Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Nov 16, 2025 4:46 am
A couple of thoughts …
1) In general, and certainly in the US, the pressure builds. It is pressure from many angles and, like in a pressure cooker, it seems it will build until it — something— erupts. When I do visit the States I notice disarray in many places, but also dislocation, and separation — alienation. OTOH I also notice expressions of camaraderie and brotherhood in some places which seems unusual given a notable decline.
It is not surprising that the pressures exerted by circumstances show up in mental health issues. That is what they say is happening. And they say it is worse for women than for men. Especially younger women and girls.
And if one does not have a spiritual life, some link with a higher self or “higher power” (the sense of a guide within the confusion of life) and that corner of the self that one can take refuge in, it is easy to see how people can go off the edge.
2) I see disunity and disharmony, which is obviously destructive of a sense of social unity (in the US, I could not speak for Europe), and it seems that people cannot Rx it. Everyone takes a stab at some pet theory though. It’s like the blind describing an elephant.
My view? The actual facts of the matter are very difficult to talk about freely because of the dangers involved in speaking honestly and forthrightly. Especially here on this forum, as in general, the core differences are always between people who are
tendentious opposites. If some shadow of an impression is picked up by an oversensitive interlocutor, and precisely as that worthwhile Jung excerpt I posted above asserts, the “projection mechanism” click into motion, and then the machinery of ‘righteous attack’ is lowered against ‘the enemy’ whose head popped up over the horizon …
It is so predictable!
Clearly though (returning to thoughts on the US), the nation has entered what seems like a critical phase. Sociologically. Demographically. I have been told that the conflicts of the Sixties were more dramatic though, however I was not a witness to it.
3) In order to understand “the present” I cannot see how one could
avoid examining the discourse of radicalized extremists, on the Left as well as the Right. So, in that sense Gary, you do yourself a disservice by avoiding that examination. It is my opinion, as one who reads widely, that many ideas of The Dissident Right have entered the so-called mainstream. I noticed the beginnings of it 15 years ago. It is certainly “reactive” (as in reaction, reactionary) but similarly and even more intensely the activism of the Left is far more pervasive and its effects far more visible. It is predictable that Right-tending activism would show up. It
was predicted.
4) It is very hard to make much ‘sense’ of politics, and you might be better off suspending the attempt, simply because it all involves so much conflicted psychological material that erupts emotionally. Hysterically in fact. Again that Jung clip speaks to the ‘impossibility’ of making sense of it. Thus the only productive field anyone (of us) can actually work on is our own inner self, and in the context also of immediate relations (spouse, family, kids, neighbors, friend).