What happened to Will Smith explained by Carl Jung

Carl Jung explains that our unconscious is divided into several parts, one of which is the shadow, the part created for war, to defend ourselves from what we consider a threat.

When I saw that Will Smith gave a show of violence at the Oscars I automatically remembered his disagreement with Eminem when he was still a Rapper and said when receiving a Grammy that rappers don’t need to cuss or say violent things in their lyrics.

Problem is, Eminem was the heavy rap guy at the time Will said that, so Eminem responded in a song saying:

Will Smith doesn’t gotta cuss in his raps to sell records

Well, I do, so f*ck him and f*ck you too.

This song is called The Real Slim Shady, Eminem’s alter ego. Nothing is more obvious than this alter ego being the representation of Eminem’s shadow, that is, he brought to the conscious what was unconscious.

Carl Jung himself said: Until you become conscious, the unconscious will direct your life and you will call it destiny.

Will Smith doesn’t seem to have brought his shadow into a conscious place, he prefers to stick to the nice guy stereotype, being the representation of someone who always chooses good over evil.

Evil and Good do not exist in reality, everything has a grayscale. What is bad now may be good at another time. Just as Eminem’s lyrics offend many people, these same lyrics allow the shadow of people who are willing to acknowledge his violent sides to identify with him and express themselves in a healthy way.

Eminem says in the song The Monster:

I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed

Get along with the voices inside of my head

Knowing who we are, completely gives us the key to the greatest of all domains, self-control, from that domain, comes all success and all health, because we are going to be complete.

I don’t think Chris Rock offended Jada enough to provoke that reaction, I don’t know if he was offending her at other times. But I’m sure Will’s Shadow got the message to go into action and as he doesn’t know his own shadow, it completely controlled him, like a fateful fate.

Will himself said in his speech how he was taken over by a defensive force and how Denzel described it as the devil catching you at your greatest moment. When the shadow sees that you’ve become a target, at its greatest moment you get all the spotlight, so it springs into action to defend you from threats, it’s so many eyes, it must think you’ve become a sought-after prey.

But when you recognize that we all have a hidden Rottweiler waiting to defend us whatever the cost, you learn to handle it, feed it and train it to attack at the right time and in the right way.

That’s why I prefer people who cuss because they release the energy of their frustrations in a non-violent way, whoever holds all that energy, is not a better person, he is just a person who will later explode in an unexpected way.

There is no better or worse person, there are incomplete and ignorant people, but we are all trying to be our best version.