. Abused, neglected and in my mind hated by his father, he was the middle child of three. 

His older sister and younger brother have histories obscured to me; quite likely for the best. Suffice to say that my aunt found a way through her tragedies and I am deeply proud of her determination to contribute back to a society she could have easily deemed the perpetrator of her suffering. My uncle once married to a wealthy Jewish woman, he was an avid IT, but later came to commit grievous offences toward children, and to my knowledge is presently in jail. 

I hope deeply that there is some way for a man to come back from that, more importantly I pray that the victim can, too. Through much suffering, I was able to, and would say that my sister was, too. She had been molested, by her step father. In fact, my fiance, her sister, and my best friend's sister, were all victims of molestation. There is also, mind you, a decent probability that each of the people who molested every single person I have just mentioned were also molested, or at the least abused psychologically. Those who would say they were not particularly damaged in childhood rarely come to touch children wrongly, or rape them. So it cascades, a waterfall of trauma, traceable beyond those molesters are yet more molesters, who in turn were molested or abused by others.

 It is profoundly terrible to consider these things, after all to assign blame to the offender in front of you is about the best we can do from a legal perspective; you can only prosecute, judge, and punish those who are still here, but at the same time I feel a deep sympathy for those who commit these crimes, for, unless they truly have become a slave to their shadow, a silhouette of a silhouette, they will eventually contemplate the torment they have inflicted upon others, and upon doing so will a demon expose itself to them. This wild beast, the untamed shadow, is formidable. It is a force of destruction that has not been taught its place or purpose. In this way, it is just like the molester. 

He was likely beaten, neglected, terrorized in all manner of ways by strangers as well as people tasked with being his protectors, with being his trusted commitee, his family. Like his shadow he was not educated in the high art of value for human life, and had not developed the ability to do proper self-inventory. Although worthy of disgust, hatred and punishment, could it be that he might also need help? (2) Perhaps jailing him with other animals who are just as savage and dangerous as him doesn't result in profound psychological and moral transformation. Perhaps, lets get really crazy, it can make him worse.

2). Of course, I can not claim to have a better solution. 

Not many people can truly, by their own accounts, ever recover, and even though I have come beyond that event in ways that seldom happen, I am still quite fragmented; I had been betrayed and preyed upon at a fundamental level. This is why I believe the incorporation of my shadow is much simpler in comparison to others. I have been protected by my shadow since my childhood, I have seen it and what it can do when it is unleashed. I have watched my shadow take control of my body and physically crush its attackers with terrifying proficiency. I was once followed into a school bathroom and assaulted by four boys in middle school. The end result was horrific and I had no idea until that moment that me, suppressed little old Billy, a shy and awkward child who was introverted from years of neglect and abuse, could let the shadow take the wheel and unleash bloody destruction when needed.  Only somewhat recently have I been able to look at it again, say hello to it, study it and eventually become its friend through deep contemplation of its own wants, its owns desires, and its own reason for being. I came to find that this entity is with me, whether I want its companionship or not, and to deny its presence is a dangerous subtraction from my chances of success.

My molestation, and exposure to what an unsatisfactory life looks like, I can only suppose, is why I am incredibly driven to raise my own family, and to ensure beyond all doubt that this wretched and disgusting cycle of molestation, poverty and abuse ends, finally, by my hand. I will aspire daily to make me the final link of that rusted, rattling chain; it shall be nothing more than a poor excuse for a jump rope when I am done, or I will have failed in what I believe is my primary purpose for existing in this world.

I have been a hip hop artist, poet and writer for more than half my life, due in part to the cultural fibers of my community and an adolescant need to cultivate my creativity; to express my torments and to converse primarily with myself regarding how to mend my broken spirit. To this day, I have recorded and personally edited all but 8 of my songs - which were done at a place called AS-220, a program that provided immense, absolutely crucial, artistic development opportunities for low income youth - for 13 years, with an end result of numerous stage appearences, a few college radio plays and at least 350 songs and projects which all lay behind the real success story; I found a way to expand my mind, to articulate to a reasonable degree what is in my mind, and what feels most satisfying of all, the ability and tendancy to try and inspire others.

Unfortunately, hip hop as a whole and its surrounding culture certainly did no good in halting the wave of modern nihilism; hyper dominance became evidently too destructive a force, and so, once the values held by the culture were destroyed by thrill seeking man children who knew not what power they had, what good they could have done for their audience, the nihilism set in. Yet another indication to me that the shadow self can indeed be applied to a structure in a clear way. The music itself transformed, from hard, heavy, dynamic and emotional outcries cleverly weaved between intelligent lyrics to soulless, dreamless mumbles of unenlightened overdoses-to-be. This became a consistant theme in hip-hop and the music I once considered my true expressive outlet of choice now points to a terrible possibility; the American Dream is undesirable to the modern American and even if they did want it, they no longer have to work to attain it. 

As John Miller accessed in the story of Eaden, when man is given his fill of food, given a woman, and a life free of turmoil, he spoils, and seeks the most immediate course of action that can most effectively destroy the construct preventing him from experiencing torment. Man is tired of his comfort, threatened by his own safety, poisoned by his own drink and invaded by his own thoughts. 

Man no longer need climb up the status hierarchy; no longer for him does the game of life apply. He can not be hunted; even if you argue that he is still primal, still basic and now, living in cities, is still unsafe, his threats simply masked and presenting themselves in different ways, that does not matter, for he now realizes it is somewhat unlikely he shall be killed randomly. He need not fear death any longer; for his nihilism has neutered his instinct to live, and his appreciation of life flickered away by the pathetic gust of lethargy caused by the supposedly wonderful cloud we call progress.

He need not improve his status, because he doesn't seek a mate - a person to cherish and devote to - he may avail himself at a moments notice to the world of internet pornography; a place where abuse and destruction of human ethics are wrapped up in a premium, perfect, pretty plastic package that will do anything for you, be anything for you, say anything for you, will beg for you, will treat you like a god or an insect, and will leave a man wondering; what is the point of playing the hierarchy game? His original mission of climbing up the corporate and social ladder in order to gain status, to fuel his personal life; his children, his lover, his home and then himself - god bless him for it seems to be in that order of importance - is aborted upon discovering that regardless of your performance, it reasonably seems you can have as much pie as you want whether you play the game or not.

He need not seek food, he needs to seek shelter from it! Dazzling and nauseating odors seeping from the bags of Burger King's delightfully deadly cuisine intoxicate man, capturing him and filling him with death while promising life. It must be asked, does the American man eat to live, or live to eat? An immense comfort is found in food; it is everywhere you look. The three primary objectives of man, to eat, to procreate and to die, are all hyper available in a way not known in any point of human history. Indulgeances are no longer occassional treats - granted that eye-witness testimony is the lowest form of evidence, I will still submit that I grew up with many people who somehow can live off of a non-water diet! I myself am obese, after years of finding hyper preserved and altered food the savior of my sadness. 

It has been and will be argued that ease of access is good! Clearly, ease of access has allowed struggling nations to prosper. Once desolate and haunted places that only the human manifestations of greed and death ever traveled to were recently given a real chance at economic and social longevity; which even optimistic projections could not imagine would occur so quickly.