The Crash of 2008 as a Learning Experience

The blame-game hasn't stopped. Was the crash of ’08 the fault of bankers, Congress, regulators, the media, or the people? Blaming others feels good when it defends against our participation in the fiasco.

Even though bankers may have broken the law and need more regulation, we’re all part of the problem. Deficiencies in human consciousness caused the crash. Our intelligence is impaired by unresolved negative emotions that produce collective occurrences of self-defeat or self-sabotage.

Even if we regulate the banks more stringently, as we should, we’re in danger of acting out our propensity for self-defeat in other areas of life, notably with nuclear proliferation, genetic manipulation, and environmental degradation.

We’re not to blame for being dysfunctional or neurotic. Human nature has fundamental flaws, though these can be resolved. It’s obviously crisis time on planet Earth, time to answer the call to become more conscious.

We can start by seeing and acknowledging our own contribution to the problem. We can’t prevent institutional corruption or overcome passive inaction when we neglect to address personal dysfunction and our negative emotions such as anger, distrust, dissension, envy, fear, and hatred. These emotions corrupt family, community, and national life, as they also block us from having the power or will to achieve reform.

What is Humanity’s Greatest Weakness?

A lot of experts tend to blame social problems on the cruelty, malice, and ignorance of other people. For instance, the materialistic and selfish aspects of contemporary life are often blamed on a financial elite that has been pursuing its narrow self-interest.

Author and scholar Tony Judt says as much in his new book, Ill Fares the Land (Penguin Press, 2010). Much of today’s social dysfunction is not inherent in the human condition, he writes. It dates from the 1980s and includes an obsession with wealth creation and privatization. These developments featured a growing disparity between rich and poor, uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, and the delusion of endless growth.

These changes Judt mentions did indeed occur over the last three decades. Nevertheless, the author is wrong on a critical point: it was a weakness in the human condition that facilitated these undesirable changes. This problem may be humanity’s greatest weakness, though the substance of that weakness remains unrecognized by most experts and observers.

Humankind is still strongly under the influence of a psychological condition called inner passivity. I describe this condition in detail in my book, The Phantom of the Psyche: Freeing Ourself From Inner Passivity. The book explains why inner passivity, which produces self-defeat, is an inherent and universal human weakness. Inner passivity is a result of a lack of self-awareness. It refers to our inner state of nonbeing, the inner zone of dissociation, that is the central aspect of our subordinate or unconscious ego.

Uncovering Vital Self-Knowledge

The trick to becoming a happier and healthier person is to understand exactly how we contribute to our emotional and behavioral problems.

Sure, the world around us can be a difficult and challenging place. Yet most of our suffering and self-defeat are caused by chaotic dynamics in our mental and emotional processing. Up to this point, the human race hasn’t understood these dynamics clearly enough.

For starters, we want to expose the operations of our inner critic. That part of us assumes to be our voice of authority. It pretends to represent our best interests. But this part of us is inappropriately aggressive, and it is a source of negativity.

Another source of negativity is our inner passivity. This part is often represented by an inner voice of self-doubt. It is through inner passivity that we allow our inner critic to harass us, intimidate us, and hold us accountable. Inner passivity makes it very hard for us to self-regulate.