Many hold on to religious beliefs for a port in the storm, something secure in a world that contradicts itself at every turn. Those who criticize the religious often claim that such sets of beliefs serve as a crutch, keeping believers from exploring beyond their beliefs for the sake of their security. But, as Jesus said, never criticize another for the splinter in his eye before removing the beam from your own.
In Carl Jung's complex diary, The Red Book, we find that no one - atheist scientist or pious religious - is free from the "crutch" that we call reality. Any numbers, any language, any signs that anchor us to one point of view - what he called the current historic reality - is necessarily and always limited. Beneath it all, he claims, there is no anchored reality. The real reality is, that there is no reality that can be codified by a name or a concept. It is beyond all that. And while this might seem like a sophist luxury, a philosophical nothing, for Jung it is anything but. Reality 'anchors' lead to real-life consequences, and they can be great - and horribly destructive.
On a lighter note, he tells us that all things labeled must reject itself (as it is not the whole), including gender roles. Jung may be the first to declare that all people are full - that no one is either wholly this or that, but share in all traits that can make up a human, including gender. The more masculine or feminine one is (according to the historic reality of the time, or contemporary culture) the more the inner contra - the other side - unconsciously rebels. The extremely masculine hates the feminine, and the extremely feminine hates the masculine. Says Jung, men ought to put on a dress now and then to feel how it is to be feminine. The self-humiliation of it, he claims, is a good thing - it will free the inner opposite and lead to greater balance. On reading this, I couldn't help but see Sean Connery as James Bond - the ultimate masculine male - dressed up in lacy pink. The laugh it caused may have been a laugh at my own masculinity, but it was a laugh none-the-less.
On the other hand, hardened ideas can lead to massive destruction. Jung first fell into the conscious perception of his unconscious in early 1914. Thinking he was going mad, he saw rivers of blood, bloated bodies, and all the horrors of war. He claimed he was relieved (for himself) when the war broke out a few months later, as it confirmed he had seen the future, not his own insanity. But, we are forced to ask, how can one see the future? How can one who claims to be a scientist say such a thing with such surety?
Jung believed it wasn't so much evil that created the war, but rather Europe's virtues. The extremely controlled and "civilized" customs of Europe at the time, he saw, necessarily held its opposite - the unleashed barbarity of war. With one, the appearance of the other was a certainty. His seeing of the future, then, was nothing more (or less) than the conscious knowledge of the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious - the expressed manner of beliefs and its shadow. The shadow was simply on the cusp of its due time. The future war, from a psychological point, was thus inevitable.
Of course, it is more complex than that, as Jung himself would agree. In fact, by labeling such a phenomena we are guaranteed to get its reverse, but we get the idea. Seen in its broader implications, we can say that reality - the ultimate reality which is the vast presence we often call God - is beyond good and evil. What this says for a broader view of religious or cultural morality is extremely hard to say, and would probably take a large book to simply state a few of the possibilities. But for our purposes here, we can see how we might understand our own world present, as well as its future. We might see that the current cultural upheavals are reactions to past certainties - but also that the changes - the "fixes" - are no better on a moral scale, but rather are simply reactions to fixes from a more distant past. As far as the future is concerned, we might want to try to grasp what is most opposite to our current world view in the West- for that would be our future. Is, for instance, the march towards relativism and multi-culturalism still relevant after over a century, or has it overplayed its hand, inviting its opposite?
What I have found is that most people - pro or con this or that - have a view that we are headed for a collapse of one kind or another, anything from nuclear war to environmental disaster to an alien invasion. In any case, most I know feel that we have gone too far - whether or not they come from the right or left perspective. But this does not necessarily mean that catastrophe it closing in on us. Rather, from Jung's perspective, the right always reaches for the left, and both reach for a center, a balance, that, in time, will call for an upset to the balance. Following this, we could certainly say that we of the West are not balanced, and probably have not been so since the Renaissance. But where are we on the pendulum? Many of Jung's time predicted war, but very few predicted the vast and lengthy war that occurred and upset the entire European hierarchy and culture. Are we at this tipping point, or merely shy of a particular goal that has yet to reach a temporary (which might mean centuries) balance?
It seems only a genius like Jung can see this future, for although it is already locked in our psyches, few have the ability to reach in that far and read it accurately. It is my belief that we are heading towards a multi-cultural one-world totality - something akin to, but perhaps not quite, a one-world dictatorship. It is not necessary that we go there, though - if we do not fully buy into the "historic reality." This, it seems to me, is simply good advice regardless, for nothing is worse than a lurching ship, one that shifts dangerously from one side to the other until it tips. To avoid absorption in the mentality of the times requires finding something in oneself that is eternal, that does not partake of current world realities. This, as Jung must have known, is what lies at the center of religion - not its does and don'ts, but its core, that for which it aims. This "that" is beyond good and evil, in a way, but as a non-ego force, it can never be truly evil. And so it seems that, by penetrating and living the unconscious that is our soul, we might prevent the worst of what otherwise seems inevitable. FK
In Carl Jung's complex diary, The Red Book, we find that no one - atheist scientist or pious religious - is free from the "crutch" that we call reality. Any numbers, any language, any signs that anchor us to one point of view - what he called the current historic reality - is necessarily and always limited. Beneath it all, he claims, there is no anchored reality. The real reality is, that there is no reality that can be codified by a name or a concept. It is beyond all that. And while this might seem like a sophist luxury, a philosophical nothing, for Jung it is anything but. Reality 'anchors' lead to real-life consequences, and they can be great - and horribly destructive.
On a lighter note, he tells us that all things labeled must reject itself (as it is not the whole), including gender roles. Jung may be the first to declare that all people are full - that no one is either wholly this or that, but share in all traits that can make up a human, including gender. The more masculine or feminine one is (according to the historic reality of the time, or contemporary culture) the more the inner contra - the other side - unconsciously rebels. The extremely masculine hates the feminine, and the extremely feminine hates the masculine. Says Jung, men ought to put on a dress now and then to feel how it is to be feminine. The self-humiliation of it, he claims, is a good thing - it will free the inner opposite and lead to greater balance. On reading this, I couldn't help but see Sean Connery as James Bond - the ultimate masculine male - dressed up in lacy pink. The laugh it caused may have been a laugh at my own masculinity, but it was a laugh none-the-less.
On the other hand, hardened ideas can lead to massive destruction. Jung first fell into the conscious perception of his unconscious in early 1914. Thinking he was going mad, he saw rivers of blood, bloated bodies, and all the horrors of war. He claimed he was relieved (for himself) when the war broke out a few months later, as it confirmed he had seen the future, not his own insanity. But, we are forced to ask, how can one see the future? How can one who claims to be a scientist say such a thing with such surety?
Jung believed it wasn't so much evil that created the war, but rather Europe's virtues. The extremely controlled and "civilized" customs of Europe at the time, he saw, necessarily held its opposite - the unleashed barbarity of war. With one, the appearance of the other was a certainty. His seeing of the future, then, was nothing more (or less) than the conscious knowledge of the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious - the expressed manner of beliefs and its shadow. The shadow was simply on the cusp of its due time. The future war, from a psychological point, was thus inevitable.
Of course, it is more complex than that, as Jung himself would agree. In fact, by labeling such a phenomena we are guaranteed to get its reverse, but we get the idea. Seen in its broader implications, we can say that reality - the ultimate reality which is the vast presence we often call God - is beyond good and evil. What this says for a broader view of religious or cultural morality is extremely hard to say, and would probably take a large book to simply state a few of the possibilities. But for our purposes here, we can see how we might understand our own world present, as well as its future. We might see that the current cultural upheavals are reactions to past certainties - but also that the changes - the "fixes" - are no better on a moral scale, but rather are simply reactions to fixes from a more distant past. As far as the future is concerned, we might want to try to grasp what is most opposite to our current world view in the West- for that would be our future. Is, for instance, the march towards relativism and multi-culturalism still relevant after over a century, or has it overplayed its hand, inviting its opposite?
What I have found is that most people - pro or con this or that - have a view that we are headed for a collapse of one kind or another, anything from nuclear war to environmental disaster to an alien invasion. In any case, most I know feel that we have gone too far - whether or not they come from the right or left perspective. But this does not necessarily mean that catastrophe it closing in on us. Rather, from Jung's perspective, the right always reaches for the left, and both reach for a center, a balance, that, in time, will call for an upset to the balance. Following this, we could certainly say that we of the West are not balanced, and probably have not been so since the Renaissance. But where are we on the pendulum? Many of Jung's time predicted war, but very few predicted the vast and lengthy war that occurred and upset the entire European hierarchy and culture. Are we at this tipping point, or merely shy of a particular goal that has yet to reach a temporary (which might mean centuries) balance?
It seems only a genius like Jung can see this future, for although it is already locked in our psyches, few have the ability to reach in that far and read it accurately. It is my belief that we are heading towards a multi-cultural one-world totality - something akin to, but perhaps not quite, a one-world dictatorship. It is not necessary that we go there, though - if we do not fully buy into the "historic reality." This, it seems to me, is simply good advice regardless, for nothing is worse than a lurching ship, one that shifts dangerously from one side to the other until it tips. To avoid absorption in the mentality of the times requires finding something in oneself that is eternal, that does not partake of current world realities. This, as Jung must have known, is what lies at the center of religion - not its does and don'ts, but its core, that for which it aims. This "that" is beyond good and evil, in a way, but as a non-ego force, it can never be truly evil. And so it seems that, by penetrating and living the unconscious that is our soul, we might prevent the worst of what otherwise seems inevitable. FK
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