Projection: noun (1) an estimate of what might happen in the future based on what is happening now, (2) the attribution of one’s own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects; especially: the externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense against anxiety, (3) the display of motion pictures by projecting an image from them upon a screen.

It has happened that human beings have projected the quality of human consciousness onto a tree or mountain. In these cases it is relatively easy to understand that such projections are projections, not facts. But let us notice how often we stub our toe on some inanimate object, and then take out our wrath on that object as if it had intended to hurt us. We also project the human form of consciousness upon our pets – a type of consciousness that they do not actually possess. Our dogs and cats are conscious beings, and we humans share in the type of consciousness they have, but these other intelligent, mammalian species do not manifest the uniquely human symbol-using, art-creating, language-forming, culture-building form of consciousness.

With our fellow human beings, we are also projecting. Let us notice that we do not know from direct experience whether another human being is conscious or not. And in fact we often project consciousness upon someone who is actually asleep or fully distracted. They are not “there” as we say, even though we thought they were. Most of the time our projection of human consciousness upon other human beings is accurate to a large degree. These other human beings are clearly providing responses that we can interpret to be consistent with a projection of our own personally experienced mode of consciousness upon these other upright-walking primates.

So, our capacity for projection, though often wrong, is also a great gift. “Projection” might be defined as our best guess about the impending future. If we understand that all projections are guesses, then we can be open to correcting our projections as the ever-impending future unfolds with corrective inputs to our consciousness. So viewed, projecting is simply part of the process of learning. Being clear and definite about what we currently think is a form of sensitivity to the next inputs from Reality – inputs that may challenge and potentially enrich our thinking. Openness to the future does not mean being an empty container that is blown this way and that by every input. Openness to the future means a willingness to have our projections contradicted, so that we can create projections that are more accurate to the Reality in which we exist. There is something humbling about these insights, for they entail realizing that our sense of reality is always a projection created by us. And because our projections are created by us, they are always wrong to a significant degree.

All Thinking is Projection

All thinking is projection and all projection includes some sort of thinking. This claim may be surprising to some of us. It is not commonly understood that all thinking is projection. We sometimes believe that our thinking dropped into our minds from some dependable social authority or perhaps from some magical source. This is never true. We have simply chosen to adopt some projection invented by someone else. Our thinking does have social sources, but even though these sources apply, our thinking is still a guess about how Reality is working. Sometimes we believe that our thinking has come about through our own orderly effort to observe objectively and arrive logically at a conclusion that is therefore dependably true. But this process of thought also arrives only at guesses that may need to change with further thought. Our thinking does have observational and logical sources (an intuitive sources as well), but though these sources apply, our thinking is still a guess about how Reality is working.
All thinking is a projection on the future for the sake of making a next decision in the present. Sometimes is seems true that there is not time for serious thinking to take place – that is, our projection happens without taking time for serious thought, we simply act before thinking and then think afterward. Take for example, the situation in which we mistake a stick for a snake. The sort of thinking and responding happens very quickly. We are moving away before we have time to observe carefully, think logically, and act appropriately. We have nevertheless, projected “snake” upon a stick. This was an act of thought, though a very fast one, not worthy perhaps of the status of “serious thought.” But even with our so called “serious thought” that we have taken time to shape, we are still guessing about Reality, We are still projecting mental creations upon an ongoing Mysteriousness that we only partially understand.

This awareness about projecting has great importance for our interpersonal relations. Men commonly project the male experience of living upon the females among whom they live. This male thinking is typically taken from a patriarchal culture in which unquestioned assumptions have been taken as self evident. In spite of much liberation of women and men from these older habits of thought, it still requires serious humility on the part of most men to realize that women’s experience is something different from what we men are typically inclined to project upon them. For example, if our women friends are gifted, as many women are, with an intense emotional intelligence, we can be surprised by the speed with which they catch on to certain things that our step-by-step intellectual methods take more time to figure out. Also, women are often sensitive to our unconscious patterns of male entitlement – which entitlement is simply a projection of the typical male ways of not seeing reality clearly. The fact that this pattern of projecting has dominated societies for the last five or six thousand years does not make it something more dependable.

Women also project thought patterns upon men that are not in accord with the life of those actual males. Nevertheless, women’s projections upon men are, as a rule, far more accurate than men’s projections upon women. Nevertheless, it is true that projecting is not something unique to the male gender. All thinking is projection no matter what sex or culture or class of humans we belong to, or think we belong to.

Projection in Politics

In the broad social realm, especially the political realm of endeavor, projection is also an important dynamic to notice. Entire ideologies are projected upon the social scene that do not correspond with the facts of ongoing social life. For example, we need to question the commonly held form of political thought that promotes less taxation of the wealthy and argues that providing more investment funds to the investors creates more jobs that effectively “trickle down” to the well-being of everyone. This entire system of thought is a projection, a projection that the facts of social life overwhelmingly contradict. Our sluggish, job-deficient economy does not need more investors: it needs more customers. People without jobs are not spending money. If money is not spent, investors cannot make a profit, so they stop investing. (Perhaps they turn to speculating, which produces nothing.) When governments pamper investors with an excessive percentage of social wealth, the consequence is that investors stop creating jobs. Lack of jobs further suppresses the circulation of money, which further suppresses profits, which further suppresses job creation, which further suppresses the vitality of the whole economy, and so on. Strange as it must seem to the people who are addicted to a wealth-pampering ideology, their projected “truth” is entirely opposite to the facts.

Indeed, here is a projection of thought that is more in keeping with the reality that is going on: if the people who have money gave half of it to their government, and then that government redistributed such wealth to citizens who will spend it, this would inspire investment, create more jobs, provide more money to those who spend it, enliven the whole economy, which would then enable the society to function better for the benefit of everyone.
In spite of the supportive feedback from reality for such unpopular guesses about social life, the wealth-pampering ideologues insist upon their projection to the detriment of all people, including themselves. Consider this: if the wealthy held all the money (a full monopoly-game type win) we would have no economy at all. Even the so-called “control” that wealthy people hope for is an illusion. Only a vigorous popular trust in the exchange system provides some control to people with money. So as more wealth power is centered in fewer people, the more out-of-control the whole society becomes. If, however, wealth power were more equitably spread to all the citizens, better control of what needs control for a constructive destiny would be established. These sentences are better projections upon the future, because the feedback already received supports them better than that same feedback supports the wealth-pampering projections.

The political drama in the current U.S., Canada, and other places is in large measure a fight between these two contradictory projections upon the flow of social life in the world today. In order to resolve this stalemate in political life, we will need to notice the dynamic of projection, the dynamic of feedback from Reality, and our capacity as humans to project better guesses, better thinking – thinking that honors Reality rather than disintegrating into stubborn defenses of those indefensible projections that our consciousness is making and clinging to for the sake of supporting attitudes of greed, cultural biases, and self images that are far from the truth of our actual lives.

Projection is a human gift, but when our projections meet negation from Reality, we need to change what we project. It does not matter that our next projections will also be limited and will one day need correction. Our untenable projections must be replaced, even though our replacements will also need to be replaced in time – perhaps a short time, perhaps a long time. Reality calls us to move in this moment of decision toward greater realism. Those who ignore Reality will pay a stiff price in ruin and despair and inflict these costs on many others. It is in this sense that we, humanity, must move forward, not backward into patterns that may have worked, or seemed to have worked, in past centuries. Thoughtless passivity on these matters is a core evil that each of us is called to correct. Project and correct, project and correct, never stop learning.

Projection and Christian Theology

Clinging to untenable projections is a secular description of the Christian theological category “sin.” We are all sinners in this regard. We are often knowingly sinners, and more often unconsciously sinners in this regard. We are not sinners because we are projecting, that is a gift of authentic humanness, a gift from that Final Reality that has created our species. We are sinners because we believe what we think – that is, we cling to what we currently project to be real. We passionately believe in false projections that we think we must live for, and perhaps die for. The “truth” we can authentically live and die for is not some truth of our own creation, a projection that is always wrong to some extent. Rather, the truth that we can authentically live and die for is an openness to Reality, a trust in Reality to correct all our projections, to affirm our fragments of truth, and to negate our always vast inadequacies. The truth we can authentically live and die for is also the courage to invent new projections in the knowledge that these projections will also be corrected by Reality.

When Martin Luther advised his flock to sin boldly, this is part of what he meant. Move beyond your older, obviously obsolete religious beliefs and project better ones, knowing they may also be inadequate. God will forgive your mistakes: that is, Final Reality’s enduring Presence will further correct you, accept you, and challenges you to guess again your life projections and consequent projects. Authentic living is a continual leap into the full face of a Mysteriousness that you can never fathom. Such leaping is Christian faith. “Faith” Christianly understood means trust in Reality. Such trust is the only solution to all that ails the deep life of the human species. This does not mean that Christianity is the only religion, for if this trust is expressed in other-than-Christian language, it is still the healing balm that humanity awaits. Trust in Reality is a discovery of an elemental healing of human life, however such healing is discovered or talked about.