As the world economy continues its tailspin, like many, I am wondering how we got into this mess. While it’s easy to point fingers and demonize politicians and government, target deregulation and find fault in the global capitalist system, assigning blame is always easy when we look outside ourselves. To really understand what has happened, I’ve concluded, I need to start with myself.
Only I know the absolute truth of how I feel, think and act. No one else can ever truly know what I know about my inner self, the secret self I cannot deceive. It is this secret self that feels greed and envy, jealously, lust, resentment and fear, and it is within the dark and hidden territory of these feelings that my self-exploration must begin if I have any hope of understanding the powerful economic forces that have been unleashed in larger society.
My secret self leads a secret life of guilt and shame, and despite the gnawing irritation they produce, it is rarely, if ever, exposed to others. Just as a pearl forms around an irritating grain of sand within an oyster, I have smoothed out the irritating knowledge of my own personal imperfections and failings by forming a pearl of personality designed to hide the uncomfortable feelings that only I know well. Sometimes, I lose track of the grain of sand and even begin to believe that the pearl I have constructed to seal off my secret self is real. In stressful moments, though, I discover the uncomfortable irritation remains.
Like me, society builds a pearl around its irritating truths and hides them beneath a glossy narrative of hopes, dreams and happy endings. Accepting the conventional wisdom, I too often go about my daily business half asleep, seeing what I want to see and not seeing what I don’t. I like what I agree with, and what agrees with me – all else is pushed aside or ignored. Thus, the world becomes my oyster, a self-fulfilling expression of my own pearly point of view.
In moments of stress or crisis, though, the pearl cracks, and my false constructs are revealed, as are those of society at large. Interestingly, while the economy collapses, the avalanche of commercial advertising continues unabated – the inertia of the business world continuing in relentless motion despite the fact that the money train has come to a screeching halt. The powerful inertia of my secret self continues as well; I still want to soothe the irritation of life. I overeat, buy more stuff, start arguments, zone out in front of the TV and blame others for what is going wrong, but of course, none of this solves the basic problem that I face. My irritating secret life refuses to disappear no matter how hard I try to make that happen.
The present global economic situation is very serious, and I am afraid. I think we are all afraid. I’ll also admit that I have been greedy and self-absorbed and feeling entitled for a long time, and I suspect in some ways we all have been. With that understanding then, what’s caused this mess seems a bit clearer. And perhaps, if as individuals we can be honest about our secret self, the dire global economic situation might actually begin to improve.
