Power of the Dark Side

by Pamela Jaye Smith

  KIDS AND CLIQUES

  After the family, a child’s next exposure to groupthink is the playground. Teen angst is triggered by being thought “uncool,” and some teens start pulling triggers because they’re cruelly shut out of a group.

  A. IN ACTION

  Bullying is a huge problem in almost every country and culture. In a bit of generalization, kids in Japan commit suicide over it, while kids in America pick up guns and kill others because of it.

  B. IN MEDIA

  Mean Girls, Heathers, My Life as a Dog, The Breakfast Club, Grease, Hair Spray, Legally Blonde, and Swing Kids where Nazism strains young Germans’ friendships.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Lower Solar Plexus: the self, boundaries. On the down side: separatism, cliques, hatred of “other”.

  Use dress codes, jargon, signals of any sort that divide people into “this” versus “that” or “them” versus “us.”

  Start with someone from the outside wanting to be in the group. Have an initiation — gruesome, icky, or cruel. Show your character resisting, then overcoming her natural anathema and succumbing against her better judgment.

  Show a former friend being hurt because of your character’s actions. Does the character change, or not?

  Are the rewards of belonging to the clique enough for the character? Is he totally absorbed into the group? Does he harbor some individuality? Might he step away?

  Show some reflection of this in the grown-up world, in history, myth, or media so that we can see where it could all lead to tears, even if in your story it does not.

  CHILD WARRIORS AND

  CHILD WORKERS

  Some observe that adolescence is a modern invention and until the early part of the 20th century in western Europe and America, children have always worked and have often gone to war.

  Amnesty International reports tens of thousands of child soldiers in conflicts raging around the globe, particularly in Africa. Kidnapped kids are usually forced to kill someone else, using horror and guilt to make them obedient. Human empathy needs to be hardwired into the brain by age eight, so many are lost to any redemption.

  Many trade treaties regulate against goods made by children. Public awareness about fair labor practices has improved the situation somewhat, but it’s hard to enforce subcontractors in remote locales or overcrowded cities.

  Children are a huge sector in the sex worker industry, often sold by poverty-stricken parents unaware of their fates. In economic terms, until the demand goes away, the ruthless and the helpless will furnish the supply side of this damaging market.

  A. IN ACTION

  The Children’s Crusade of 1212 saw 20,000 children marching through Europe headed to the Holy Land to free Jerusalem from the Moslems. Many died on the way and many were sold into slavery.

  Many Islamic terrorists are trained in radical madrassas, schools which teach distorted versions of the Koran, rabid politics, and little else. Young soldiers indoctrinated in this groupthink easily strap on suicide bombs.

  The U.N. estimates one million children are forced into prostitution each year. The Internet has proliferated and globalized child porn.

  Child protection laws and increased awareness so far seem unable to stem the rising tide of child abuse in soldiering, commerce, and the sex trade.

  B. IN MEDIA

  Little Miss Sunshine offers a poignant perspective on the sexualization of very young girls, as do Pretty Baby, and Taxi Driver.

  Even if kids escape the military, it’s hard to make them fit for regular society. Mr. Eko in the TV series Lost followed this cruel path, but fashions a shaky redemption by masquerading as a priest. A couple of former African boy-soldiers have written biographies; some documentaries cover this as well.

  Charles Dickens often wrote about exploited children, and the 12th-century Children’s Crusade spawned many novels.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Sacral & Root. For most kids, it’s about doing whatever it takes to survive, whether it’s sex or soldiering.

  Show as many facets of the situation as you can without cluttering up the story: the parents or lack thereof, the economic pressures, the desperation and madness of homegrown armies and militias, the training schools.

  Expose the background drivers of government, businesses, local customs, superstitions, social pressures, etc.

  Illustrate end products tainted by this perverse groupthink: blood diamonds, cheap goods at big box stores, sex tourism.

  Show differences in how kids adapt to the stark situations. Who bonds, who stays aloof? Show how differently they recover, or not. Who seeks love and redemption? Who just wants to hurt others?

  Cautionary tales show the consequences of actions. Will the boy soldier become a Richard the Lionheart or a Hitler? Will the young prostitute die of AIDS and abuse or become an advocate for others? Why does one go one way and one the other?

  VANDALS, GOTHS,

  GOLDEN HORDES

  There is something in the nature of man that loves a good battle, and if need be, we’ll travel far and wide in search of it. Though it’s a brutal way to do it, sometimes the God of War must be credited with stirring up gene pools and cultures through rape, pillage, and looting. Soldiers are the carriers of ideas, customs, arts, crafts, and religions, as well as genes.

  In groups such as this, there’s usually a strong, charismatic figure at the head, and very strong male bonding amongst the followers. Soldiers often profess love for the leader bordering on worship and Romance with a capital “R”. Strict codes of behavior and rough justice keep the rowdies working together for their common purpose. Fierce loyalty often ensues. Sycophants can flourish, and the juggling for succession offers opportunity for dark intrigue.

  Uniforms, body markings, special languages, high signs, codes, and war stories are valued. Violence is the watchword. Honor is a valued commodity and any slight must be repaid with a duel to the death or just an outright vengeance slaying. A version of this gang-type boy bonding is what militaries try to instill in boot camp.

  A. IN ACTION

  Genghis Khan and the 13th-century Mongol Hordes; Attila the Hun and his guys sweeping across eastern Europe; the Goths, Visigoths, and Vandals who helped bring down the once-mighty Roman Empire; Vikings marauding across northern Europe and America; warlords in feudal China; and the more formal but still deadly Samurai of the Japanese Shogunate. And for girls, the Amazon female warriors.

  B. IN MEDIA

  Alexander, Troy, Shogun, The Last Samurai, Xena: Warrior Princess, and the Hercules ‘90s TV series, Taps, and Pathfinder, about the Vikings.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Lower Solar Plexus: power, & Root: sheer survival.

  Show how strong LSP motivations create the honor thing and tight bonding, excluding others.

  Play up the internal competition between guys, and for the leader’s favor.

  Some members should be motivated by idealism and want to make a difference, to right political wrongs. Others are just in it for the fighting and the booty. Use that contrast for conflict among the warriors.

  What happens when a horde guy gets old? Or wants to settle down?

  SOLDIERS OF GOD

  A real problem with religions claiming to hold the Truth is that they tend to be exclusive, and exclusivity often leads to extermination of the “other.” History is soggy from the blood of forced religious conversions. Some sword wielders may have been true believers, but most crusades are orchestrated by power mongers, empire builders, and ubermerchants.

  Also, some people just want to fight and hurt and kill; a religious reason that promises rewards in the afterlife works just fine.

  People who don’t think or feel. If you can control their emotions, you can control their actions. Beliefs are the easiest way to control people, starting with fear then offering hope. Use both (hell and heaven), and you’ve got ‘em hooke
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  A. IN ACTION

  From Homer’s god-guided Greeks to modern Iraq’s warring Sunnis and Shias, militaries often appeal to a belief in a god and drape their campaigns in the cloak of righteousness.

  Anthropologists believe the Aztec, Maya, Toltec, and Inca often went to war to obtain human sacrifices for their religious rituals. Had they just taken too literally the order to “lift your hearts unto god”?

  Then there’re the Crusades between Christendom and Islam, which spread from Arabia by sword, as well as hearts and minds. Religious wars in Europe formally began with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors plundered the New World for the Catholic Church. Hindu-Muslim conflicts in India flared when the British Empire left in 1948 and still rage today.

  B. IN MEDIA

  The Old Testament is full of stories of zealot warriors invading and conquering the land their god promised them.

  Kingdom of Heaven, Joan of Arc, Queen Margot, The Mission, Luther, Apocalypto.

  A culture’s foundation myths often include deity-blessed or deity-led wars to conquer or defend the homeland.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Lower Solar Plexus: personal power and small-group bonding, & Aspirational Solar Plexus: idealism.

  Uneducated, unquestioning people are easiest led by belief. Give your character some learning, some exposure to other systems, and precipitate a crisis of faith.

  Have the deity fail, and the usual explanations don’t satisfy. Characters at loose ends after a loss of faith and meaning are fascinating.

  Where is deity on the battlefield? Both sides often pray to the same deity for victory, so why bother to train or prepare if it’s all up to a deity anyway? God helps those who help themselves, but both sides did that and one still lost. This line of thinking can drive your characters nuts and hurl them out to secularism or pull them back into the nonthinking shell of blind faith.

  ORGANIZED RELIGION

  Social science notes that when a culture shifts from just having a local shaman to having a priestly caste, it’s expanding in both size and sophistication. Order is kept by religious proscriptions: It’s much more efficient to implant a little policeman (morals) inside everyone than to patrol the streets 24/7.

  Karl Marx said “Religion is the opium of the people.” Religion also controls the money through tithing, tributes, and manipulations of trade.

  Religions offer inspiration to beauty, compel us to behave with compassion, and offer pathways to union with higher power, usually through manipulation of our senses via art, music, postures, chants, sensory deprivation, or stimulation. They’ve promoted marvelous progress in education, art, and health care, but let’s take a look at the damage.

  A. IN ACTION

  Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, notes a cleverly scathing Monty Python skit, but religious persecution has been the order of the day since religion was invented.

  Crazed mobs of Christians rejecting logic and learning in the 4th century CE rampaged through Alexandria, Egypt, tore apart the great female philosopher and mathematician Hypatia, and torched the city’s magnificent library, destroying thousands of years of collected wisdom in the name of their religion.

  Cardinal Richelieu, Prime Minister of France in the early 1600s (The Three Musketeers), saw religion as an instrument of state, and believed that ends justify means. He bloodily defeated the Huguenot religious resistance (Queen Margot).

  Jesuit missionaries of the Colonial era Catholic Church went around the globe preparing the way for trade and military incursions (The Mission). Contemporary Liberation Theology in Latin America and the Philippines often pits populist priests and nuns against the party line of the Catholic Church, as well as the tyrannical regimes they preach against.

  Four hundred years of Church-sanctioned witch trials in Europe executed thousands of accused Satan worshipers, mostly women. See more at www.TheSpanishInquisition.ow.

  Religious systems that completely deny our natural impulses are asking for trouble. It’s one thing to suggest austerities for a training period like Hindu, Buddhist, and Native American systems do; but a lifetime of going against human nature often causes backlash, as in pedophile Catholic priest scandals.

  B. IN MEDIA

  The Da Vinci Code, The Name of the Rose, The Mission, The Seventh Seal, The Three Musketeers, Queen Margot, The Jewel in the Crown, The Exorcist, The Scarlet Letter, Resurrection, Leap of Faith, Dogma.

  The Bene Gesserit Order in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels is a feminine version of the Jesuits, spreading prophecies via religion to pave the way for expansion across the universe.

  Paul Scott’s rich Raj Quartet novels and the BBC series based on them, The Jewel in the Crown, chronicle the 1948 separation of India into Hindu and Muslim states, still at war today as India and Pakistan.

  Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle novels swirl around Europe’s religious wars, when science first challenged the Church’s control via Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, Gottfried Leibniz, the Royal Society, and Freemasonry.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Solar Plexus, Lower & Aspirational.

  The tragedy of the Dark Side in religion is that its supposed purpose is to enlighten. Rather than just the evil stuff, be sure to show a range of characters: true believers who actually do good (Mother Theresa), the self-deluded (TV evangelists), the psychopathic (Torquemada, Silas in Da Vinci Code), perverts taking advantage of the system, as well as regular people who find comfort and inspiration in the rituals and faith.

  Religious faith is anathema to the atheist, bemusing to the agnostic. For true believers, it brooks no questions and entertains no doubts. Show this disparity between the points of view and have your characters passionately question each other.

  If you are promoting a belief system in your story, give us something to contrast it with: some other system, curious people, lapsed believers, hypocrites. Remember that religions are man-made systems that preserve and promote both enlightened spiritual truths and human flaws such as repression and control.

  Many nonbelievers find many religions’ resistance to logic, broad education, and individual freedoms a mark of backward, frightened people controlled by cynical leaders. For dramatic conflict, show that this is not always the case: within the suppression, show creative outpouring; within the manipulation, show actual spiritual connection; within mindless devotion, show sharp intelligence that believes nonetheless.

  The Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John captures the pain of spiritual disconnect. Have a character wandering and angry, or sorrowful, once they’ve lost faith and must rearrange their entire worldview, like Neo awakening in The Matrix.

  Most of all, show the power of faith and how it can be tragically misused by the Dark Side, whether Dwellers on the Threshold or that scary Dark Brotherhood.

  ORGANIZED CRIME

  Some argue that organized crime simply brings order to otherwise chaotic activities that will happen regardless. Rather than random uncontrolled extortion, prostitution, gambling, political corruption, vengeance, drink, and drugs, a crime lord imposes order on the indulgence of our Dark Side.

  During Prohibition in America (1920-1933), possession or drinking of alcohol was not against the law, but the manufacture, sale, or transport of it was, kind of like marijuana now. People making millions selling illegal drugs certainly don’t want it legalized.

  Maybe gangs are the human evolution of hunting packs and will always be with us, since young men are like wolf pups and demand alpha male control. Street gangs also offer a sense of belonging to immigrant and underprivileged youth, as well as a captive workforce for adult gangs.

  A. IN ACTION

  Mafias, Japanese Yakuza, Chinese Tongs, and street gangs embody this group archetype. Though supposedly operating outside the law, most of these groups are either tolerated or aided and abetted by some aspects of the legal system.
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br />   Organizations often have their own complex legal systems. Sometimes scores are settled in all-out gang wars that cause tragic collateral damage. Sometimes they’re settled by one-on-one to-the-death combat in a sports ring setting, with each side’s champion quite willing to become the honored blood sacrifice to keep the local peace.

  B. IN MEDIA

  In The Godfather, Don Corleone argues against bringing in dope; he’s afraid of the wrong element and how drugs might bring down the people they both prey on and protect.

  West Side Story, Air America, The Untouchables, The Godfather, The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, The French Connection, The Sopranos, Yakuza, Black Rain, Warriors, Colors, Bound (this stylish lesbo-mobster romp was the Wachowski brothers’ first feature), City of God, Scarface, LA Confidential, Boondock Saints, Traffic, Deadwood, A History of Violence, and on the funny side Prizzi’s Honor, Married to the Mob, and Get Shorty.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Lower Solar Plexus: power, greed, exclusivity.

  Show collateral damage on kids, women, property, and social order (The Seven Samurai). Show how fear paralyzes creativity. Show how drugs and prostitution squelch self esteem; how getting high keeps you down. It’s no coincidence that the world’s slums are huge drug markets; think what would happen if all those disaffected people sobered up and took action!