The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [430]
Here, of course, as in so many other respects, stories merely provide us with a mirror to how human nature actually works. And this leads on to another very important aspect of human psychology to which Comedy again provides the clue.
A recurring feature of Comedy is the way it shows us a particular group of people whose lives are shadowed by the presence in their midst of an egocentric dark figure. Thus the lecherous Count Almaviva dominates his household, the jealous King Leontes dominates his court, Napoleon in War and Peace dominates Russia, and so forth. So overpowering is the force of their egotism that it has the effect of casting everyone else into shadow, making it difficult for other people to be properly themselves.
This is precisely the effect we can see in real life whenever any social group or organisation becomes dominated by one strongly egotistical personality. We can see it in a family, a place of work, a village, street or town, any form of community, even a whole nation. The power of such egotists to dominate the lives of all those around them is enormous. They may do it in a `dark masculine' way, by open bullying and aggression, in a 'dark feminine' way, by devious scheming and plotting, or by a combination of both. They may be aided by a group of accomplices or toadies around them, who act like extensions of their ego. But the effect of their behaviour is exactly as we see it reflected in so many comedies. It casts a malign spell on everyone in its shadow. It makes other people uneasy, miserable, fearful. It makes it hard for them to act to their full potential. And it wastes their time. Whenever we come across people who represent an extreme case of egotism, one of its most noticeable consequences is the strain this imposes on other people's time and energy, as they try to meet the egotists' demands or to operate around them, to an extent of which the egotists themselves are blithely unaware.
This is of course because, in being taken in by their own self-image, such egotists are largely unconscious. By definition they are blind. And one of the things to which they are particularly blind, as we have noted, is what other people say and think about them behind their back. They live in a little bubble of self-esteem, either imagining that others take them at their own face value or heedless of what these others think anyway, because such people are `below the line'. The views and feelings of these others are therefore of no account. Unconsciously, the egotist sees the world around him in exactly the terms in which we see it presented in a Comedy. He himself (or she) is `above the line' and therefore, to those whom he sees as similarly above the line, on his own level, he can be polite, humorous, generous, even deferential. But everyone else, `below the line, can be disregarded, bullied, exploited or treated with contempt. And it is they, his victims, who see most clearly just what a blindly self-centred and immature human being they are having to cope with.
We may all have come across extreme examples of this kind of egotism in our own lives and be grateful that on the whole they are exceptions. But the real reason for this type of two-facedness is that it reflects what happens to human nature whenever ego-consciousness becomes split off from the ability for selfless feeling and objective awareness. And in this respect it provides us with a model which applies not just to the psychology of individuals but also to human beings collectively.
The ruling consciousness
The real problem with the ego, as the only part of our psyche through which we can be conscious of the world, is that it is so structured that its awareness must always be limited. However much we may try to eliminate its distortions and to dissolve its conflict with the objective unconscious, some element of subjective distortion and blindness must inevitably remain. And just as this applies to the consciousness of the individual ego, so it equally applies to that collective consciousness which tends to develop in