The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

particularly thick Shadow. When we experience those moments when
people reveal the dark side, we can see something come over their face;
their voice and body language is altered—almost as if another person is
confronting us, the features of the upset child suddenly becoming
visible. We feel their shadow as it stirs and emerges.
The Shadow lies buried deep within, but it becomes disturbed and
active in moments of stress, or when deep wounds and insecurities are
triggered. It also tends to emerge more as people get older. When we
are young, everything seems exciting to us, including the various social
roles we must play. But later in life we tire of the masks we have been
wearing, and the leakage is greater.
Because we rarely see the Shadow, the people we deal with are
somewhat strangers to us. It is as if we only see a two-dimensional,
flattened image of people—their pleasant social side. Knowing the
contours of their Shadow makes them come to life in three dimensions.
This ability to see the rounded person is a critical step in our
knowledge of human nature. Armed with this knowledge, we can
anticipate people’s behavior in moments of stress, understand their
hidden motives, and not get dragged under by any self-destructive
tendencies.
The Shadow is created in our earliest years and stems from two
conflicting forces that we felt. First, we came into this world bursting
with energy and intensity. We did not understand the difference
between acceptable and unacceptable behavior; we only experienced
natural impulses. Some of these impulses were aggressive. We wanted
to monopolize our parents’ attention and receive much more of it than
our siblings. We experienced moments of great affection but also
powerful dislikes and hatreds, even of our parents for not meeting our
needs. We wanted to feel superior in some way and appreciated for it—
in appearance, strength, or smartness. We could be remarkably selfish
if we were denied what we wanted, and turn devious and manipulative
to get it. We could even find some pleasure in hurting people, or
fantasize about getting revenge. We experienced and expressed the full
gamut of emotions. We were not the innocent angels people imagine
children to be.

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At the same time, we were completely vulnerable and dependent on
our parents for survival. This dependence lasted for many years. We
watched our parents with eagle eyes, noting every signal of approval
and disapproval on their faces. They would chastise us for having too
much energy and wish we could sit still. They sometimes found us too
willful and selfish. They felt that other people were judging them by the
behavior of their children, so they wanted us to be nice, to put on a
show for others, to act like the sweet angel. They urged us to be
cooperative and play fairly, even though at times we wished to behave
differently. They encouraged us to tone down our needs, to be more of
what they needed in their stressful lives. They actively discouraged our
tantrums and any form of acting out.
As we got older, these pressures to present a particular front came
from other directions—peers and teachers. It was fine to show some
ambition, but not too much of it or we might seem antisocial. We could
exude confidence, but not too much or we would seem to be asserting
our superiority. The need to fit into the group became a primary
motivation, and so we learned to tamp down and restrain the dark side
of our personality. We internalized all of the ideals of our culture—
being nice, having prosocial values. Much of this is essential for the
smooth functioning of social life, but in the process a large part of our
nature moved underground, into the Shadow. (Of course, there are
some who never learned to control these darker impulses and end up
acting them out in real life—the criminals in our midst. But even
criminals struggle to appear nice a great deal of the time and justify
their behavior.)
Most of us succeed in becoming a positive social animal, but at a
price. We end up missing the intensity that we experienced in
childhood, the full gamut of emotions, and even the creativity that
came with this wilder energy. We secretly yearn to recapture it in some
way. We are drawn toward what is outwardly forbidden—sexually or
socially. We may resort to alcohol or drugs or any stimulant, because
we feel our senses dulled, our minds too restrained by convention. If
we accumulate a lot of hurts and resentments along the way, which we
strive to conceal from others, the Shadow grows thicker. If we
experience success in our lives, we become addicted to positive
attention, and in the inevitable down moments when the drug of such
attention wears off, the Shadow will be disturbed and activated.

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Concealing this dark side requires energy; it can be draining to
always present such a nice, confident front. And so the Shadow wants
to release some of the inner tension and come back to life. As the poet
Horace once said, Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret
(“You can throw out Nature with a pitchfork, but she’ll always come
back”). You must become adept at recognizing such moments of
release in others and interpreting them, seeing the outlines of the
Shadow that now come forward. The following are some of the most
notable signs of such release.