Monday, May 30, 2016, will be Memorial Day. Surely it is fitting for us to remember those American soldiers who died in combat. But Sebastian Junger's new book TRIBE: ON HOMECOMING AND BELONGING reminds us not to forget the problems of post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) and suicide among combat veterans after they return. I found certain parts of his elegantly written short book called to my mind numerous associations.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) May 29, 2016: C. G. Jung, M.D. (1875-1961), the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist, claimed that the human psyche includes what he refers to as the collective unconscious. He famously worked out an approach (known as Jungian analysis) to helping individual persons integrate contents of the collective unconscious into their conscious awareness inasmuch as it is possible to do this.

But we should avoid romanticizing the collective unconscious, because not all impulses arising from the collective unconscious prompt us to engage in pro-social behavior. For this reason, we should carefully discern impulses arising from the collective unconscious. By discernment, I mean wrestling with impulses that come to us, as the biblical character Jacob famously wrestles with the angel of God who comes to him in his sleep.

Now, by definition, Jungian analysis involves one-to-one interactions between the analyst and the patient. However, Jung himself encouraged the formation of a social group known as a club in Zurich for various Jungian analysts and patients undergoing Jungian analysts.

The collective unconscious carries memories of our small-group hunter-gatherer ancestors that Darcia Narvaez in psychology at the University of Notre Dame writes about in her award-winning 2014 book Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom (Norton).

By definition, our small-group hunter-gatherer ancestors were pre-literate and pre-philosophical people. They lived in what the American Jesuit cultural historian and theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003) refers to as primary oral cultures. To spell out the obvious, Ong belonged to the religious order of men in the Roman Catholic Church known as the Jesuits (known formally as the Society of Jesus). Perhaps we can liken the Jesuits, at least in spirit, to the spirit of the club in Zurich that Jung helped found.

In addition, Narvaez writes skillfully about the work of the American neurosurgeon Paul D. MacLean, M.D. (1913-2007). MacLean refers to the oldest evolutionary layer, or part, of the human brain as the reptilian brain. The reptilian brain is the biological base of our fight/flight/freeze response.

In the book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981), the published version of Ong's 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, Ong does not happen to advert explicitly to MacLean's work on the structure of the human brain. But the spirit of fighting for life is biologically based in the fight/flight/freeze response of the reptilian brain.

The part of the human psyche that Plato (428/427 to 348/347 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE) refer to as thumos (or thymos) is also biologically based in the fight/flight/freeze response of the human brain.

Now, in his new book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (Twelve/ Hachette Book Group, 2016), Sebastian Junger, a journalist and war correspondent, writes elegantly about post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) and suicide among soldiers returning from battle in war. No doubt PTSD and suicide among veterans of war are serious problems that deserve our attention. If Junger's elegant writing about these problems contributes to advancing public awareness and discussion of them, good for him -- more power to him.

Junger repeatedly discusses American Indians as examples of people who lived and worked together in tribes -- in Narvaez's terminology, small-group hunter-gatherers. His thesis is that soldiers in combat live and work together with one another in a way that he likens to American Indians living and working together with one another in a tribe. I understand the point of his analogy. However, as Junger understands, the draft would be a better analogy with tribal warriors than our all-volunteer armed forces are.

No doubt our small-group hunter-gatherer ancestors discussed by Narvaez lived and worked cooperatively with one another within their small groups in order to stay alive and perhaps flourish. No doubt they experienced a strong sense of belonging within their group -- a sense of belonging that most contemporary Americans rarely experience in any group they may belong to.

But Junger argues that American Indian tribes had ways of reintegrating warriors returning from battle into pro-social life again within the tribe that we Americans today do not have for reintegrating combat veterans back into pro-social life in American society. Oftentimes, returning combat veterans do not experience a sense of homecoming and belonging back in American society that is comparable in spirit and intensity to group bonding of soldiers in combat.

After all, most contemporary Americans have been detribalized, to put it mildly, by their American upbringing and social and cultural and educational conditioning. Even those of us who have NOT experienced the group bonding of soldiers in war may NOT have experienced strong and intense bonding with others in small groups to which we belong.

Of course critiques of so-called individualism in American life are a dime a dozen. Basically, Junger is adding his voice to such critiques. Nevertheless, he works out a fresh framework of thought for discussing the serious problems of PTSD and suicide among returning veterans of war.

In addition to favoring so-called individualism, we Americans of European descent are so detribalized that we tend to refer pejoratively to real or imagined so-called tribalism. For example, certain critics of the billionaire developer Donald Trump of New York, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential candidate in 2016, tend to characterize him and his political persona as representing authoritarianism and his enthusiastic supporters as representing the spirit of tribalism.

No doubt our current ideas about authoritarianism are based on the historical examples of fascism in Europe. No doubt fascism in Europe involved mass movements in which individual persons were submerged to the will of the political strong-man. But we Americans of European descent tend to think of such mass movements as involving tribalism, but writ large.

At times, for the purposes of waging war, American Indian tribes formed alliances. For example, Junger discusses how the American Indian leader and orator known as Pontiac (or Obwandiyag, 1720-1769) helped forge an alliance of American Indian tribes for the purpose of taking a stand against the British. Pontiac's War (1763-1766) is named after him.

Now, in the Hebrew Bible, after Jacob wrestles with the angel of God who came to him in his sleep, he receives a new name: Israel. He is portrayed as having twelve sons. We are told that each of the twelve tribes of Israel is named after one of the sons of Jacob/Israel. And the twelve tribes of Israel form an alliance to help fight against invading forces.

Now, the Canadian cultural historian and theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) uses the terms detribalization and retribalization routinely in his experimental but flawed book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press, 1962).

What McLuhan means by detribalization is equivalent to what the Harvard sociologist David Riesman (1909-2002) means by inner-directed persons in his famous book The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (Yale University Press, 1950). With the memory of European fascism fresh in his mind, Riesman, who was himself undoubtedly an inner-directed person, discusses what he refers to pejoratively and apprehensively as the emerging other-directed persons in contemporary American culture. (However, Ong was quick to note that being other-directed is not necessarily something pejorative.)

McLuhan, who was also undoubtedly an inner-directed person (as most academics to this day tend to be), uses the term retribalization pejoratively and apprehensively. Because the mass movements of fascism in Europe can be characterized as representing retribalization writ large, Junger's use of the analogy with American Indian tribes will probably face predictable difficulties with Americans of European descent.

Now, in the article "World as View and World as Event" in the journal American Anthropologist, volume 71, number 4 (August 1969): pages 634-647, Ong describes two broad senses of life: (1) the world-as-view sense of life and (2) the world-as-event sense of life.

The American Indian tribes discussed by Junger and the small-group hunter-gatherers discussed by Narvaez embody and manifest the world-as-event sense of life.

But the detribalized Europeans and Americans in modern culture in the West (in McLuhan's terminology, in the Gutenberg galaxy that emerged in the West after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the 1450s) embody and manifest the world-as-view sense of life. Typically, our American upbringing and social and cultural and educational conditioning today inculcate and habituate us in the world-as-view sense of life.

However, I assume that the world-as-event sense of life is stored in the collective unconscious (in Jung's terminology). As a result, we American progressives and liberals today may want to access the world-as-event sense of life in the collective unconscious inasmuch as we can.

Please note that I do not think that anti-60s conservatives today would have any interest in accessing the world-as-event sense of life in the collective unconscious. Anti-60s conservatives have not yet effectively digested certain political and social and cultural changes in the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, anti-60s conservatives tend to look back on the 1950s with nostalgia. However, in the 1950s, under the Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), the inter-state highway system emerged. Often enough, inter-state highways cut deep concrete strips into existing communities in urban areas, thereby effectively severing them into two parts. So progressives and liberals should beware of anti-60s conservatives with their endless cries for community and their selective memories of community before the inter-state highways emerged in the 1950s.

Now, Jung and his followers refer to forming an axis between ego-consciousness and the Self (capitalized to differentiate it from ego-consciousness, which others often refer to as the self [lower-case]). So perhaps we American progressives and liberals today can form an axis, as it were, between the conditioned world-as-view sense of life of our ego-consciousness and the world-as-event sense of life remembered in the collective unconscious.

But a word of caution is in order here. At times, unconscious contents can surface with such power that they overpower ego-consciousness, resulting in a psychotic episode. For understandable reasons, most people would prefer not to experience a psychotic episode. So before you try to undertake possibly working out and establishing an axis between your ego-consciousness and the world-as-event sense of life remembered in the collective unconscious, you should make sure that you have sufficient ego strengths to undertake such a possibly perilous inner journey. Even so, I do NOT recommend using the approach that Jung himself recklessly experimented with that he refers to as active imagination.

Because Jung recklessly favored what he refers to as active imagination, he often inveighs against the form of guided imagistic meditation outlined in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. But even that form of guided imagistic meditation can be dangerous for certain people, who can experience a psychotic episode as a result of using it. Let me briefly explain why even guided imagistic meditation can precipitate a psychotic episode in certain people.

Ong never tired of referring to Eric A. Havelock's book Preface to Plato (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963). Havelock sets up and works with a contrast between the Homeric epics with their imagistic thinking and Plato's dialogues. Havelock sees the Homeric epics as representing oral tradition, basically pre-literate and pre-philosophical thought. Havelock sees the ancient Greek philosophical thought in Plato's dialogues as emerging historically as the result of phonetic alphabetized and vowelized writing in ancient Greek culture. Now, did Plato also occasionally use narratives and imagistic thought in his dialogues? You bet, he did. See John Alexander Stewart's compilation and translation in the bilingual edition titled The Myths of Plato (London and New York: Macmillan, 1905).

But the important point here is that Havelock see imagistic thought in the Homeric epics as expressing oral tradition (i.e., pre-literate thought, even though the Homeric epics obvious got written down). So guided imagistic meditations in Ignatian spirituality can potentially resonate with the world-as-event sense of life remembered in the collective unconscious. As a result of the potential danger of prompting a psychotic episode, I do NOT recommend making a 30-day retreat in silence following the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, as Jesuit novices customarily do.

However, if you want to read about the perils of the perilous inner journey of one person who was acculturated in the world-as-view sense of life, check out the poems of the Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) that literary critics refer to as his "terrible sonnets" -- not because they are terrible poetry (they are not), but because they describe inner experiences that sound terrible.

Now, in his first book Frontiers in American Catholicism: Essays on Ideology and Culture (Macmillan, 1957), Ong urges his fellow American Catholics to construct and work out and develop what he refers to as "a real Christian mystique of technology and science" (page 121; also see pages 123-125). Ong seems to believe that the Christian tradition of thought contains certain elements that could indeed be used to construct the new Christian mystique of technology and science that he envisions. He may be right about that much. But it is easier to envision this possible development that it is to do it. In any event, it has not yet emerged.

Nevertheless, Ong's repeated use of the term "mystique" suggests that he is deliberately echoing Lucien Levy-Bruhl's famous characterization of the "participation mystique" -- in Ong's 1969 terminology, the world-as-event sense of life. See Levy-Bruhl's book How Natives Think, authorized translation by Lilian A. Clare, with a new introduction by C. Scott Littleton (Princeton University Press, 1985).

Now, I would say that the mystique Ong envisions as possibly emerging from certain elements in the Christian tradition of thought may still be desirable for Christians to work on. But I would also say that a new mystique of technology and science needs to emerge not only from Christian resources of thought, but also from non-Christian resources of thought -- and preferably one that secularists could also endorse.

Such an envisioned new mystique of technology and science should accompany our efforts to work toward a new cultural mix of our world-as-view sense of life with the world-as-event sense of life remembered in the collective unconscious.

By way of digression, I want to call attention to the alleged spirit of academic freedom and tenure alleged in American institutions of higher education as analogous to certain pro-social features Junger mentions in connection with American Indian tribes and belonging. In addition, I want to call attention to how the Jesuit religious order that Ong belonged to is analogous to belonging to an American Indian tribe, as are all religious orders of men and women in the Roman Catholic Church. Arguably belonging to a church is also analogous to belonging to an American Indian tribe. But most Christian churches tend to give their members a strong sense of belonging in exchange for their thinking in certain ways dictated by the church authorities. In other words, most Christian churches tend to foster a community of affinity (like-minded people), but not a community of otherness, as the late American Buber scholar Maurice Friedman (1921-2012) describes these two kinds of community in his short book Genuine Dialogue and Real Partnership: Foundations of True Community (Trafford Publishing, 2011).

Now, Junger, rightly in my judgment, cautions us not to romanticize American Indian tribes. He says, "It's easy for people in modern society to romanticize Indian life . . . . That impulse should be guarded against" (page 13). Fair enough.

In his widely known book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (London: Blond & Briggs, 1973), E. F. Schumacher (Ernst Friedrich, 1911-1972) does not happen to use imagery of a tribe explicitly.

In his widely discussed recent eco-encyclical, Pope Francis also criticizes modern capitalism for proceeding as if people didn't matter. Like Schumacher, he does not happen to use imagery of a tribe explicitly.

In American popular culture, the Lone Ranger is a masked man who fights for the common good with his American Indian partner Tonto. If the Lone Ranger symbolically represents American individualism, then his partnership with an American Indian symbolizes what -- the psychological partnership that Jung and his followers refer to as the axis between ego-consciousness and the Self in the human psyche (in Jungian terminology, the Self in the human psyche symbolizes being in touch with the collective unconscious)? And what does the Lone Ranger's being masked symbolize?

In the title essay of Ong's 1962 book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, pages 260-285), he works with the Greek/barbarian contrast to refer to outsiders inside society today. He constructs an extended comparison-and-contrast essay in which he articulates what he considers to be the Greek position and the barbarian position. What he considers to be the Greek position is deeply indebted to Pericles' "Funeral Oration" as Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE) remembers and reconstructs it from his memory in his famous History of the Peloponnesian War. Pericles (c. 495-426 BCE) was a political leader and orator in Athens during its famous experiment with participatory democracy.

In the Hebrew Bible, there is a famous injunction to remember that you were once strangers (outsiders in Ong's terminology) in a strange land.

It's not just that the so-called outsider is inside society today. The far deeper problematic for American individualism today is that the collective unconscious (in Jung's terminology) is inside the psyches of all Americans today.

Now, in the book A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America (Oxford University Press, 2011), Grace Elizabeth Hale shows that Ong's imagery of outsiders has become rather popular. But what about his imagery involving the Greek position he articulates? Evidently, Ong's proverbial Greeks have become the political and cultural establishment against which Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have inveighed in each of their respective presidential primary campaigns.

In Senator Sanders' oratory, he often makes it sound like Hillary Rodham Clinton symbolizes the establishment against which he is campaigning. In Trump's oratory, she is "crooked Hillary." Trump likes to use epithets to characterize individual persons he doesn't like and wants to diminish. Epithets are used extensively in the Homeric epics (e.g., wily Odysseus).

While white middle-class Americans were pursuing their fantasy lives about being outsiders in rebellion in postwar America, many of them also helped mainstream American Indian spirituality, as Philip Jenkins details in his book Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Now, at a later time, Ong himself shifted away from his earlier Greek/barbarian terminology in his "Introduction: On Saying 'We' and 'Us' to Literature" in the book Three American Literatures: Essays in Chicano, Native American, and Asian-American Literature for Teachers of American Literature, edited by Houston A. Baker, Jr. (Modern Language Association of America, 1982, pages 3-8). In his introduction, Ong, who served as president of MLA in 1978, says, "All of us want to realize ourselves as distinct person, but we also want others -- lots of others -- to know that we are our own distinct selves. We do not want to be unique all alone. Hence we negotiate. And so do cultures" (pages 3-4).

Perhaps American culture today is still engaged in negotiating with certain other cultures that many Americans previously thought of as outsiders (in Ong's 1962 terminology). In Ong's 1982 terminology, we Americans of European descent may be negotiating our identities of "we" and "us" to integrate pro-social features of American Indian tribes.

Trump has clearly been appealing to white identity politics that does not want to negotiate with the pro-social non-white political and social and cultural traditions also inside American society today. In this respect, white identity politics in American society today resembles the anti-Semitic identity politics of German Nazis.

But those white Americans today are descended from white strangers (outsiders) who were historically strangers in a strange land. Ironically, many white supporters of Trump claim to be Christians. However, like the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible contains the injunction to remember that you were once strangers (outsiders) in a strange land. But I guess that Trump's white supporters are Christians in name only (CINOs). In any event, Trump's white supporters do not appear to be ready to negotiate their white political and social and cultural identity with the pro-social features of any non-white traditions.

In conclusion, Monday, May 30, 2016, will be Memorial Day. Surely it is fitting for us to remember those American soldiers who died in combat. But Junger's new book reminds us not to forget the problems of PTSD and suicide among returning veterans of war.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview