The Dehumanization of the World: A Jungian Reflection on the Collective Shadow

We live in an age where it has become alarmingly easy to devalue another person’s life simply because they hold an opposing view. In this climate, someone need not have harmed us, assaulted us, or taken anything from us in order to become an enemy. It is enough that their perspective differs. In that difference, we reduce them from a whole human being, a complex soul with a history, a longing, a family, to a mere abstraction. And abstractions are easy to annihilate.

From a Jungian perspective, this is the most dangerous expression of shadow projection. When we cannot hold our own fear, anger, or insecurity, we hurl it outward, painting the Other as the embodiment of everything we refuse to see in ourselves. In our refusal to wrestle with our own shadow, we feed the collective shadow. It grows visceral fat on our disowned emotions, until it erupts in the public sphere with devastating force.

We saw this with chilling clarity when a public assassination unfolded during a recent political event. It was not only a tragic act of violence; it was a mirror. It reflected back to us what happens when personal shadows—unchecked anger, unprocessed fear, unexamined bias—are amplified by the machinery of social media, political rhetoric, and cultural division.

When multiplied, they coalesce into a collective shadow capable of anti-social and psychopathic terror. This pattern is not new. It has played out across history, again and again, whenever societies fracture, demonize, and dehumanize. And it will happen again and again—until we are willing to look inward.

Dehumanization is always the precursor to destruction. It begins with language—mockery, vilification, the casual stripping away of another’s dignity. It escalates into justification: “They are not like us, they do not deserve what we deserve.” And eventually, it ends with violence—words turned into bullets, contempt turned into blood.

If we are to interrupt this cycle, we must take seriously the inner work that our era continually resists. We must recognize that our hatred of the Other is a disguised hatred of the rejected parts of ourselves. What we refuse to integrate within becomes projected outward, amplified by algorithms, inflamed by political leaders, and acted out in real time on the public stage. The hypocrisy is glaring: in the very act of fighting what we fear, we become it. We denounce violence while feeding the conditions that make violence inevitable, and then spearhead the act itself.

The path forward is not naïve optimism nor avoidance of the world’s horrors. It is courage—the courage to confront the shadow within ourselves and in our culture. Individually, this means pausing when hatred rises in us, asking: What part of me is being touched here? What fear or wound am I disowning?

Collectively, it means cultivating spaces where dialogue, ritual, and reflection can hold our projections before they harden into action. The work is urgent. Because until we learn to honor the humanity of those with whom we disagree, until we can look into another’s eyes and see a soul rather than a scapegoat, the cycle of dehumanization will repeat. And each time it does, the cost will be higher, the violence sharper, the wound to the human and collective spirit deeper.

Jung reminded us that the shadow, once made conscious, can become a source of creativity and healing. But left unconscious, it devours us. The choice is stark: integration or destruction, humanity or hatred. Our future depends on whether we can summon the courage to face the darkest corners of ourselves and, in doing so, to reclaim the light, our souls, and our hearts.

.