Philosophy Now Forum

We're all good Belinda, thanks.

Dubious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 6:52 am True or not, they prove themselves equally ineffectual in the gradual uploading of a more cosmological perspective and all what may emerge from it including a much more potent revision of our interface with the planet, which, after all is the source and cause of our existence. That which emerges from the deep never immediately floats to the surface or make itself wholly visible. That’s when philosophy attempts to fill the gap.

Not sure if I could immediately go along with one part of this. That is, your statement about irrelevancy and anachronism.

But please let it be noted that as the conversation has proceeded here, and on this topic, my attention has turned with a new focus to the fin-de-siècle period and, as is likely obvious, on the figure of CG Jung. The reason I do this is because I have recognized in myself, again because of what I've realized in these conversations, an enactment and a carrying-forth of the 'modalities' of a very very different sort of spirituality which, as I am able to understand, was initiated in the time-period I mention.

I am curious to hear more on the topic of 'cosmological perspective'. It is too vague a reference to make sense to me at this point.

There is it seems to me an extremely direct and highly relevant relationship between the works and propositions of Nietzsche -- an unquestionably radical breaking out of a cage or the cracking of an egg (to refer to Hesse) -- and the sort of path that Jung launched himself onto. The reference to a singular Jung is a way to refer to hundreds and thousands of various people. So when you say "True or not, they prove themselves equally ineffectual in the gradual uploading of a more cosmological perspective and all what may emerge from it" I am left with two thoughts: One is that what you have stated remains too vague to function as an assertion; and two that there is no other way that I can conceive to understand where we are at and the situation that we face and are in except to understand the evolution of causal chains.

So to put it in simple terms: Nietzsche dynamited his present and as a result many new and different paths or trajectories were set in motion.

With Jung two important themes of focus can be recognized: Nature and Body. And in relation to nature "the ways that manufactured environments make people sick", and in relation to the body the ways in which it is possible to listen to our bodies ("without necessarily making the mistake of turning them into a source of ineffable wisdom" to quote Andres Samuels).

If I am not mistaken it was you who mentioned dozens of pages back, your sense about recovering a much needed respect for the Earth -- the platform that sustains us. So one could not fail to see that through Jung's recovery, as it were, of direct lines of relationship both to nature and the body that many new paths were opened. It seems to me to go without saying. (The ecology movement, the therapeutic modalities involved in 'healing' the body and the mind, a new awareness of art as a means of exploring spirituality, and not to mention whole new ranges of receiving impetus from 'internal sources').

I don’t think most people would be bothered or aware of such specifically articulated amputations of the psyche from it’s supposed roots. You aren’t going to get a neurosis from something vaguely or never experienced. The cause of anxiety is not so much one’s separation from some ancient mythic belief but, much closer to home, existential conditions never faced before morphing into scenarios ever more deadly. We’re at a millennial cusp of a kind where another may not follow. It’s our dissociation with the past which must happen - not forgetting what they were - if by “future” is meant the emergence of a new horizon.

Here I will mention again my premise and I must speak in generalities, always problematic: I do not think that many people today have any sense at all of what has informed them. They do not have a way to think about it and contemplate it. I could list a dozen and even perhaps a hundred 'causes' that have informed us all and about which we remain unaware, and yet are the direct causes of neurotic separation from self and thus of psychological malady.

So when you say "most people would not be bothered" I am led to say that I do not think it matters much. We have ceased to understand that everything that we are now, and the social and cultural modalities and even the nations we live in, came to be because of the Roman conquest of Northern Europe. How many people when they think about *Europe* are aware, consciously, of the causal chains? But you do not have to be aware of them to have been propelled into motion by them.

Let me mention, let's say, an imagined Christian who finds the Christian mythology and perhaps the entire path non-sufficient. I recall to mind LaceWing who said as much and constantly. What do you suppose that person will have to do to 'return to themselves' or 'turn into themselves' in order to recover all over again those 'chopped stumps' of authentic connection to themselves? How will they find and how will they recover themselves? Well you know how Jung described it. According to him you have to go back to the site of the original causal mutilation. But also according to Jung all of this is dangerous and problematic.

You aren’t going to get a neurosis from something vaguely or never experienced.

Oh no? Except if 'neurosis' is part-and-parcel of a general cultural situation of course. Then it is possible to understand that an entire culture can *go crazy* and become susceptible to (what Jung termed) possession. Then indeed you will simply live in it and again without necessarily understanding it. Anomie, dislocation, disassociation -- these are all psychological-spiritual terms for what results from separation from self (nature & body).

The cause of anxiety is not so much one’s separation from some ancient mythic belief but, much closer to home, existential conditions never faced before morphing into scenarios ever more deadly.

Right, and these separations have a long causal chain. The 'existential conditions never faced' are like festering wounds that are never healed because they are never seen, understood and confronted.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 9:19 am I know God (to a certain level). One can read all the books on the planet, but until one makes that single leap of faith, (perhaps) one can never actually gain gnosis.

So.

Beyond a general interest in the history and man's interpretations of theology, what is the point if you are never going to find an actual knowledge of God's existence?

With this I agree wholeheartedly.

In the course of this conversation I have been, say, forced to remember that in my own case my 'spiritual life' began completely and entirely outside of a specific religious context. It all had to do with 'opening roads' and then setting forth on those roads as an experiential path. So I can very much relate to the idea of a 'leap' onto a path (in my case a great deal of travel and wandering and encountering unusual situations) as well as 'leap of faith'. I would also say (and I was reminded of this through Promethean's anecdotes) that I was guided by a Mercurial god (or spirit or perhaps I should only say aesthetic?) and that this god is the god of chance encounter as well as 'roads' and 'openings'. It is very difficult, therefore, for me to reconcile what I understand 'god' to be with the over-articulated and even rather emasculated picture of Christ and the Apostles generally. So I am forced to see, and to face & accept, my own essential 'paganism'.

Your second statement 'What is the point if you are never going to find an actual knowledge of God's existence?' -- if you mean to direct this question to me -- is that there comes a time to *organize one's perceptions* and to participate in a larger, cultural conversation. There is a whole world of books and each book is a compendium of years & years of life, thought and struggle of each author. To encounter what others have experienced and thought is a way to compare what you experienced and thought.

I think I do very well understand that some people, perhaps many people, do not ever develop a spiritual life. They remain fixed in other modes. But that was certainly not the case with me.

What I notice about the experiences that you shared, and what I glean out of it, is one essential thing: initiation.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 15, 2022 10:52 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Wed Jun 15, 2022 7:12 pmThe first step in Christianity, not man made Christendom, it is to awaken to our situation. We are conditioned machines preventing our species from awakening to our human nature.

A few thoughts in response . . .

Numerous times I have said, and I still think it, that the doctrines and the sound precepts of traditional Christian theology seem to me sound. They have been developed over hundreds of years, even a thousand years, and they incorporate many different traditional, philosophical, ethical and ideological ideas. Perhaps there are others here who absolutely negate the good sense in these outlines of sound practice? However I am not one of them.

When one speaks of 'Christendom' one speaks about a social order in which a religious mode is practiced, right? In my way of understanding things, and life generally, one has to accommodate 'the masses' and provide to the masses (sorry to put it like this) a sound set of guidelines and rules. The function of traditional religion is to inculcate a form of obedience to certain rules and regulations. I do not have a problem per se with this, and when I spoke about 'Christian culture' to IC I referred to just this: a general, socially-accepted and socially-administered set of ethics. I cannot see how a society can do without these. So I am resolved to foster religiousness for a host of different reasons.

But when it comes down to the philosophical and existential brass-tacks, and here on a forum where ideas are hammered out and analytic acids are applied, I am aware that 'religious life' and 'spiritual life' are distinct categories. Spiritual life involves many different levels of risk. Not the least being that God and Spirit cannot really be portrayed or said to be one thing and not another. The religious mode of life for, say, an average citizen, is fulfilled through simply living as a decent person. If that is attained then a great deal is attained.

But spiritual life is far more demanding and also dangerous. I think there is always, and there will always be a heretical tint to it. Same with mystical understanding of the inner aspect of religiousness.

The only person who can 'awaken' as you say is just that: one person who has a spiritual life. In a sense I think that person must cover-over the truth of what spiritual life is and demands from those who need to remain solidly anchored in religious life. The way I think about this is to imagine how you or I or we would reveal the truth of things to a child -- our children I mean of course. Kind of like in nursery school you have to establish a predictable, regular order and everything has to feel 'safe'. Otherwise the kids feel insecure and when insecure they act out.

I think I can go along with 'regeneration from above' if the above is redefined. I see Christianity as a construct and as a 'lens' or perhaps I should say a program for self-development. But as I have often said I think one has to seek out the original and more or less pure sources of this teaching. But the image of God, and even the way that Jesus Christ is pictured, seems quite wrong to me (now that I have been thinking about it). So what I presently think is that if there is even a Jesus-figure that is held in the imagination (and here I mean for one on a spiritual as opposed merely to a religious path) that figure of Jesus must be visualized in a very different way.

I have come to believe that if there is a new man of theology it must be a Hamlet-like figure. Theology must become infinitely more expansive and the theological conversation infinitely more open and broad. And so must the (static) figure of Jesus. But I also see the visualization of Jesus-God as a person to be misleading. As I say average people need a fixed image, not one that moves and shifts. The odd thing is that many people wish for a father-figure-like Jesus and one as predictable as an Apollo. But there is another aspect to God or to the manifestation of God and it is, I am almost afraid to say, a trickster and a mercurial figure.

A J wrote

When one speaks of 'Christendom' one speaks about a social order in which a religious mode is practiced, right? In my way of understanding things, and life generally, one has to accommodate 'the masses' and provide to the masses (sorry to put it like this) a sound set of guidelines and rules. The function of traditional religion is to inculcate a form of obedience to certain rules and regulations. I do not have a problem per se with this, and when I spoke about 'Christian culture' to IC I referred to just this: a general, socially-accepted and socially-administered set of ethics. I cannot see how a society can do without these. So I am resolved to foster religiousness for a host of different reasons.

You are attracted to how interpretations of Christianity can improve the social order. I am attracted to how Christianity can serve for the conscious evolution of Man's being. You seem attracted to how the social order within Plato's cave can improve by beliefs while I believe the individual can struggle for inner unity by efforts to escape the Cave. Belief or understanding with the whole of oneself?

I believe the Great Chain of Being serves as a hypothesis to explain the evolution and involution of universal being. It begins with a source beyond the limitations of time and space yet responsible for the days of creation. Each day of creation represents a level of reality determined by its vibratory quality and quality of consciousness in relation to our source. Each lower level can exist within the next higher like a gas exists within a liquid. EVERY-THING serves the process of existence within the NOW of NO-THING

Our source is pure consciousness while the universe or the body of God are relative lawful manifestations of our source. Obviously I don't believe in a personal God but rather the source of this great machine or the body of God. The level of the Son and Jesus efforts on earth with the help of the Spirit, made it possible for Man to consciously evolve from chaotic plurality into the higher level of inner unity: "I AM.

The energies of interacting Chaotic plurality serves the earth while our potential for inner unity serves the needs of the great machine or our universe. Satan gave Jesus the choice of dominating the earth or serving the Father or universal needs. Jesus chose to serve the Father but who knows what this means? Does knowledge of the universal skeleton or the workings of the Great Chain of Being help science to eventually verify the universal purpose of Man and how Christianity enables Man to awaken to it? If the laws of being together with the laws knowledge are complimentary, then there is no reason science and religion cannot become ONE in the search to experience the meaning and purpose of Man on earth

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:38 pmI am curious to hear more on the topic of 'cosmological perspective'. It is too vague a reference to make sense to me at this point.

The cosmological perspective or horizon is one which has expanded almost to the point of infinity one in which the old paradigms are mostly defunct. If one places the bible in such an context it almost becomes a caricature. The extent of space and time are catalysts to new conceptions just as it was among the ancients who, as mentioned, subscribed to a universe a fraction of the size of the solar system. The greater the expanse encountered the more imperative it becomes for the mind to adapt itself to it as a matter of both empathy and conscience working in tandem. In that sense, the external becomes the great challenge through which the soul (if you want to call it that) seeks to expound itself on a vastly elevated proscenium.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:38 pmSo to put it in simple terms: Nietzsche dynamited his present and as a result many new and different paths or trajectories were set in motion.

Whereas I admire Nietzsche you give him too much credit for events already happening during his life. What was unique was his ability to express and to understand the significance of it for the future.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:38 pm I do not think that many people today have any sense at all of what has informed them. They do not have a way to think about it and contemplate it. I could list a dozen and even perhaps a hundred 'causes' that have informed us all and about which we remain unaware, and yet are the direct causes of neurotic separation from self and thus of psychological malady.

A neurosis, I think, can happen through external events unless there is some excessive sensitivity of a somatic origin. I think all that’s happening now, including a future of which we can no-longer be certain has the tendency to steamroll many people into an existential wilderness from which they cannot escape. An overload of negative feedback can cause the body itself to suffer. There are in fact, many reasons for a neurotic disposition...but that’s always been the case, not least, in Medieval times.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:38 pmOh no? Except if 'neurosis' is part-and-parcel of a general cultural situation of course. Then it is possible to understand that an entire culture can *go crazy* and become susceptible to (what Jung termed) possession. Then indeed you will simply live in it and again without necessarily understanding it. Anomie, dislocation, disassociation -- these are all psychological-spiritual terms for what results from separation from self (nature & body).

I think what Jung meant by that is the more you identify with some ritualistic mass gatherings of flags, music, speeches and ceremony the more separated you become from yourself. From what I recall, Jung admitted of nearly becoming so absorbed in one of those overwhelming rallies as staged by the Nazis.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:38 pmThe 'existential conditions never faced' are like festering wounds that are never healed because they are never seen, understood and confronted.

Ah yes! Not unlike the old Amfortas wound described by Jung himself.

You may find this interesting..

https://www.jrhaule.net/wound.html

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 3:14 pm

attofishpi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 9:19 am I know God (to a certain level). One can read all the books on the planet, but until one makes that single leap of faith, (perhaps) one can never actually gain gnosis.

So.

Beyond a general interest in the history and man's interpretations of theology, what is the point if you are never going to find an actual knowledge of God's existence?

With this I agree wholeheartedly.

In the course of this conversation I have been, say, forced to remember that in my own case my 'spiritual life' began completely and entirely outside of a specific religious context. It all had to do with 'opening roads' and then setting forth on those roads as an experiential path. So I can very much relate to the idea of a 'leap' onto a path (in my case a great deal of travel and wandering and encountering unusual situations) as well as 'leap of faith'. I would also say (and I was reminded of this through Promethean's anecdotes) that I was guided by a Mercurial god (or spirit or perhaps I should only say aesthetic?) and that this god is the god of chance encounter as well as 'roads' and 'openings'. It is very difficult, therefore, for me to reconcile what I understand 'god' to be with the over-articulated and even rather emasculated picture of Christ and the Apostles generally. So I am forced to see, and to face & accept, my own essential 'paganism'.

Your second statement 'What is the point if you are never going to find an actual knowledge of God's existence?' -- if you mean to direct this question to me -- is that there comes a time to *organize one's perceptions* and to participate in a larger, cultural conversation. There is a whole world of books and each book is a compendium of years & years of life, thought and struggle of each author. To encounter what others have experienced and thought is a way to compare what you experienced and thought.

I think I do very well understand that some people, perhaps many people, do not ever develop a spiritual life. They remain fixed in other modes. But that was certainly not the case with me.

What I notice about the experiences that you shared, and what I glean out of it, is one essential thing: initiation.

I have the utmost respect for the likes of yourself and many upon this forum that have endeavoured to read the minds of others. I do apologise, sometimes, too often in fact, I belittle others, but perhaps it is because I am just a teeny-weeny gnat that has been so frustrated at being tapped into something very very large without the means to express it, and often very ridiculed for even attempting to.
After my experiences, I decided to join this forum to test other minds with how my analysis from what I had experienced stacks up! At times I consider I am indeed mining minds, it seems that we are all doing the same, whether we read books, watch docos, and chat on a forum.
Our brains are databases, some can share their database very eloquently, some just stumble over boulders to plant face first into gravel..i do that often. I really do like to learn from people on this forum, and I have (contrary to what some might think) learned a lot over the years that I have been here.

Lately, I have been feeling like the final piece to complete a jigsaw puzzle, but I don't fit in the only empty space, but the picture I am sure would be beautiful, and probably would still be comprehended so, without that final piece.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

I note you did omit the actual key from your quote of my statement, the first line, the path that is the only one worth.Y to make that leap of faith...no matter.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 1:39 pmI note you did omit the actual key from your quote of my statement, the first line, the path that is the only one worth.Y to make that leap of faith...no matter.

Oh, you mean this?

Well, like Christ apparently said: To know God is through me (belief in).

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 7:31 pmYou are attracted to how interpretations of Christianity can improve the social order. I am attracted to how Christianity can serve for the conscious evolution of Man's being. You seem attracted to how the social order within Plato's cave can improve by beliefs while I believe the individual can struggle for inner unity by efforts to escape the Cave. Belief or understanding with the whole of oneself?

That might be one way of putting it. Yet I would have to say now and at this point that my interest in Christianity had and perhaps has an *inauthentic* aspect. So I have to start right at the beginning or from the first obvious point, and that is to say that I believe that I do understand 'spirituality', because it is with spirituality and not religion with which I first engaged, but that classical religion and certainly *organized religion* are foreign to my nature. Christianity as a religious and cultural form was foreign to my experience. So why did I take it up? (if it could be said that I did take it up).

The answer is that I sought, and still seek, a 'solid metaphysical platform' upon which to construct a 'proper conservatism'. To put it like this implies this perception and assessment: the *world* spins out of control. Politically, socially, culturally, and because the traditional groundings have been undermined, whole arrays of other forces and powers dominate man. Be they economic, or technological-mechanistic (the machine), or be they propagandistic in the sense of advertising-ideological; or be they *spectacle* in the Debord sense of the term [Debord defines the spectacle as the “autocratic reign of the market economy.” Though the term “mass media” is often used to describe the spectacle's form, Debord derides its neutrality]: it seems that the reigning power is in these things, not in 'the mind of man' and certainly not from 'the intellect of man'.

Without a solid grounding in metaphysical principles, man -- people -- spin-out into all sorts of manifestations that express the loss of grounding. I think I see the gender dysphoria as a manifestation of personal and social madness (just one example). I said before that when one deals with children in a day-care setting you must establish boundaries and limits within which the kids feel safe and 'contained'. When their containers are shattered (when their horizons are erased) they become insecure, and when insecure they act out. I suppose that at that point the notion of 'possession' by unconscious forces and powers makes a good deal of sense.

So when I have expressed something like enthusiasm for 'renovation' and 'renewal' through my somewhat romanticized focus on 'Europe' I am responding within a rather traditional branch of European ideation that has to do with the decline of Europe -- Spengler, Richard Weaver and a dozen others. It is a classic, anguished perception is it not? If I were to use your descriptive language I might say that 'the beast' has escaped his cage and freely roams about. I see the beast as unbridled, ignorant appetite and quest for power; the assertion of the will of this sort of inferior man (to use a Chinese description and as opposed to the Confucian superior man).

Reading Richard Weaver had a strong effect on me. He is not a Christian, I do not think, and he is a Platonist. Yet within Christian cultural currents his notion of 'deviation' from and an abandonment of 'transcendentals' became a guiding idea in the mid-20th century in conservative thought:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

This idea can be received and adapted to a wide range of perspectives.

So if it is true that "The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence" then one can say that one's work is cut out for one: to rediscover and reinvigorate the realistic appreciation of those transcendentals.

One could immediately turn to the traditional Catholic forms because in every symbol, in every gesture, in every proceeding and procedure, those 'transcendentals' show themselves.

However, it should be noted that the Catholic and the Christian forms were impositions quite literally forced on northern Europe in the 8th century through imperial conquest. So there is a tremendous wound or conflict in all of this. And when St. Boniface axed the sacred pillar at Irminsul in approximately AD 750 -- sacred to the Saxons and to their gods Thor or Wotan -- it is there and at that time and through that act that Yggdrasil was chopped down to a stump. But Yggdrasil is also a transcendental concept and 'picture'!

AJ: Oh no? Except if 'neurosis' is part-and-parcel of a general cultural situation of course. Then it is possible to understand that an entire culture can *go crazy* and become susceptible to (what Jung termed) possession. Then indeed you will simply live in it and again without necessarily understanding it. Anomie, dislocation, disassociation -- these are all psychological-spiritual terms for what results from separation from self (nature & body).

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 9:55 amI think what Jung meant by that is the more you identify with some ritualistic mass gatherings of flags, music, speeches and ceremony the more separated you become from yourself. From what I recall, Jung admitted of nearly becoming so absorbed in one of those overwhelming rallies as staged by the Nazis.

There is a far more difficult underbelly when CG Jung and an entire new movement that developed in Central Europe at that time is examined. CG Jung embodied a significant rejection of 'the Christian imposition' and his psychological mapping, and the use of his inner self to define a path forward, most certainly involved an act of rejection of imposing Christianity. In this sense Christianity is then defined as an obstacle, as a block, and as something needing to be seen through. So all the *identifications* of those who were propelled into motion by Nietzsche's corralling of a general consensus into ideas that became activist, turned to the act of *throwing off the yoke*.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 4:03 pm

AJ: Oh no? Except if 'neurosis' is part-and-parcel of a general cultural situation of course. Then it is possible to understand that an entire culture can *go crazy* and become susceptible to (what Jung termed) possession. Then indeed you will simply live in it and again without necessarily understanding it. Anomie, dislocation, disassociation -- these are all psychological-spiritual terms for what results from separation from self (nature & body).

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 9:55 amI think what Jung meant by that is the more you identify with some ritualistic mass gatherings of flags, music, speeches and ceremony the more separated you become from yourself. From what I recall, Jung admitted of nearly becoming so absorbed in one of those overwhelming rallies as staged by the Nazis.

There is a far more difficult underbelly when CG Jung and an entire new movement that developed in Central Europe at that time is examined. CG Jung embodied a significant rejection of 'the Christian imposition' and his psychological mapping, and the use of his inner self to define a path forward, most certainly involved an act of rejection of imposing Christianity. In this sense Christianity is then defined as an obstacle, as a block, and as something needing to be seen through. So all the *identifications* of those who were propelled into motion by Nietzsche's corralling of a general consensus into ideas that became activist, turned to the act of *throwing off the yoke*.

No idea how this relates to anything I said.

...but never mind. These conversations are so useless...and boring.

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 8:36 pmNo idea how this relates to anything I said.

From Jung's perspective the European conflagration, and certainly the National Socialist movement, was a symptom of a vast psychic infestation or possession. Like falling into a whirlpool. The German people, and others drawn in to other fascist and Marxist programs, were drawn in because of a deep psychic attraction. Deep resonances, deep longings.

Though this is true, and though Jung was a fairly well-balanced doctor and psychologist who had a sharp eye and ear for what was occurring around him, and indeed predicted disaster, and who also saw himself as a spiritual healer and even something of a prophet, Jung too was caught up in the mood of the time. So Jung was, along with so many others, a participant.

That is why I said

"Then it is possible to understand that an entire culture can *go crazy* and become susceptible to (what Jung termed) possession".

You (when apparently in a less grumpy mood) wrote:

I think what Jung meant by that is the more you identify with some ritualistic mass gatherings of flags, music, speeches and ceremony the more separated you become from yourself.

That would be a superficial way of seeing the problem of mass possession. The separation from the self would come first and the involvement second or as a result.

And in regard to Jung himself there is a side of his thought and activity that is suppressed by those who manage his intellectual estate.

And that is why I wrote:

There is a far more difficult underbelly when CG Jung and an entire new movement that developed in Central Europe at that time is examined. CG Jung embodied a significant rejection of 'the Christian imposition' and his psychological mapping, and the use of his inner self to define a path forward, most certainly involved an act of rejection of imposing Christianity. In this sense Christianity is then defined as an obstacle, as a block, and as something needing to be seen through. So all the *identifications* of those who were propelled into motion by Nietzsche's corralling of a general consensus into ideas that became activist, turned to the act of *throwing off the yoke*.

Have you thought about getting out of the house and into the fresh air?

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 8:36 pm These conversations are so useless...and boring.

Can you please direct me to the really exciting ones?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 9:17 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 8:36 pm These conversations are so useless...and boring.

Can you please direct me to the really exciting ones?

I would if I could!

No offense but these forums are a bloody waste of time which can be much better spent.

Have fun!

Btw, Jung's perspective on a psychic infestation is by a long shot secondary to the actual, real historical events leading up to the Nazi takeover. There was no infestation except that of poverty and misery. Even under those circumstances Hitler didn't win the majority he expected.

Jung can be profound; he can also be ridiculous.

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 9:44 pmNo offense but these forums are a bloody waste of time which can be much better spent.

Oh? More fun to be had!? Time better spent?! This comes as a revelation.

Doing … what?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 10:15 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 9:44 pmNo offense but these forums are a bloody waste of time which can be much better spent.

Oh? More fun to be had!? Time better spent?! This comes as a revelation.

Doing … what?

You mean to say you have no other options available to you? That indeed would come as a revelation!