The Shadow

Note: while my concept of "The Shadow" is inspired by Jung, it is also different

Idea: to avoid confusion, instead of "Shadow" I may use a different word, but it needs to sound cool, and it needs to be somewhat similar to "shadow" in terms of meaning. I'm thinking about "Exterius" or something, and in some (not all, of course) interpretations this "Exterius" is not just an abstract concept but may also be anthropomorphized, like an evil god or a demon/dragon-like entity who lurks in the immediate vicinity of people, making people perceive anyone different from them as "evil", because what they see in the people who are different from them... is Exterius! Yeah, sounds pretty cool. I'll probably change the name of this page soon.

I define "The Shadow" as the synthesis of all one does not identify oneself with, and what one wants to avoid to be.

Some people have experienced in online "political" (or even just social/cultural, the distinctions are very blurry on social media) discussions, to be called "far-left" by some people and "far-right" by others. One interpretation (which may be explored in a different page) is that one is indeed far-left and far-right simultaneously (likely this interpretation can be argued more easily accepting the horseshoe theory as valid). However, in this page, the following interpretation is given: one is not far-left nor far-right, but to be called that way is simply a projection of the shadow of the one who is doing the calling. Generally speaking, those calling others "far-left" identify themselves as right-wing, whereas those calling others "far-right" identify themselves as left-wing. The most remarkable example is National Socialism (a.k.a. Nazism), an ideology that seems to be an almost infallible magnet for people's shadows. Thus, those who self-identify as left-wing call Nazism "far-right", those who self-identify as right-wing call Nazism "far-left", those who self-identify as liberals or libertarians call Nazism "authoritarian", those who self-identify as centrists call Nazism "extremism" and so on. What one calls Nazism is among the best indicators of what one self-identifies as. Basically, if one says "Nazism is X", it's pretty much guaranteed that the one who uttered that sentence self-identifies as the extreme opposite of X. Interestingly, this also applies to religion: in order to discredit a particular view, one may declare that the Nazis were: atheists, Christians, or "pagans", depending on which view one wants to discredit. Of course, "The Shadow" goes beyond the simplistic left-right spectrum that is popular on social media in the 2010's and 2020's. It affects religion, and many other things, and has affected people for millennia. "The Shadow", simply put, is a catch-all term for anyone who is different from oneself. Out-group homogeneity (seeing the out-group as "more or less all the same") plays a huge factor in this. For the Christians, The Shadow is the term "pagan" (which, at least originally, meant "anyone who is not Christian"), for the Ancient Greeks it was "barbarian" and so on. Here is a tentative list of some groups of people, followed by their Shadow (the terms for the Shadow I'll give may be nouns or adjectives, doesn't matter):

Ancient Greeks/Romans: Barbarian
Christians: Pagan, Satanists, Satanic, sinner, disbeliever, infidel etc.
Muslims: kafir (disbeliever), kufr (disbelief), shirk (polytheism), mushrik (polytheist), haram etc.
Psychiatrists: mentally ill, mental illness, mental disorder etc.
Nazis: Jews
Jews: gentiles, goyim
Left-wingers: far-right
Right-wingers: far-left, "woke" etc.
Centrists: extremism
Anarchists: statism
Capitalists: socialism
Socialists: capitalism
Liberal: authoritarian
Neo-Pagans: (not always, but often) Christianity, Satanism, "latent Christianity" etc. (the claim of some Neo-Pagans that "Pagans don't worship Satan, that's what Christians do" is IMHO one of the most mindblowing instances of projecting one's own Shadow onto others)
Vegans: Carnists, Corpse Eaters, Animal Abusers etc. (the interesting thing to note is that these insults are sometimes used against vegetarians, who do not eat meat... this seems to provide more evidence in favor of the idea that "catch-all out-group terms" are so broad to encompass literally anyone who is different from oneself, making these terms highly inaccurate yet highly loaded in affective/emotional undertones).
Omnivores(???): (I need to do more research about this one)
---I may add others as soon as they come to my mind

Note that this is one specific interpretation of what goes on when someone uses a catch-all out-group term onto someone else. Keeping with the relativistic spirit of the philosophy section of this website, I'll eventually also offer various kinds of other interpretations, psychological, sociological, theological, metaphysical, spiritual etc but those may be on separate pages. These other interpretations may or may not invoke abstract entities. For example a more naturalistic, psychological interpretation may focus on the fact that these are thought patterns happening in someone's mind, whereas an evolutionary psychology interpretation may focus on trying to explain why these thought patterns arise in the first place, seeking answers in ancient humans and primates. A theological interpretation may declare that these thought patterns are caused by God (or the gods/some gods/one god among many), or that these thoughts patterns are themselves divine entities (or emanations of one or more divine entities), or that we as humans are God (i.e. collectively, all humans are one God) or gods (i.e. individually, each human is a different deity). As always, the "same" thing can be interpreted in many ways.