I’m sure we’re all breathing a sigh of relief now that the contentious elections of Nov. 5 are over.

For the majority of the electorate, the result brought elation, while others are still drinking from the bitter draft of defeat. That is nothing new.

But for all of us, the terrible divide in our nation remains.

I know, this one election did not cause the chasm, it just laid bare how wide it has become over the last 30 or so years. I suggest it also revealed a deeper cause for the rancor that plays such a prominent role in our politics, and shows no sign of abating.

As blogger Ed Jacobs wrote recently of the current state of our nation, quoting from a senior lecturer in government at Harvard University: “Simply put, the problem is cultural. America, culturally, has completely abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia and bullying.”

Why? Let me explain by citing an episode from the first season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

In that episode, The Skin of Evil, crew members of the Starship Enterprise take a shuttle to a planet called Vagra II, and there get themselves into a terrible fix. When the team sent to rescue them arrives, it learns one crew member is dead.

From a dark pool near the team, a dark form. ascends. Within moments, it takes on a human shape. Captain Picard asks Lieutenant Commander Riker what he sees, and Riker replies, “Trouble.”

The being calls itself Armus, and in the course of the episode, self-identifies as the embodiment of evil. It was, in fact, all the evil that had lived in the beings that once occupied that planet: greed, cruelty, sadism, murder, you name it. The Vagrians were able to roll up all of the evil in themselves and create a slop heap of it. And from that foul heap, they created Armus, and then set off to another planet, leaving their collective shadow behind in rage.

Now, Armus murders the Enterprise’s security chief, and threatens to kill not only those on the planet, but the entire crew of the Enterprise above the planet to sate its lust for cruelty.

Of course, this story is fiction. In that make-believe, scripted world, it was possible to rid an entire race of its dark side, of what analytical psychology calls the collective shadow. Every one of us has his or her own shadow, too — the side we are careful not to let the world see.

We are unable to rid ourselves of our dark sides. As mortal beings we will always be imperfect.

Enter, projection.

From us, the shadow flows out in projection onto others, then turns around to face us, and there we read it as the embodiment of all that’s wrong in our own lives, unwilling to confront the fact that we are looking back at our own faces. Doing so helps us skirt having to deal with our imperfections. When we try to slough off the dark side of ourselves onto others, we emerge completely innocent of any responsibility for all that’s gone to smash.

Thus, not coincidentally, the German nation under Adolf Hitler did by projecting its collective shadow onto Jews and other “undesirables.” As Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said: “The Jews are to blame for everything.”

Convenient.

And in the service of furthering that lie, the Nazis committed unspeakable crimes.

The Christian writer Anne Lamott once wrote: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when he starts hating the same people you do.”

Robert Burns penned a poem called “Holy Willie’s Prayer,” in which a professing man of faith summons the wrath of God upon another who’d just bested him in an argument. Along the way, Willie cites his own shortcomings, but assures himself that in his case, the Lord would readily forgive him. Here is an excerpt.

“Lord, remember me and mine with mercies temporal and divine … but Lord, confound his stubborn name for bringing thy elder to disgrace and public shame … Amen and amen.”

It is on us to grapple with the gross side of ourselves, to acknowledge it, and, as well as we are able, to retract the projection. We don’t want to do this because it is incredibly difficult and painful.

Just to make ourselves better versions of who we are takes a lifetime. While many have tried to expunge their own shadow, no one to my knowledge has completely succeeded.

But projecting it onto others who disagree with us, and blaming them for all that’s wrong, is no solution. Left and right, we’ve all had a hand in the making of our national malaise.

As Jesus said in Matthew 5.7:

“You hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@auburn-reporter.com.