Our Shadows

Back in the day, I was an avid reader of Mad Magazine. At that time, it was the only comic book that satirized/parodied modernity & the contradictions of the human condition. What was most interesting about this eclectic comic were the tiny drawings on the border of every other page. One common theme that left an indelible impression on me was the one dealing with the human shadow (which is loosely defined as a psychological projection where a person subconsciously denies his/her own attributes/thoughts/emotions by projecting them to the outside world, usually to other people.). In the little sketches, one would see a person going through the various pleasantries/pretenses of civilized behavior, but the shadow he/she casts tells the opposite story of his/her true feelings. As I grew older, the more I read up on these unconscious forces within us, the more confused I became about the nature of identity, free will, morality, ethics & the whole notion of what makes humans human outside the sequence of DNA bases. 

Stumbling across the above clip recently was fortuitous as I've been pondering over this phenomena off & on for quite some time. Being skeptical & shunning Oprah-esque feel-good/New Age pop psychology, red flags popped up here & there while viewing this, but the clip does raise some interesting nuggets everyone has thought about at one time or another. Well worth the time to delve more into....


OneLove


:::MME:::