What the Joker and Voldemort Teach Us About Personal Development (Jungian Psychology’s Approach to Good & Evil)
Evil’s purpose is to serve the greater good
Evil’s purpose is to serve the greater good.
Reading my hundredth depth psychology book gave me a serious realisation about our beloved hero stories. What if, on a cosmic scale, the bad-guy only existed to force the good-guy to grow? Pulling concepts from across the psychological spectrum, I’ve collected evidence and arranged it in the most practical way possible.
Let me explain…
The 4 functions and how they relate to the Shadow
Carl Jung’s 4 functions theory was the inspiration behind the Myers-Briggs 16 personality test (INFJs and ISFJs etc).
The above example shows the personality function wheel (you can also think of this as a cross), of a thinking type. Usually analytical, and often plagued by incessant thoughts, someone considered to have thinking as their ‘superior function’ will have feeling as their ‘inferior function.
Think of the person you know that can think their way of anything, but often comes across as overly logical when human emotions are at play.
You can turn this wheel 360º.
Place feeling at the top, and you have someone who goes with how they feel instead of what makes sense. A sensation type will be drawn to the material world, but will lack the intuition most deem common sense. Like the person who’s financed a 6 series BMW but now can’t afford rent.
The superior function makes up our ego (or conscious mind), while the inferior function sits in our shadow (or unconscious mind).
The two other horizontal functions sit in-between.
The purpose of this model, is to allow you to understand what character traits you are lacking. Jung believed the goal of life was to reach wholeness, not perfection. If we are struggling, unhappy or plateaued, we should look to our failures to find a solution.
Concentrating exclusively on our strengths is what most people do, and is why most people become stagnant after they leave school.
Because our inferior function sits outside our understanding, i.e. our unconscious mind, it is closely related to our Shadow.
The Shadow is all the things we refuse to accept about ourselves. Personality traits we don’t like, facts about life we’d rather not realise, things in the past we think are better left forgotten, the Shadow becomes a dark ball of mystery. Not all shadow traits are negative, but they appear to be, because it is the dark part of ourselves we ridicule with suspicion.
“The shadow is ninety percent pure gold”
– Carl Jung
But it is also the place where the answer lies for our biggest problems.
The villain is there to develop the hero
Stories tell us about ourselves, they’re not just for fun.
A hero story, is traditionally about an individual setting out into the world in search of treasure, wisdom or solutions, and then their return home with their new gift to share with the tribe. More modernly, it is about a person of unique abilities (the chosen one), and their confrontation with Evil. Good and evil have a stand off, good wins, good-guy gets girl (treasure), and the bad-guy is disintegrated out of existence (for now).
What we’re interested in is the play-off between good and evil.
Evil doesn’t just disappear because it’s defeated, it dissolves because it’s fulfilled its purpose.
Harry Potter
Voldemort is Harry’s Shadow.
They are one of the same, which is made clear by their shared faculties (talking to snakes, being able to access each other’s minds etc). While Harry stands as the epitome of heroism and bravery, the Dark Lord represents everything cold, evil and slithering about life.
They are two sides of the same coin, nether is complete without the other.
But how then do you explain his death? By his death.
Killing is painted as the archetypical evil in the wizarding-world. It is how Voldemort created the horcruxes, by committing the greatest crime against nature imaginable, be was able to split his very soul. An act so far removed from our common understanding of goodness.
But what does Harry then do?
It’s more apparent in the books.
Voldemort is so weakened by the loss of his last soul-fragment, he is easy pickings for the teenager. He kills him, no way around it. The necessity of this killing, however, is so obvious, that it is deemed acceptable (even heroic) by everybody who read the book.
But what about all the stuff about good and evil? Not committing murder? as it is a crime against nature.
The real world isn’t so simple.
Sometimes, good people have to do bad things. Defending your family, cutting someone out of your life before they can do you damage, killing someone who is about to kill you.
The secret lesson of Harry Potter, is that evil is just as important as good, as good is as evil.
For Harry to reach full development, he had to experience evil, but not just see, do it.
In a full circle kind of way, Voldemort was a good guy, and Harry was a bad guy. They both played into each other, both helping to reach a point of equilibrium.
This is the answer for the existence of evil, because without it, how could we have good? The human mind is not designed to live in paradise, this is a skill that must be learnt. To truly appreciate the good, we need to truly appreciate how bad things can be.
And, like a fairy-tale ending, “Harry’s scar never troubled him again”.
The Dark Knight (The Joker)
Heath Ledger’s Joker, not that other rubbish.
The beauty about this take on the character is the childish genius of it.
If you asked a kid to come up with a bad-guy, they would possible come up with the Joker. “Why is he evil?” a mid-wit teacher would ask, “because he is”, replies the juvenile genius. A terrible writing mistake that so many modern films make is trying to reason for the villain’s villainy. He/she’s trying to murder half the population because… Global warming…
Yeah, good one.
I used to think that there was no bad people, only misunderstood perspectives, a few experiences has lead me to conclude that evil does exist. And it exists only for the purpose of evil.
“Some people just want to watch the world burn”
While Batman is calm, calculated and moral — the Joker is ruthless, unpredictable and violent. There’s no better representation of the heroes dichotomy. Even the shadowy, but righteous appearance of Bruce Wayne is reflected polar-opposed in the colourful, but corrupted aesthetic of the clown.
The Batman’s personal development comes from the need to evolve in order to defeat this threat.
In the movie the batman spares the joker, which leads to a monologue about the infinite struggle of good and evil.
“You just couldn’t let me go [let him fall to his death], could you. This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object”.
But in the comic book, batman snaps his neck.
He does this to paralyse him (still pretty bad), but accidentally kills him. The hero is forced by necessity to commit an act he was completely opposed to doing. This isn’t a green-light to commit atrocities.
Myth is always exaggerated to the point its analogous relationship to the real world seems implausible.
It is lesson of a universal principle, one thing always implies it’s opposite.
For us, this means to reach full development, we need to face that which we have neglected. Before it manifests in our life as a teacher.
That personality cross is too simplistic. Most people are more complex and can be for example intuitive as well as a thinker.
And no way does evil serve the greater good…that is twisted logic. And sounds like Voldemort or some tyrant trying to convince people that what will harm them is actually “good”. What is good for the world is actually good.
Jung says, “There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. Unconsciousness is the primal sin, evil itself for the Logos”. (p. 33) So, yes what is unconscious and in “shadow” and not brought out into the Light and dealt with can lead one to be “ruled” by it. I know people who refuse to deal with their negative habits, anxieties, etc and become more conscious and “evolved”. They think suppressing all that is easier and less painful that dealing with it. I don’t believe that from my own experience.
And where do these “unconscious shadows” come from? Children are born innocent. What is the role of “free will”? What about “simple mistakes”?
Almight God is Pure Consciousness & it seems in this corrupted Eden the goal is to attain more consciousness to rise up beyond the corruption to be closer to The Primordial Creator while at the same time “evil”, “unconsciousness” is trying to pull us down & keep us from being close to Almighty God. Why? Is there some other “being”allegedly competing to “be God”? Jesus came to “refresh God’s beautiful Eden Garden (Earth)”. “But it’s Almighty God the One who rules the entire universe, who’ll ordain their (evil doers, corrupt, reprobates) disgrace at the end of time.” (Gospel of Judas) Doing evil is not natural because what is natural is good and guidance from Almighty God. That’s why it’s been prophesied an “end of time” and in the Quran Almighty God ending the universe is described as “a scroll being rolled up”. If “equilibrium” or “balance” between Good & Corruption is the goal for life then why would Almighty God end the Universe? Jesus came to refresh, a “restart” for Eden, but that did not go too well. Not “balance”, but victory for Goodness is the objective. So, this universe will end according to various religious texts perhaps because “balance” is not the goal and that’s the best we can do; a stalemate. Perhaps Almighty God will make a new Universe.
I don’t believe in worshipping ideas, people or “gods”. It seems to me there is a sort of “worship” of Carl Jung and his ideas. I’m not sure why. Yes, he was brilliant and brought forth incredible ideas about psychology and how it impacts human behavior and thus our world but he was a man who died over 60 years ago. I truly wish he were alive so I could talk with him and question some of what he wrote. I’m certain he would welcome that since he truly was an intellectual and would be the last person who would desire “worship” & “idolization” of himself. Thank you for the thought provoking article.