January 2016
Falling from the Cloud
by
Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
I’ve
been wandering around for a couple of days thinking about what to write for
this article, trying to focus the mind, but having difficulty. It’s between
Christmas and New Year and I’m caught up in the bardo space of neither this nor
that, which many of us feel at this time of the year. Some businesses are open,
most are shut, the streets are quiet in the most part, and the place has a
dreamlike quality. Topics rise up in my mind: guilt, shame, community, getting
stuck and unstuck, and moving on and I’m moved to consider them in the writing,
but a fall from the cloud of
community is the one that captures me.
In computer speak, the Cloud is a public WiFi provider that allows for
the sharing of data and information for the benefit of streamlining resources
and creating community coherence. Without public WiFi, the internet connects us
anyway, however much we seek it. Within the internet are deeper, darker depths
where few choose to wander.
In meteorological terms, the cloud is a visible mass of liquid or frozen
droplets of water and various chemicals that gathers together to form types of
communities of droplets. Some
droplet communities are very dense and some less so.
Issues can be cloudy, in that they are not transparent. Moods can be
cloudy, where suspicion and worry lurk. There are clouds before a storm, and
hunters of storms observe the clouds. I watch them: the clouds of meteorology,
moods, and thoughts. Being a cloud
watcher all my life, I like the meditation practice, adopted by some
hypnotherapists, including me, of thinking of thoughts and feelings like
clouds, and watching them gather in cloud form and disappear.
Community has cloud-like characteristics. Community is a social unit of
any size that is connected by durable relations, with rules, said and hidden,
that work towards keeping the unit going.
I like to watch clouds. I gaze at them, endlessly, from my back veranda,
watching them form and dissolve and form and dissolve. I saw a red dragon once.
There it was, this red glowing dragon seen through clearly defined luminous
clouds. He raced across the sky, and was gone.
I like the
Community is highly complex and can be studied by anybody and from a
range of disciplines: ecology, anthropology, social science, information
technologies, organizational perspectives, philosophy and psychology, for
instance. I am, though, most interested, given my profession and inclination, to
want to consider it from the perspective of the individual person.
shame and guilt and wondering about the given wisdom that guilt, as the
feeling of having failed in some obligation and shame, as the painful sense of
distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior, are
individual phenomena. I question this, because underlying these senses are two
things: an implicit belief in the rightness of something and a sense that we
will be judged by other people in our community for feeling the things we do,
even though it usually doesn’t ever come to that, as we keep our guilt and
shame secret. But keeping such
things secret doesn’t mean they do not arise inter-relationally, even though
they are rarely articulated. Being an inter-relational phenomenon also doesn’t
necessarily imply an actual condemnation of one’s behavior, just a disturbing
feeling that such a thing has, or is about to, happen.
I’ve
been mulling about certain intangible codes of behaviour that are apparently
present among groups of women, for instance. I’m thinking of the “code of
silence” that seems to operate, whereby some things are never spoken of, and
when they are, individuals are singled out and expelled from the group. This
dynamic shames and blames girls in the school yard and mature women in the
workplace, and among friends. It’s
a code that is learned very early on and forms what sociologists call, “the
hidden curriculum”.
I, like
a few, never learned this particular code and it gets me into a lot a trouble
every now and again. I wasn’t present when that bit of learning took place. I
was at home in bed with yet another childhood illness. And so I get into
trouble by inbeing blunt and declaring things, things that seem to me as clear
as day, when the code has it I be silent. When I break the silence, I do not
feel ashamed nor guilty, even though someone says explicitly that I should (and
say I’m sorry), for I see the dynamic pretty clearly. I’ve lost friends this
way, and that is sad. It does, however, give me an insight into how groups
work, and do not work.
The
inter-relational is difficult to pin down and codes of behaviour are rarely
ever actually articulated. Much goes by at a sort ethereal level. Things are
vaguely felt, except when things are said that are said against the code that
inheres the group. It’s against this cloudy backdrop that the problems of guilt
and shame are manifest.
Much
psychological literature identify guilt and shame as individually felt things. Guilt
and shame certainly feel like they are individual. I may not know the code of
silence, but I know other codes. I know how it feels to fall upon the
guilt-edged sword of shame. It hurts in a nagging, dull sort of way. But, you
know, how is it possible to have a sense of a conscience outside a code of
practice lived by the rest of one’s community? A conscience arises in relation
to beliefs and ideas about community for the benefit of community. Having a
sense of right and wrong are relational, indeed, inter-relational within
community, and, as such, are endlessly negotiated.
Martin Buber, the existential philosopher in his book, On Psychology and Psychotherapy,
beautifully identifies the point at which an action of conscience is felt as
being apparently objective truth. It is a point that we tend to attribute possible
reactions to our personal stuff as a condemnation by the group, even when what
we’re experiencing is an introjected idea of the mores of the group. To
introject is to take what is outside into ourselves. The introjected idea can
be very flawed. I think a code of silence is one of those: when not speaking up
is lauded over saying what needs to be said for the safety of others. Sometimes
the introjected idea has come via sources that should not be trusted. Examples
of an untrustworthy source of ideas is the belief that plane travel is
dangerous, or you should never step into the ocean because sharks will get you,
or New York is a dangerous town, or all men are beasts, or women are all gold
diggers, or whatever. Such are beliefs that interfere with good choices….
