The Shopkeeper
Normalizing, Obedient, Opportunistic
“Stated a bit differently, (Stanley) Milgram revealed that for a remarkable number of people, it is very difficult to disobey authority figures, but quite easy for them to set aside their conscience.” John Dean, pg 43 Conservatives Without a Conscience.
The Shopkeeper clings to dear leader. And she uses her commerce to solidify a “relevant” place in the world; lacking spirituality and the capacity for Sacred Perception—she is focused on getting whatever will bring her ease, increase income or provide some sense of control. She frequently invents a fantasy of belonging and importance, and she is a zealous seller of whatever t-shirts and hats the Destroyer manufactures, tracking her inventory with care.
Playing with Power, she is satisfied telling lies and will do so with a straight face. In her 15 minutes of fame, she might be interviewed on specialized propagandized media, where listeners (fellow followers) will take her seriously (if she doesn’t deviate from the party line). Without being grounded in the human heart, she feels safer believing whatever the authority says to believe, even inconsistent or preposterous beliefs; It is strange and disorienting to watch when Shopkeepers easily contradict themselves and flip any story on its head with apparent shamelessness.
Infusing confusion, invalidating stabilizing structures, disrupting anything that the Heart uses for orientation, chaos creates greater circumstances where Shopkeepers can sell Destroyers as “strongmen.” An opportunistic “friend,” she defends Destroyer bullying as clear, simple “straight forward talk,” (however insane it sounds to the rest of us).
Why this painting?
The Shopkeeper has no interest in nuanced reflections and may have descended into deep cynicism where anyone outside the cult is believed to be lying. Such energy formation. It normalizes the worst urges of the Destroyer.
In his important political essay, The Power of the Powerless, the Czechoslovakian dramatist, pollical dissident and later politician, Vaclav Havel, depicts the Shopkeeper putting a politically correct sign in the window to signify the store owner’s lack of resistance to the dominating regime. In a post-totalitarian society, obedience is not enforced with tanks in the streets but by ideology and by adopting rules and prescribed rituals. Extraordinary actions are not required to Play with Power. It is enough that compliant citizens accept the current lie; the appearance is paramount—as over time, in fact, the appearance becomes reality.
On stage, Inside-out and/or Upside-down, this energy may be called Informant, Rat, Pretender, Schmoozer, Sycophant, Influencer, Capitulation in advance, Public Relations, Enabler, Follower, etcetera. Whatever the exact personification, at core, like the Destroyer, it is Playing at Power.
Inside Out:
Who are these people so obedient to authority? If we are exploring our inner world, they are likely parts of you and me, primitive parts that are not fully awake to reality. On stage, the internal Shopkeeper lacks Inspiration and so is not creative, nor loving, nor purposeful; instead, she clings to the perception that true agency is less important than security. Authenticity is less important than being significant to authority by amplifying the noise of the herd.
When we bring an inner Shopkeeper into the spotlight, it can quickly become arrogant and self-righteous, especially if questioned. But if we remain courageous enough to inquire, we begin to see that she has pledged allegiance to something or someone. We might imagine her as a helpless prisoner to dominating forces unleashed by a dominator, as puppet. The demand or mandate might be familial and multigenerational or come from places other than family of origin. It might come from organizations, from institutions, religions, cults etc. It may not be spoken, often it is not. It needs only to be some soul-destroying machinery that has a capacity to chain the mind. Her payoff? An infantile state of blissful ignorance, an eradication of inner conflict, which sets her free. Free to act on selfish and mean-spirited whims.
Sometimes in the dramatic action, there arrives a turning point that’s not made, a threshold that’s not crossed, because the Shopkeeper is a coward and refuses the burden of being independent and responsible. Wearing carefully constructed blinders. A few Shopkeepers have clear financial incentives for remaining enslaved. Trust fund babies typically, for example, resist insight or significant change because they fear angering a wealthy relative who is keeping their bank account filled.
“My family would disown me if I did this other thing.”
Upside Down:
When we meet such an energy form in the world, assume there is always a reward for unquestioned compliance, and some threat for non-compliance; and so there is no need for a totalitarian army patrolling the streets and shooting dissidents (yet).
Shopkeepers can be hard to pin down. They may speak against tyranny (dogmatically), asserting that they are the true Patriots on a mission to protect democracy (or at least freedom) and so should not be stopped from their great mission or they will be forced to use force. But whatever vagary they claim is hollow, full of idiocy. Whatever flag they fly tells us only that they are roped to authority of some kind or another.
Spreading a virus that is treatment resistant, they are just as dangerous as the Destroyer because they comply with the demands, enthusiastically. We are wise to remember that the Nazi party could not have perpetrated a holocaust without an army of Shopkeepers. And, because we live in a world where Destroyers have amplified voices on powerful platforms, if we enable the Shopkeeper (multiplying like cockroaches), we will inevitably lose the ability to resist, eventually compelled to put someone else’s words (the full idiocracy of “authority”) as our sign in the window.
