The concept of psyche does I think differ quite a bit from mind, at least insofar as I understand the distinction. Psyche as I use it is a Jungian term and Jung meant the conscious, ego-portion that we understand as 'ourself', and the unconscious portions in which as it were the ego 'floats'.
To understand psyche in this sense, as I understand it, is to probe how a living being orients themselves within 'being'. Not only is there a conscious attitude---the intellectual mind as it were---but also larger dimensions of our selves that participate in being. So, not only might we organize our conscious perception of 'the world' and find ways to explain it, but there is also a subconscious or unconscious relationship to being.
In the sense that I mean, we 'imagine' ourself in this world, but we do that from within 'psyche' which has both consciously derived elements but also other, perhaps unconscious, elements. The language that arises from within ourselves and communicates to us (in the sense of with our ego) is a language of dreams, and dreams also connect to imagination, and imagination in the childlike sense. It is also the world of symbols of which our world and our mind is filled to the brim. My understanding is that imagination is part-and-parcel of the human creature, and is something we have to accept, understand and work with. To suppress imagination, as I understand it, can lead to deleterious effects. I tend to think that man---any man, every man---actually exists and has being within and through an 'imagined reality'.
I have also said at times that we exist within our own 'novelesque' which is a way of saying that we exist and live within and through narratives of and about ourselves in this world. Our ideas about life, our relationship to psyche and being, as a sort of bubble from which we confront and deal with 'reality'. I understand 'spiritual life' as being a means by which a man has a relationship to life through the whole group of perceptive possibilities. Religion is a unique factor in all this too. His reasoning self, his emotional self, his sensational self and his intuitive self---all these are part of a totality. It seems to me that a man might say, when speaking through his reasoning self 'This is how it is'. But I have noted that his 'intuitive self', or you could say his 'unconscious self', also tends to have a say in the matter. And then one is back toward the question or the fact of living within an 'imagined world'. I guess you could say that an imagined world is a world modified by imagination.
uwot wrote:Have you also noted that when you say things like: 'I do not think that 'real understanding' of 'our world' is possible for 'the multitude' (Mass Man)' [that] mass man responds with derision?
Without a doubt I acknowledge that saying such a thing and in the way I say it rankles you. I am not concerned with 'politically correct formulations', or your emotional reactions (to the degree they are 'emotional'), and so I make an effort to describe things truthfully and as I see them. My view of this issue is that it is larger and more important than your or anyone's
emotional reaction and I get the sense that your reaction is largely emotional. Still, I have made the effort to describe as clearly as I can what I think, the conclusions I have come to, and why.
Jose Ortega y Gasset in 'The Revolt of the Masses' wrote:"I persist then, at the risk of boring the reader, in making the point that this man full of uncivilized tendencies, this newest of the barbarians, is an automatic product of modern civilization, especially in the form taken in the XIXth Century."
"This type which at present is to be found everywhere, and everywhere imposes his spiritual barbarism, is, in fact, the spoiled child of human history."
"If from the viewpoint of what what concerns public life, the psychological structure of this new type of mass-man be studied, what we find is as follows: (1) An inborn, root-impression that life is easy, plentiful, without any grave limitations; consequently, each average man finds within himself a sensation of power and triumph which, (2) invites him to stand up for himself as he is, to look upon his moral and intellectual endowment as excellent, complete. This contentment within himself leads him to shut himself off from any external court of appeal; not to listen, not to submit his opinion to judgment, not to consider other's existence. His intimate feeling of power urges him always to exercise predominance. He will act then as if he and his like were the only beings existing in this world; and, consequently, (3) will intervene in all matters, imposing his own vulgar views without respect or regard for others, without limit or reserve, that is to say, in accordance with a system of 'direct action'."
"I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State."
"It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, to-day he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period. But that capacity is of no use to him; in reality, the vague feeling that he possesses it seems only to shut him up more within himself and keep him from using it. Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere.… Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his 'opinions.' "
With certain reservation (reservations that must be noted) I tend to agree with his analysis in The Revolt of the Masses. It is a very worthwhile book to read. It is my understanding that the now-current willfulness to undermine 'civilized values', is part-and-parcel of the mass man's 'vertical ascent'. I say this with very definite reservations and
all of this needs to be carefully qualified. That could happen in an intelligent conversation but if it happens that one's interlocutor is possessed by resentment, there is effectively no way to have such an 'intelligent conversation'. But that does not so much bother me. Or, to put it another way, I let it slip by without being bothered by it.
I feel that the most intelligent and 'sophisticated' platforms for understanding and acting in life are not easily accessible to the mentality of the mass man. I also am aware, very aware indeed, that this 'mass man' is a part of my own self that I need to be aware of. Just as we need to be aware of what is higher and 'best' in our own psychic structure, our mind and our being, so to do we need to be aware of what it connects to: appetite, unstructured will, unconscious desire, and a special form of 'revolt' and a disinclination, essentially, to submit to
inner authority that also has an external component. (It also has to be said that these ideas (of O y G) could, with a certain inflection and will, be brought into service of authoritarian and even fascistic ideals.)
He ('mass man') is a historical development in this sense, and as O y G says he is a product of various trends that began in the XIXth Century. What is 'negative' about him needs to be looked into and sorted out; and what is positive in him (as a new platform for future developments) also needs to be carefully sorted out. In short, it is
ALL a work of tremendous discretion and has to be undertaken carefully and thoughtfully. And obviously I am speaking now to the 'barbarian' tendency and activity of destroying what is not fully understood. And the 'barbarian' is actively operative in destroying those traditions, and those spiritual links, that connect us with 'higher worlds' and higher values. Our barbarian self, our barbarian 'ego', needs to submit itself to higher authority. But how could that happen when, for the mass man, there
IS no 'higher authority'? Or when a notion of 'higher authority' is a distortion? Or very partial and incomplete? Or when it cannot even be conceived? It is a bit of a problem. We need to become aware that nothing and no part of 'all this' is easy---as easy as sitting in front of the Tele and absorbing some chatter and nonsense. It is a work that requires a serious inner attitude, sustained discipline, and the capacity to learn to listen. In my view, those qualities are in short supply.
I am more than happy to talk about any specific part of O y G's analysis, and my understanding of it, if you wish. I find it very interesting.
uwot wrote:I think respect for your fellow man and woman is a good place to start. It is risible how poor some christians and their apologists are at loving thy neighbor.
The closest I get, personally, to love is care of the people in my immediate vicinity. The problem with the way you are taking some of my ideas, which do express a certain contempt, I do admit this, is that you think (I reckon) that loving someone means to accept their folly, their 'stupidity', their ignorance, or their 'evil'. My way of seeing things is far more 'strict' if you will. It seems to me that 'loving' people, or humanity, means in the first place to love oneself, and to me this means to take responsibility for oneself. To take oneself in hand. To be stern with oneself. To impose limits on oneself. To make demands on oneself.
Doing this, and developing that as a general ethic, would mean taking such an attitude toward other people to the degree that one could. It seems to me to all hinge on education. The best way to 'love' is to educate. And the only way to educate, in my own view, is through structure and also hierarchy. That means that one has to come to some decision about what one values and on the other side of the same coin to eliminate and not choose what one does not value. Then, to inculcate what one values is to 'love' someone in a greater than the merely emotional sense.
If I take a 'harsh' stand in regard to 'irresponsible' or 'willful' mass-man, it does not follow that I do so because I do not 'love' him in some sense, and perhaps specifically in the
Christian sense (whatever that means). You naturally misunderstand me and I suspect, though I can't be sure, that you do so because for you 'love' is permissiveness toward yourself, or perhaps even license? That attitude, in my view, aids and abets 'the spoiled child of human history' and, I think, we see the result of this in careless, bold, loud, opinionated but unstructured and also 'immoral' people. A sort of man who indeed 'look[s] upon his moral and intellectual endowment as excellent, complete'. Who refuses to make strict demands on himself and others?
As it happens I do have children. I haven't made a point of choosing any particular individuals as role models for them; it's for them to choose their own. If they ask my opinion, I will give it, but I trust them to make wise choices and change them if they prove otherwise.
I do not have children, myself, but my GF has a child (6) and a younger brother (12) and, as it happens, I am taking a role in their education. I live in Colombia and, to say the least, the moral and ethical atmosphere is extremely confused. It is a complex subject in its own right. We opted for a private Jesuit-run institution, with the classical strict parameters, because public institutions are utterly in disarray. So, the choice is made to 'subject' these kids to a rigorous academic and also ethical education. I would not, I assure you, have been able to conceive of this in my younger and more radical years! But in thinking it through it seems like the better choice. But it means: accepting hierarchies and submitting to authority; defining rules and obeying them; dealing with the consequences when authority is disobeyed; defining values; discerning what is worthy of being chosen and what is not. The structure, and the attention, has the effect of allowing the children to flourish and to grow, and not the opposite, we find. In comparison to the surrounding culture---generally in disarray---the order and structure of the Jesuit institution is an oasis. The kids thrive.
