The Dragon You Refuse to Fight
El dragón que te niegas a enfrentar
A discussion about how perceiving lack in others begins with experiencing lack in oneself, and how identity built around group conflict perpetuates cycles of suffering.
The Dragon You Refuse to Fight
A discussion about how perceiving lack in others begins with experiencing lack in oneself, and how identity built around group conflict perpetuates cycles of suffering.
When you see lack, you first have to start from experiencing lack in yourself. There is less benevolence toward oneself, and that is then projected outward as lack in another. That projection is the energy going out, and it will invite in the other person defense, self-criticism, attack.
There is a story from an animated film, I believe it was Shrek. A character approaches a dragon, ready for a death battle, ready to take the dragon down. But then the relationship to the dragon shifts. Instead of fighting, someone says, "You seem very hurt and angry. What's going on, poor dragon?" And the dragon responds with something like, "Oh, thank you for noticing."
So it goes from a death battle with this beast to suddenly a relationship of connection, empathy, and love. The character just walks by, crosses the bridge, and says goodbye to the dragon. But that shift is internal.
That is beautiful. It's a great movie.
That is what I'm referring to: benevolent presence. But it starts with yourself.
The weight of collective identity
There is all this turbulence all over the world. I'm going to Israel next week for three and a half weeks, and it's heavy there. It always is, every day, even on the quietest day, but now it's the most intense I've known, with political unrest and everything. I happened upon a phenomenal quote that, to me, encapsulates a lot of what we see going on at the political and social level. It was in a letter to the editor in The Economist, not even a full article. The letter quotes a psychoanalyst who was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. He devoted a lot of his life to chronic ethnic conflict, and he discovered that the people involved often unconsciously do not want to end the conflict.
Exactly.
Because who will they be? It's not just "who will I be," but "I'm part of the group," and that is even more powerful.
I made a good friend many years ago from Israel. He went through battle, and he told me he was quite hopeless about that conflict ending, because he said either one of the sides needs to simply decide to stop, and they do not want to.
For the Jewish people, one of the most basic underlying patterns of thinking is: we need to survive as a people.
And that is identity, because it is this people and not that people.
Specialness and entitlement
Exactly. And with that naturally goes the sense that we're special. The more special we feel, the more entitled we become, and the more problems we create. It's never-ending. I haven't spoken this openly about some of these things with most people, because I feel they're just going to attack me: "You're against us. You're a traitor."
They will. Exactly.
But what I found so interesting is that this person, in my opinion, has said one of the most intelligent things I've heard in a long time about these political issues. And he's a psychoanalyst. In other words: get off the political level and get real.
It would be interesting if you could send me that article.
I'll send you the quote and the name of the person.
Lovely. As always, a pleasure.