It is said of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung [1875 - 1961] that he was 'prophetic of today's ongoing debate about religion and science' as well as a much older debate about the 'individual' and the 'state'. Today --the GOP has demagogued religion while Bush, the party's flag bearer, has thrown in with 'state absolutists' --Friedrich Hegel, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Pol Pot.
The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
--Carl Jung
Those words put Carl Jung in opposition to a cult of cruelty and torture that has apparently assumed political control in the United States. It is ironic that a nation said to have been founded upon the principles of the enlightenment should find itself, under Bush's rule, categorized with regimes historically associated with 'collectivism' and 'totalitarianism.
Growing up in West Texas, among both radical 'John Birchers' and fundamentalist Christians, it is less surprising to me that the GOP, a party that often says of itself that it opposes 'big government' should, during the regime of George W. Bush, align itself with the forces of state oppression and incipient totalitarianism and that it should do so while brandishing the flag.
In this broad belt of unconsciousness, which is immune to conscious criticism and control, we stand defenseless, open to all kinds of influences and psychic infections. As with all dangers, we can guard against the risk of psychic infection only when we know that is attacking, and how, where and when the attack will come.
Since self-knowledge is a matter of getting to know the individual, facts and theories are of very little help in this respect. For the more a theory lays claims to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts.
Any theory based on experience is necessarily statistical; that is to say, it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them by an abstract mean. This mean is quite valid, though it need not necessarily occur in reality.
--Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self
In "The Undiscovered Self", Jung foresaw a great crisis arising from the forces of 'collectivism' on the one hand and those that celebrate the inherent value of the individual on the other. It is a dialectic that few could have imagined might reach a zenith in a Bush regime, from which nothing special was expected, a regime that held out only the promise of oppressive dullness --not oppresssion itself, a regime characterized by standard GOP conventionality and mediocrity.
Little was expected of Bush who delivered even less in every area but one. Bush marshaled the powerful forces of state propaganda, fear, and 'group think' to forge a totalitarian collective from among his aggressive, authoritarian, intolerant and elitist base! In the wake of 911, even strong 'individualists' found it easier to just go along with the 'mass think' that blamed Islam, Europe [France, in particular] for crimes that we now know were perpetrated by the Bush regime itself. Hitler had been similarly successful in the wake of the Reichstag Fire.
Jung argued the future of civilization was literally dependent upon the ability of the individual to resist the collective forces that are found in every society. Jung's prescription consisted of individuals 'gaining an awareness and understanding' of one's own sub-conscious, in other words, "the undiscovered self'.
Resistance to the organized mass can be affected only by the man who is well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.'
--Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, [p. 60]
One should not be surprised that Bush benefited most from the 'collectivist instinct' found in the 'religious right', a movement which typifies 'group think' and the suppression of individual reason, creativity, originality, or non-conformity of any type.
He [Jung] distinguishes between religion which expresses a subjective relationship to certain metaphysical factors and a creed which merely gives expression to a collective belief. Religion is understood in the broad sense, including the relationship of the individual to the metaphysical and the world of dreams, feelings and intuitions.
Science, on the other hand, is the rationalistic, statistical and theoretical part of understanding. Self-knowledge, according to Jung, cannot be achieved by abandoning either of these facets.
--Review, Carl Jung's The Undiscovered Self
In America, the 'religious' instinct is that of the 'group'. It has very little in common with the individual's quest for enlightenment or spirituality. Thus, the process by which individuals acquire knowledge of Jung's 'undiscovered self' is antithetical to 'ideological fanaticism' observed to be rampant and intolerant throughout Bush's America.
Only when individuals embrace the dual nature of the human psyche --the existence of good as well as its capacity for evil --that individuals may cope with the dangers and threats posed by those in power or by what Jung has called 'the sum total of individuals' i.e, the modern 'mass society'. It is not only totalitarian regimes but society itself, by way of the 'science' of 'demographics' that reduces the individual to the individual only as he/she is a part of the 'mass'.
Modern propaganda reaches individuals enclosed in the mass, yet it also aims at a crowd, but only as a body composed of individuals. What does this mean? First of all, that the individual is never considered as an individual, but always in terms of what he has in common with others, such as his motivations, his feelings, or his myths. He is reduced to an average; and except for a small percentage, action based on averages will be effectual.'
...
'In this broad belt of unconsciousness, which is immune to conscious criticism and control, we stand defenseless, open to all kinds of influences and psychic infections. As with al dangers, we can guard against the risk of psychic infection only when we know that is attacking, and how, where and when the attack will come. Since self-knowledge is a matter of getting to known the individual facts, theories help very little in this respect. For the more a theory lays claims to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts. Any theory based on experience is necessarily statistical; that is to say, it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them by an abstract mean. This mean is quite valid, though it need not necessarily occur in reality.
--Propaganda: On the Formation of Man's Attitudes[p.6]
Jung defies summary. It is better than you read him for yourself. However, there are some general conclusions are possible. Jung writes that 'Separation from his instinctual nature' impels the 'conflict between conscious and unconscious', between 'knowledge and faith' [Jung, op cit., p. 81] It is easy enough to find this 'symptom' in Bush's America bombarded as it is by unprecedented 'mass media' and equally unprecedented pressures to conform.
These 'pressures' to conform have always been identifiable, opposed as they were by Henry David Thoreau who chose --at Walden pond --to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Others known for their creative resistances to 'mass think' include Mark Twain and later Lenny Bruce, the 'beatniks', hippies, and Viet Nam war resisters. 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg is a latter day movement's very anthem of 'resistance' as was the earlier 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman in which it is written:
'I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
--Walt Whitman
"Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?'
This page break here is awkward. Which 'bottom' are you referring to?
If you are referring to Jung"
""Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?'" --Jung, op cit, p.88
The source is correct ...the page number is a 'typo'. Should be '85'. Sorry.
by
Len Hart (122 articles, 158 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 474 comments)
on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 3:35:31 PM
This is really well written, Len! Thank you! Very well researched and very interesting to read.
To me it seems frankly simple. That is, how not to blend with hte crowd and think for myself. It's a matter of adding up the facts as combined with a sense of ethic, a knowledge of right and wrong. I think almost every human being has both, and it is the extreme exception (Bush, Cheney) who do not. Those lacking in such fundamental abilities are sociopaths, capable of violence without regret, because they are simply out of touch.
I think part of what makes the crowd phenomenon possible here in America is our so-called "educational" system. Facts and figures bore kids from a young age, shutting down receptivity to information and learning along with it. The offshoot of habitual boredom is that the mind shuts down. I have wondered, at times, if this is in fact a deliberate government tactic, designed to keep people "Down" so as to support their own agenda.
What do you all think? I will be interested.
To put it simply, critical thinking is not stressed in our school systems. Neither are we trained to observe life and others with any kind of depth, such as comes from the arts.
Hence the dumbing down of hte American culture. TV may have a lot to do with it too. It's as if we go into another trance-like state when watching the TV, which thinks for us. It spoonfeeds us brainwashes in subtle ways (commercials) which later become bigger (propaganda, buying into everything we hear).
The best cure for the social infection, as you call it, may be to divorce ourselves from mainstream education, choose alternate routes for our kids, shut off the TV, read books (which require us to think) and do other things to bring our brains forward, not merely cram facts into our heads which will be promptly forgotten anyway.
I do think Jung is absolutely right, that a relationship to God (or ethic, or whatever you choose to call it) is key to knowing one's spiritual way. When we have a strong sense of right and wrong, nothing will sway us. Period.
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Kathryn Smith (85 articles, 2 quicklinks, 35 diaries, 320 comments)
on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 6:18:52 PM
a uniform, straightjacketing education system made a country's citizens dislike education so much that after graduation they wanted nothing further to do with it, absorbing themselves in work and mind-numbing games and putting themselves thoroughly under government/corporate control. In the '80s, the Reaganites took a good look around the world, and while I hate to criticize a country I like in many ways, with a deep history and many mitigating factors, they found the Japanese people to be so much of an "asset" to their economy (i.e., corporations) that they declared the Japanese unfair. There followed an attempt to help American schools catch up to the Japanese in terms of how the kids did on multiple choice tests. I think the results are clear.
It reminds me of Walmart executives' insistence that its employees consider the company a "family" like everyone does in Japan, without any apparent awareness that in Japan it is a two-way street. Benevolence is a deep-rooted virtue derived from Confucianism and any executive in Japan would be ashamed of being conspicuously rich. This may change as globalism selects the greedy to take charge in Japan, but I see much resistance here. They are placing renewed emphasis on Confucian values and the majority of citizens are aware of the appalling nature of Bush's atrocities, including the visibly false-flag 911.
That said, however, the resistance to globalism in Japan is media-driven and group-think. My only comfort is that it would take time to reprogram the citizenry away from its currently benign hedonism.
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Patricia 0rmsby (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 103 comments)
on Friday, June 20, 2008 at 9:47:05 PM
some Arab patootee, I regressed that the USA has not learned from British past experience in the area. I was accused of supporting the "Terrorist's", and un-patriotic by many around me.
We know have learned in hindsight that the true "Enemy Combatant's" are all the former and current Bu$h & Co. operatives, who have profited most handsomely in the misguided "War Of Terror" the USA finds itself embroiled in. With no light at the end of the tunnel with the hundreds of billions spent, and billions unaccounted for.
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Stanimal (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 395 comments)
on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 11:58:27 PM
Those lacking in such fundamental abilities are sociopaths, capable of violence without regret, because they are simply out of touch.
It was Jung who said that in every society some 30 percent of the population are 'incipient' psychopaths. (I have recently learned that the term 'sociopath' is now out of favor among professionals in the field who, apparently, felt the distinctions between 'psychopath' and 'sociopath' were insignificant.)
Whatever the bell curve in this respect, Dr. Gustav Gilbert, who interviewed the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, found a common thread --an 'utter lack of empathy' which he identified with evil. Somewhat later, at the trial of Adolph Eichman, Hanah Arendt would find and write about the 'banality of evil'. Though 'delusions' are symptomatic of another pathology, I would not be surprised to learn that certain 'delusions' are statistically high throughout this group of 'psychopaths'. I began to think along these lines while watching coverage of the GOP National Convention of 1992. In one of the media 'sidebars', some delegates were asked about the legacy of Ronald Reagan. "Reagan made us feel good about ourselves" was the reply. Apparently no one else was disturbed by it. I thought it deplorable that there exists a 'group', a 'demographic' so insecure that they would fall for platitudes and lies in order to 'feel good about themselves'. I believe millions of Germans felt the same way about Hitler. He made them feel good about being 'psychopaths'.
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Len Hart (122 articles, 158 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 474 comments)
on Friday, June 20, 2008 at 1:23:28 AM
We know have learned in hindsight that the true "Enemy Combatant's" are all the former and current Bu$h & Co. operatives, who have profited most handsomely in the misguided "War Of Terror" the USA finds itself embroiled in. With no light at the end of the tunnel with the hundreds of billions spent, and billions unaccounted for.
The 'hysteria' that I saw in Houston was right out of a history of the Third Reich. I suspect that this more obnoxious crowd of bigots and extremists have gone underground now that their boy 'Bush' has completey discredited their 'movement', premised as it was and continues to be on oil theft and an empire enforced by Blackwater.
'Blackwater' should be prohibited by law by 1) ending the idea of 'corporate personhood'; 2) smashing the MIC and the CIA into 'thousand[s] of pieces'; 3) prohibiting the outsourcing of any 'job' that is typically the purview of the traditional military and those instances should be enumerated specifically in the statutes to be drafted.
Blackwater is a symptom of the impending fall of the American empire.
by
Len Hart (122 articles, 158 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 474 comments)
on Friday, June 20, 2008 at 1:25:24 AM
