Rubbish and Individualism -

I was walking the dog and picking up a McDonalds cup someone had left lying there. I wondered what it would be like to not care enough to just drop things where you left them. I could hear the discussion inside my head

Me: “Why did you leave this here?”

Them: “Why not. Mind your own business. I can do what I want. It’s my rubbish.”

The way my brain made sense of it was to point out the inherent individualism, which seems to always have a tinge of. “You’re not the boss of me” toddler in it.

It made me think about the archetype of individualism and how it differs from Jung’s theory of individuation. In a nutshell Jung believed that in the second half of life we are designed to turn away from the societal norms and pursue our individual destiny, in this way serving our unique purpose. Individuation as he termed this process is not always based on producing or proving but aligns the Self, the irreducible spiritual self with the world. This is our work as individuals, and it serves the whole of humanity. It’s about as far away from chucking our rubbish wherever we like as you can get.

The I don’t care about my impact individualism is much more connected to another idea of Jung’s, archetype. Archetype is a pattern of human behaviour and experience that is understood across time and culture. The archetype of individualism is particularly strong in the US and it seems to be leaking into many other western countries.  Giving it a tweak I think the archetype that supports the I don’t care is that of the Rugged Individualist.

Having an image can be helpful to plump up this idea so I present, John Wayne

The quintessential man’s man. Tough, capable, strong, unwavering, able to beat the odds, expert at knowing when to act, not afraid of the enemy. The man’s man.

These things are so helpful to us all. The capacity to find a way to act with courage, to be unwavering is an asset when it is paired with the kinds of values that John Wayne’s character also displayed – caring, respect, protection and kindness were at the heart of his characters and what saved him from being a caricature.  

Of course, the characteristics are also descriptions of masculinity. There are some who believe this is the death throws of patriarchy – I think it’s patriarchy emboldened. As we have seen in the rhetoric around the recent US elections, for many, the vision that utopia is a man’s world. Where the individualist takes what I want and damn the consequences. Where we understand that the successful individualist is able to get away with harm because he’s not afraid, he won’t back down. He knows he has the power. And it’s that, the dominance and control that is part of the shadow of the archetype of the rugged individualist that causes our current problems.  Without the values like compassion and respect, the rugged individualist becomes a brittle bully who takes without consequence.

This impunity comes because as individualists we live under the falsehood that we can do what we want, that we are the only ones that really matter. It’s only me and people like me that deserve reward.

Often when we belong to a group that is near and see the reaping the benefits of the individualist’s ways we align with them in the hope that we get some of the spoils. But it doesn’t really happen. The individualists promise much but take more. It’s the way of things, the law of the jungle, trickle down economics. However it’s dressed up it’s still the few at the top who benefit.

And that’s not natural. Nature doesn’t work like that. Of course the shark eats the other fish but he doesn’t also destroy the ecosystem that supports and ongoing supply. The lion catches the buk but he doesn’t slaughter needlessly.  Like John Wayne we need values to make our individualism a way of contributing to life. Without those values be become marauding forces in the lives of others. And we can justify just about anything because of it.

When we have been raised to worship the individual at the expense of interconnectedness we are allowing ourselves to think we are above nature. That we matter more than anything else. It’s a perversion of what it is to be a human.

It means that more and more people are able to throw their rubbish wherever they like and when enough people do it we are left with a beach full of garbage and no one willing to clean it up. So it’s our job, as individuals to come together, to contribute as individuals to engaging in our values and taking our impact seriously. And putting our damn rubbish in the bin.