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Conscious or Unconscious?

© Bonnie McCarson

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung made his life's work the understanding of the psyche's secret functioning. Individuation, a person's process of becoming more conscious, was one of the key concepts his studies produced. Oh, I'm conscious, you might say. But Jung spoke of consciousness in a different sense from the way we would use it in today's medical terminology. Medically, most of us are conscious most of the time that we are awake. But of what are we conscious? Our surroundings? The things we are involved in at that particular moment, the things we are interested in? Surely all that, but is there anything else, like the underlying factors that cause us to react in certain situations?

After Hurricane Katrina struck several weeks ago, I found myself seeking more consciousness of what was behind the feelings I experienced as I watched television coverage of the aftermath. I felt much anger, but for days I didn't know why. I kept thinking that as a nation we are such a "knee-jerk reaction" kind of society. Then, I began to search myself for why I was saying that. For one thing, my status quo was being threatened. I was angry about the sudden dramatic jump in gas prices, which necessitated some changes in my driving habits. It seemed ridiculous that prices should go up as much as they did in a day's time. Surely it was price gouging. Then, slowly, I realized that perhaps I was projecting my own tendency toward emotional overreaction onto the country. I was having a "knee-jerk reaction" myself. That's not to say our society, or the fuel industry, is entirely clear in that area, but at least part of the problem was mine. It was something in my shadow making me react without full consciousness of why. I needed to get to a point where I could see that fact before I could think constructively about the aftermath of the disaster. Then I could ask what the real problems are and what we need to do to address them.

I often look back at the hit counter for my articles. The overall top hit getter is "What Makes Harry Potter So Popular." (Oct. 2000) At different times one entitled "What Is Reality?" has placed in at various spots on the list - sometimes low or mid range - but now it is high. I wonder if its sudden rise in popularity has to do with the disasters that have changed our focus in recent weeks. I can understand the popularity of the Harry Potter article. After all, the fantasy novel series that has taken the world by storm, and I explained in the article why I think J. K. Rowling's books have had such success. But maybe we don't really like to look at reality so much. It is much easier to live in fantasy at times - especially the fantasy that we are fine and that the problem is someone else's, not our own. Maybe that is why the article about reality ranked so low until the recent disasters made us stop and think. Beside the devastation and loss of life in the wake of recent hurricanes (and last year's tsunami in Asia), the so-called reality shows I allude to in the article seem merely someone's fantasy played out through the participants as pawns.

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