Sufficient affluence/sustainable economy: Understanding Detroit’s bankruptcy (part II)
By John F. Sase, Gerard J. Senick, Senior Editor, Julie G. Sase, Copyeditor
“Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing the time. Action with Vision is making a positive difference.”
— Joel Barker (“the Paradigm-Shift Man”), Scholar and Futurist
“All archetypes have ‘shadow’ manifestations as well as positive aspects. The shadow has power precisely because it remains in the dark; we tend to deny its presence in us because we consider it unacceptable. Only when we face and acknowledge the shadow’s presence can we neutralize its potential negative impact on us.”
— Caroline Myss, American Author and Medical Intuitive, http://www.myss.com/library/contracts/archetypes.asp
In Detroit, we live in the middle of a national media-fest and feeding frenzy that exploit the bankruptcy and urban decay of the City. We also have a new mayor-elect this month, Mike Duggan, whose election has brought even more media attention to the Motor City. Therefore, this month’s column continues our series on the current state of Detroit by making a high-altitude appraisal. We will focus upon the creation of a Vision for the Future of Detroit and Southeast Michigan. However, before embarking on our vision quest, we need to prepare ourselves. This article presents four archetypes from the Jungian tradition. By working through these archetypes, our consciousness-both individually and collectively-will be raised. This preparatory work will put us in a space that allows a solid vision to emerge.
Our Vision Quest
In order to move forward, we need a collective vision for the future of Detroit, the suburban ring, and the other urban areas of Southeast Michigan. The region cannot sustain itself economically if the City of Detroit is in collapse any more than the City can sustain if the suburban ring fell into that state. Furthermore, the fate of Metropolitan Detroit would shudder if the nearby urban areas, including Ann Arbor and the many small towns in the region, were to decline. In other words, the region functions as one single economic unit.
A vision for the future is more than a dream. A vision implies that there is a goal that can be attained and maintained. Succinctly, most people desire a sufficient level of affluence. In order to attain and maintain such affluence, we need to focus upon achieving a sustainable economy within our vision.
Barriers that impede our path to developing a workable vision come in the form of what some refer to as personal demons, negative influences, or universal archetypes. We will address these obstacles in the form of four archetypes: The Child, the Victim, the Saboteur, and the Prostitute. These archetypes have been with us since the dawn of humanity and have plagued each of us as we struggle to achieve our individual visions and goals.
In respect to developing a new vision, we must recognize that a mayor, members of the City Council, and their staffs are administrators. Though some constituents may feel inclined to view these officials as saviors, prophets, or demi-gods, their job descriptions require that they focus their attentions and energies upon developing and maintaining infrastructure, providing services, and finding ways to pay for them. Hopefully, the officials will participate in developing the larger overall vision. However, this is not their primary directive.
Though government officials talk about job creation (especially around election time), very rarely does any government create jobs beyond those positions needed for operating its own infrastructure. The exceptions include the building of the pyramids at Giza, Egypt, by royal decree and the formation of temporary work projects such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Depression of the 1930s. Actually, the task of job creation falls to the private sector. Individuals create firms for the purpose of earning a profit by producing and selling a good or service. In most cases, these companies need to hire large teams or bands of workers to handle production, sales, and various staff services. Ergo, the private-sector businesses create jobs and employment. Furthermore, the more value that the employees of a company can add to the process, the greater the share of revenue for which they may bargain. However, this share is limited in dollar terms. Basically, it is dependent upon the amount of additional product or service that these employees contribute to overall production. However, it is further constrained by the dollar value of the incremental amount that customers purchase in the marketplace.
Animal Spirits
In 2013, Professor Robert J. Shiller of Yale University co-won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Lars Peter Hansen and Eugene F. Fama). In presenting this award, the Nobel Committee described Shiller as a founder of the field of Behavioral Finance, an innovator in incorporating Psychology into Economics, and a pioneering analyst of speculative bubbles in the stock- and real-estate markets. In his book “Irrational Exuberance” (Princeton University Press, 2000), Shiller explains how psychological/spiritual states affect the stock market as part of the Efficient-Market Hypothesis (EMH). This hypothesis posits that an investor cannot achieve returns consistently that exceed average market-returns with the information available at the time of the investment. Shiller suggests that this hypothesis constitutes a half-truth: It is not easy to make a large amount of money rapidly; even a smart investor can lose money for years before profiting. However, Shiller notes that the EMH goes wrong when one assumes that there is no point in trying to beat the market or that one should guide economic policy under the assumption that market bubbles do not exist.
In a more recent book written with George J. Akerlof, “Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism” (Princeton University Press, 2009), Shiller promotes our need to understand how emotions influence economic decision-making. The authors argue that, as emotions remain difficult to quantify and to model, economists tend to downplay the importance of emotional factors. In contrast, Shiller and Akerlof assert that we can answer many profound economic questions once we understand and allow for the effects that spiritual and emotional drives have on economic decision-making.
Vision
Herein, we use the term “vision” as the ability to gain a great perception about the future or, at least, the development of a stated set of aims and objectives for Southeast Michigan. Often called the father of American literature, Ralph Waldo Emerson is well known as the founder of Transcendentalism. He told us, “People only see what they are prepared to see.” However, Emerson reminds us of the necessity of pragmatic vision. Upon reading Emerson’s essay “Nature” (1836), English philosopher Thomas Carlyle remarked that the vision therein formed the foundation and ground plan on which one may build “whatsoever of great and true has been given you to build.” Before we take action to build for the future of Detroit and the surrounding region, we need to develop a common vision of what we desire the future to be, not only for ourselves but for succeeding generations.
In respect to a vision, Emerson and many others through the ages have reminded us that we must find peace with nature and the world around us before we can discover a pragmatic vision within ourselves. As suggested by Shiller, we must understand and come to grips with the emotions and “Animal Spirits” within. These personal characteristics may either help or hinder us on our quest.
In recent decades, the study of these inner angels and demons that move us forward or hold us back has been undertaken by polymaths from many converging fields. Notable among them is twentieth-century Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, who developed the concept of archetypes as universal archaic patterns and images that come from the collective unconscious. A favorite contemporary Jungian scholar of mine (Dr. Sase) is author, lecturer, and medical intuitive Caroline Myss, who explains archetypes in accessible terms that are relevant to the general reader. In her most recent book, “Archetypes: Who Are You?” (Hay House, 2013), Myss has approached these angels and demons in terms of traditional archetypes familiar through the plays, poetry, and prose of many cultures. In brief, archetypes constitute universal patterns of behavior that we can discover and that help us to understand ourselves and our place in the world. In our current discussion on developing a long-term vision for Southeast Michigan, working through our dominant archetypes may enable us to discover a pragmatic vision.
On her Web site (www.myss.com), Myss describes seventy archetypes in detail. However, she iterates that each of us has a dozen dominant archetypes at play within us. Myss states that we share four basic ones that she defines as the universal archetypes of survival: The Child, the Victim, the Saboteur, and the Prostitute. As with most of the other sixty-six, these four display both positive and negative elements in their effect upon us. As suggested by Shiller and Akerlof, we need to understand the role that the corresponding emotions play as they influence economic decision-making. As we seek to identify and measure the correlation between our emotions and our economic behavior, delineating and defining these emotional variables as archetypes moves us one step closer to modeling and quantifying (or at least qualifying) them as determinant economic variables.
Archetypes of Survival
So as to not leave this discussion unsatisfied, let us explore the relationship between the four principle Archetypes of Survival, our economic decisions, and our task of developing a vision for the future. To begin, allow us to suggest that the task of re-inventing our economy is to achieve a sufficient level of affluence for all. It follows that this achievement must depend upon the creation and maintenance of a sustainable economy-Sufficient Affluence/Sustainable Economy. In order to accomplish this, we should conceive of a satisfactory level by consensus and then express it clearly through compilation and editing. We cannot expect this organic process to be a rapid one.
“Ac-Cent-Tcu-Ate the Positive / Eliminate the Negative / Don’t Mess with Mr. In-Between”
— Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, “Ac-Cent-Tcu-Ate the Positive” (Capitol Records, 1944)
In assimilating the four Archetypes of Survival, it rests with each participant to maximize the positive influences while minimizing the negative influences. Therefore, we will provide a basic definition and discussion of the four. Survival deeply involves the interaction of the Child, the Victim, the Saboteur, and the Prostitute. Each of the four characterizes overlapping issues, fears, and vulnerabilities that we must confront and overcome in order to attain our goals. In doing so, these four archetypes represent spiritual and material strengths that serve as allies as well as representing weaknesses that must be overcome. As neutral guardians, the archetypes will help to preserve our integrity by blocking any bargaining away of our strengths in the name of survival. However, if we allow ourselves to make choices unconsciously in response to challenges, we may act defensively and fearfully and not grow or learn in the process. The greater our consciousness remains, the more likely that our choices will be positive.
The Child
Our determination to remain young and healthy in mind, body, and spirit relies upon the positive energy of the Child Archetype. However, the Shadow Child may manifest itself as the inability to grow and to take on the responsible life of an adult. This negative pole may result in an extreme dependency on the individuals who assume the responsibility for one’s physical and emotional security or on the institutions that assume this responsibility. These providers of security that manifest themselves include spouses, extended family, friends, or government.
As with many of the archetypes, the core issue of the Child Archetype balances upon the scales of dependency and responsibility. This balance takes into account our need for and perception of safety, nurturing, loyalty, and belonging along with wounds, abandonment, dependency, and innocence. Furthermore, this learned balance leads us to know when to take responsibility or when to maintain a healthy dependency. It also leads us to know when to take opposition to a group or when to embrace a community and its rules. In summary, the inherent balance is characterized by tendencies of both light and shadow.
The Victim
The negative aspects of the Victim are manifest in self-pity and a hunger for sympathy. The positive traits of this archetype emerge as a warning sign of danger that serves to protect us from being victimized, However, if we are victimized, it may happen as a result of our own passivity or carelessness. In addition, the positive impulses emerge to alert us to our potential for victimizing others for our own personal gain. In contrast, the shadow side of the Victim may encourage us to play the role of victim at times for rewards in the form of pity or sympathy. In this shadow form, the Victim tells us that others always take advantage of us and that what happens to us is never our own fault. This archetype presents itself as a bit of a trickster: we may fail to recognize these inappropriate emotions in both ourselves and others. We are not meant to be victimized in life. Rather, we are meant to learn how to handle challenges and to outrun our fears. Therefore, we need to develop clarity of insight that will help us to develop a larger pragmatic vision. However, this necessity demands that we learn both the nature and the intensity of the Victim within ourselves.
The Saboteur
The Saboteur Archetype reflects low self-esteem. It is composed of the fears and related issues that cause us to make choices that block our self-empowerment and success. We may begin a new relationship and then destroy it because we imagine a painful outcome. Similarly, we may start a working relationship with another person and find ourselves in a power struggle with that person, having fallen into a recurring destructive pattern.
The bundle of emotions that constitute this powerful archetype can be turned into an ally that calls attention to the dangers of being sabotaged or of sabotaging ourselves. With the Saboteur emotions as allies, we can save ourselves the grief that comes from making redundant mistakes. However, if we fail to harness the negative side of this archetype, the shadow Saboteur will manifest itself as self-destructive behavior or as a desire to undermine the visions and optimistic plans of others.
The Prostitute
The Prostitute Archetype revolves around the emotions related to integrity. Specifically, it relates to the sale of our own integrity or spirit out of our fears of being able to maintain our physical and financial survival. As a result, this archetype activates the emotions that are related unconsciously to both seduction and control. Within this state, we are capable of selling our own power to others and buying control over another person. Like the other three Archetypes of Survival, the Archetype of Prostitution is universal. It should be understood as the selling out of our talents, ideas, morals, and ethics for financial gain. The core learning related to this strongly negative archetype revolves around the need for rediscovery and refinement of integrity, self-esteem, and self-respect.
Finis
Hopefully, this brief introduction to the world of spirit and emotion embodied in archetypes has helped us to grow in awareness: most of the work on our vision quest lies in the preparation for it. Analogously, we are musical instruments. As with a harp that has not been tuned properly, we can expect that the result may sound quite dismal. If we apply our understanding of Animal Spirits to economic decisions involving redevelopment and regrowth throughout Southeast Michigan, then we need to understand that we must form a vision before we take action in order to succeed. However, to develop such a pragmatic vision, we must come to understand our emotional drives, which can be modeled by a series of archetypes, and to direct them to a successful development of a vision of the future before we move forward to action.
As Jung states, these archetypes emerge from the collective consciousness of human society. Therefore, as individual citizens of Detroit and Southeast Michigan, we need to evaluate our personal relationship with these archetypes. In this evaluation, we must determine where the light and shadows play upon our individual and collective characters. Once we have discerned our personal status and that of the City, we will be prepared to let a vision of its future manifest itself. This vision should be a pragmatic one because of the preparatory work that we have completed. Ideally, the result should be a city that emerges as more than just functional. By redeveloping a sound economic base in a harmonious whole of public and private sectors, we can achieve a new level of greatness, both as human beings and as Southeast Michiganders.
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Dr. John F. Sase of SASE Associates, Economic Consulting and Research, earned his MBA at the University of Detroit and his Ph.D. in Economics at Wayne State University. He is a graduated of the University of Detroit Jesuit High School. Dr. Sase can be reached at (248) 569-5228 and by e-mail at drjohn@saseassociates.com.
Gerard J. Senick is a freelance writer, editor, and musician. He earned his degree in English at the University of Detroit and was a Supervisory Editor at Gale Research Company (now Cengage) for more than 20 years. Currently, he edits books for publication and gives seminars on writing. Mr. Senick can be reached at (313) 342-4048 and by e-mail at gary@senick-editing.com.
