There are several sobering takeaways from the final tranche of evidence in the Epstein saga. What seems to be on most people’s minds this time is not only the depth of corruption and suffering that surrounded it—much of which was known already—but just how willingly many prominent people buddied up to it.
The gag is that most of them didn’t even know what Epstein did. Not what he really did. But they went along with things because, well, he appeared to be rich and powerful, others vouched for him, and they found themselves inexplicably attracted.
Of course many knew or suspected that Epstein was involved in sex trafficking and other criminal activity even before his 2008 conviction, and a portion of his accomplices were complicit. Yet many stuck around. What drives someone to remain in such proximity? Often it’s an unwavering conviction in their own goodness, combined with unconscious urges to power.
Another tell is the way in which some people wrote to Epstein; the gushing love letters sent to him by many who have since distanced themselves. Some of them doing so long after Epstein’s initial conviction, and even offering pragmatic support towards his attempts to evade responsibility. All of this is standard practice, and is as clear a sign as any as to the profound lack of discernment that permeates human society. Others’ praise is often not much to go by, for how do you know that their own judgement is correctly calibrated? And that they themselves are aware of why they’re even attracted to this person?
So don’t think this is something that only happens among the elites. The Epstein coverage is one of those occasions when certain dynamics that regularly play out on a micro scale also happen to play out in such a severe and public way that we all have a clear opportunity to learn discernment by proxy. The mistake would be to just comfortably dump the issue there and fail to look at ourselves or our own situations. While the magnitude and publicity of this event are unusual, the psychological workings behind it are not.
It should be of note to anyone interested in shadow work that often the primary way in which shadow material shows up is not through possession by the qualitative opposite of the persona, but in the ways in which we unconsciously serve power in pursuit of its ends. And for those reasons we might find ourselves mysteriously attracted to anyone who appears to wield power in the way that we desire it; albeit deceptively and without regard for others’ freedom, or the fundamental requisites of human-to-human interaction. This is still very much a question of opposites, but a fundamentally moral one.
Power in itself is not the problem. On one level power is just will—the ability to make things happen and uphold any thesis—whether a belief, an idea of self, a way of operating, or some outer state of affairs for a time—against the ever present reality of the unknown. This is power in the neutral sense. But secondly there is power in the negative sense—when one seeks to serve their thesis at any cost, throwing out empathy and a willingness to engage meaningfully with anything outside of itself. We all need the first kind, but it’s the latter kind that becomes a problem—that in needing to be or have it one way, we flip enantiodromically into precisely the opposite.
The recent news should be a reminder that it is often not power unto itself that attracts, but reflected power. Just as, in the words of Schelling, a snake borrows its colours from the light. And that likewise the pursuit of power is done in the name of good—at least until, if one is willing to be sensitive, the feedback of the world and the conscience can be heard. And so one conflates a hunger for control with confidence, cruelty with charisma, and a lack of empathy with awareness and sophistication, wherever these things remain unconscious.
You can see unconscious urges to power playing out in our culture’s elevation of objectionable characters to positions of stardom. You can see it in men who play up to the animus and their attraction to ‘anima women,’ as well as in women who find themselves longing for love from ‘bad boy’ types. You can see it in just how mindlessly people in business will slip into ‘power mode’ based on surface roles and appearances alone. You see it any time a celebrity is followed and admired irrespective of their conduct or of evidence contrary to the narrative; because the crowd’s admiration is not truly rooted in the qualities of the person being admired or lack thereof, but in their own unconscious, unchecked urges to power. The readiness with which so many revert to master-slave dynamics at the first available opportunity should never cease to be noteworthy to anyone with a genuine interest in self knowledge. Your moral stance, life experience or knowledge apparently don’t matter—all that matters is the appearance you present at face value—your title, your role, possibly your demographic, and the particular circumstances around which you are connecting, your need and the apparent vulnerabilities it presents.
No wonder vulnerability is so hard and scary. Because so many still see it as a sign of weakness and will not hesitate to try to exploit it. And, on the flip-side, so willingly go along with those who pretend they don’t have any.
