[Enigma]

The passages in this thread are taken from The Undiscovered Self (specifically the first three chapters), which is one of the very last works released by Jung before his death, originally published in 1957 and republished as part of Vol. 10 of his Collected Works in 1970.

They detail Jung's thoughts on:

- the insufficiencies of scientific rationalism as the sole means of interpreting the world
- man's psychological need for religion and the importance of viewing religion through the proper lens
- the causes of Communism and how it seeks to replace religion

I think the parallels to modern society and politics will be obvious, and those of you who are familiar with Jordan Peterson will probably recognize the main themes of his teachings here.

Quote:

Historically, it is chiefly in times of physical, political, economic, and spiritual distress that men’s eyes turn with anxious hope to the future, and when anticipations, utopias, and apocalyptic visions multiply.
...
Today, as the end of the second millennium draws near, we are again living in an age filled with apocalyptic images of universal destruction. What is the significance of that split, symbolized by the “Iron Curtain,” which divides humanity into two halves? What will become of our civilization, and of man himself, if the hydrogen bombs begin to go off, or if the spiritual and moral darkness of State absolutism should spread over Europe?

Jung sets the stage here with the problems faced by the Western world. Though the "Iron Curtain" no longer exists, the "split ... which divides humanity into two halves" is still very relevant.

That split would be between the materialist and spiritual, conscious and unconscious, objective and subjective, West and East.

Quote:

Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population.

In context, the "subversive minorities" Jung is talking about would refer specifically to Communists but also include other groups, and the implications here are wide ranging: the West's humanitarianism is easily subverted and used against it by groups that want to do it harm.

Quote:

A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified either, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man’s outstanding peculiarities, and even where it exists it proves to be wavering and inconstant, the more so, as a rule, the bigger the political groups are. The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness.

[...]

Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies.

This begins an important theme here, which is the failure of a purely "rationalist" viewpoint to handle social and political issues.

Even at the best of times, reason can be difficult and inconsistent, and it becomes even more futile as the size of the group and the emotions of the situation increase.

Quote:

That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic. Under these conditions all those elements whose existence is merely tolerated as asocial under the rule of reason come to the top. Such individuals are by no means rare curiosities to be met with only in prisons and lunatic asylums. For every manifest case of insanity there are, in my estimation, at least ten latent cases who seldom get to the point of breaking out openly but whose views and behaviour, for all their appearance of normality, are influenced unconsciously by pathological and perverse factors.

...

Their chimerical ideas, sustained by fanatical resentment, appeal to the collective irrationality and find fruitful soil there; they express all those motives and resentments which lurk in more normal people under the cloak of reason and insight. They are, therefore, despite their small number in comparison with the population as a whole, dangerous as sources of infection precisely because the so-called normal person possesses only a limited degree of self-knowledge.

As reason breaks down, irrationality takes hold, fringe ideas start to bubble to the surface, fueled by ulterior motives and resentments, and infect the masses.

Quote:

Apart from the agglomeration of huge masses in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass-mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of his foundations and his dignity. As a social unit he has lost his individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. He can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance.

This all happens more easily when man, as an individual, is separated from his spiritual, moral, emotional, etc. foundations by a purely rationalist viewpoint.

As pointed out in the last passage, the more extreme and pathological elements of society are "dangerous as sources of infection precisely because the so-called normal person possesses only a limited degree of self-knowledge

Quote:

In this way the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which in its turn usurps the function of the real life carrier, whereas, in actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea like the State. Both are hypostatized, that is, have become autonomous. The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. Thus the constitutional State drifts into the situation of a primitive form of society—the communism of a primitive tribe where everybody is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or an oligarchy.

In order to free the fiction of the sovereign State—in other words, the whims of the chieftains who manipulate it—from every wholesome restriction, all socio-political movements tending in this direction invariably try to cut the ground from under religion. For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything else must be taken from him. Religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience. These do not refer directly to social and physical conditions; they concern far more the individual’s psychic attitude.

The Communist State seeks to destroy religion, removing man's defense to the material world, and replace it.

[Enigma]

Quote:

Religion, however, teaches another authority opposed to that of the “world.” The doctrine of the individual’s dependence on God makes just as high a claim upon him as the world does. It may even happen that the absoluteness of this claim estranges him from the world in the same way as he is estranged from himself when he succumbs to the collective mentality. He can forfeit his judgment and power of decision in the former case (for the sake of religious doctrine) quite as much as in the latter. This is the goal which religion openly aspires to unless it compromises with the State. When it does so, I prefer to call it not “religion” but a “creed.” A creed gives expression to a definite collective belief, whereas the word religion expresses a subjective relationship to certain metaphysical, extramundane factors. A creed is a confession of faith intended chiefly for the world at large and is thus an intramundane affair, while the meaning and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or to the path of salvation and liberation (Buddhism). From this basic fact all ethics is derived, which without the individual’s responsibility before God can be called nothing more than conventional morality.

Jung makes the important distinction between religion and what he calls a "creed".

"A creed is a confession of faith intended chiefly for the world at large and is thus an intramundane affair, while the meaning and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God" -- in short, religion is not about virtue signaling.

Quote:

Since they are compromises with mundane reality, the creeds have accordingly seen themselves obliged to undertake a progressive codification of their views, doctrines, and customs, and in so doing have externalized themselves to such an extent that the authentic religious element in them—the living relationship to and direct confrontation with their extramundane point of reference—has been thrust into the background.
...
A creed coincides with the established Church or, at any rate, forms a public institution whose members include not only true believers but vast numbers of people who can only be described as “indifferent” in matters of religion and who belong to it simply by force of habit. Here the difference between a creed and a religion becomes palpable.

This should be very familiar, since most of what constitutes modern "religion" would actually fall under Jung's description of a "creed", where the Church is filled with "vast numbers of people who can only be described as 'indifferent' in matters of religion and who only belong to it simply by force of habit".

The churches have tried to compromise with the material world and lost their relationships to the spiritual world. Look no further than the current Pope for extreme evidence of "progressive codification of their views, doctrines, and customs".

Quote:

To be the adherent of a creed, therefore, is not always a religious matter but more often a social one and, as such, it does nothing to give the individual any foundation. For this he has to depend exclusively on his relation to an authority which is not of this world. The criterion here is not lip service to a creed but the psychological fact that the life of the individual is not determined solely by the ego and its opinions or by social factors, but quite as much, if not more, by a transcendent authority. It is not ethical principles, however lofty, or creeds, however orthodox, that lay the foundations for the freedom and autonomy of the individual, but simply and solely the empirical awareness, the incontrovertible experience of an intensely personal, reciprocal relationship between man and an extramundane authority which acts as a counterpoise to the “world” and its “reason.”

...
Since I do not presume to any metaphysical judgments, I must leave it an open question whether the “world,” i.e., the phenomenal world of man, and hence nature in general, is the “opposite” of God or not. I can only point to the fact that the psychological opposition between these two realms of experience is not only vouched for in the New Testament but is still exemplified very plainly today in the negative attitude of the dictator States to religion and of the Church to atheism and materialism.

It is not social factors, the individual's ego, ethical principles, or creeds that provide man his religious foundation -- it is his "intensely personal, reciprocal relationship" with "an authority which is not of this world".

Quote:

Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence and his own spiritual and moral autonomy anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world. For this he needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass.

Such a great passage. "The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own to the physical and moral blandishments of the world".

Quote:

Merely intellectual or even moral insight into the stultification and moral irresponsibility of the mass man is a negative recognition only and amounts to not much more than a wavering on the road to the atomization of the individual. It lacks the driving force of religious conviction, since it is merely rational.

Intellectual, rational, or moral insights lack the power to provide the driving force for true individual or societal change.

Quote:

The State takes the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevailing trend towards mass-mindedness. The result, as always in such cases, is overcompensation in the form of fanaticism, which in its turn is used as a weapon for stamping out the least flicker of opposition. Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest. The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honoured as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.

The State can not properly fill man's need for religion, and so his doubts must be suppressed and stamped out by the masses. We're seeing all of these symptoms playing out in the West today.

Quote:

Religion, as the careful observation and taking account of certain invisible and uncontrollable factors, is an instinctive attitude peculiar to man, and its manifestations can be followed all through human history. Its evident purpose is to maintain the psychic balance, for the natural man has an equally natural “knowledge” of the fact that his conscious functions may at any time be thwarted by uncontrollable happenings coming from inside as well as from outside.

Jung believed that man's religious function was deeply ingrained in his psychology, as opposed to Freud, who believed religion was a form of pathology created by repression.

In Jung's view, religion provides the balance to man's conscious, knowledge-based, rational view of the world and helps him explains the things that are unexplainable. It helps him control the parts of himself that he doesn't understand.

[Enigma]

Quote:

Everywhere and at all times there have been rites d’entrée et de sortie whose efficacy is impugned as magic and superstition by rationalists incapable of psychological insight. But magic has above all a psychological effect whose importance should not be underestimated. The performance of a “magical” action gives the person concerned a feeling of security which is absolutely essential for carrying out a decision, because a decision is inevitably somewhat one-sided and is therefore rightly felt to be a risk. Even a dictator thinks it necessary not only to accompany his acts of State with threats but to stage them with all manner of solemnities. Brass bands, flags, banners, parades, and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades, and fireworks to scare off demons. Only, the suggestive parade of State power engenders a collective feeling of security which, unlike religious demonstrations, gives the individual no protection against his inner demonism. Hence he will cling all the more to the power of the State, i.e., to the mass, thus delivering himself up to it psychically as well as morally and putting the finishing touch to his social depotentiation. The State, like the Church, demands enthusiasm, selfsacrifice, and love, and if religion requires or presupposes the “fear of God,” then the dictator State takes good care to provide the necessary terror.

Jung points out the psychological value of "magic", meaning the rituals, sacrifices, religious rites, etc. that have been performed by all manners of cultures over the millennia.

"The performance of a “magical” action gives the person concerned a feeling of security which is absolutely essential for carrying out a decision" -- consider ancient armies who would make a sacrifice or call on the gods before a major battle to decide when and where to attack.

Quote:

When the rationalist directs the main force of his attack against the miraculous effect of the rite as asserted by tradition, he has in reality completely missed the mark. The essential point, the psychological effect, is overlooked, although both parties make use of it for directly opposite purposes.

Jung is not claiming that these rituals are literally magic, he is pointing out that they are not simply "superstition", as rationalists would claim -- they provide a psychological benefit.

This is why the Communist dictatorships use similar pageantry to control their subjects.

Quote:

The goals of religion—deliverance from evil, reconciliation with God, rewards in the hereafter, and so on—turn into worldly promises about freedom from care for one’s daily bread, the just distribution of material goods, universal prosperity in the future, and shorter working hours. That the fulfilment of these promises is as far off as Paradise only furnishes yet another analogy and underlines the fact that the masses have been converted from an extramundane goal to a purely worldly belief, which is extolled with exactly the same religious fervour and exclusiveness that the creeds display in the other direction.

Marxist ideology, at its core, makes very similar promises to Christianity -- but applies them from a materialistic perspective, rather than a spiritual one.

Quote:

In order not to repeat myself unnecessarily, I shall not enumerate all the parallels between worldly and otherworldly beliefs, but shall content myself with emphasizing the fact that a natural function which has existed from the beginning, like the religious function, cannot be disposed of with rationalistic and so-called enlightened criticism.

Religion, in the sense of conscientious regard for the irrational factors of the psyche and individual fate, reappears—evilly distorted—in the deification of the State and the dictator: Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret (You can throw out Nature with a pitchfork, but she’ll always turn up again). The leaders and dictators, having weighed up the situation correctly, are therefore doing their best to gloss over the all too obvious parallel with the deification of Caesar and to hide their real power behind the fiction of the State, though this, of course, alters nothing.

"Rationalistic and so-called enlightened criticism" is not enough to destroy man's religious function -- as the likes of the radical left and the Freudians believed.

It will simply take another form. In this case, the State replaces God and the State leaders become deified like Caesar.

[Enigma]

Quote:

As I have already pointed out, the dictator State, besides robbing the individual of his rights, has also cut the ground from under his feet psychically by depriving him of the metaphysical foundations of his existence. The ethical decision of the individual human being no longer counts—what alone matters is the blind movement of the masses, and the lie thus becomes the operative principle of political action. The State has drawn the logical conclusions from this, as the existence of many millions of State slaves completely deprived of all rights mutely testifies.
...
As can easily be seen, “community” is an indispensable aid in the organization of masses and is therefore a two-edged weapon. Just as the addition of however many zeros will never make a unit, so the value of a community depends on the spiritual and moral stature of the individuals composing it. For this reason one cannot expect from the community any effect that would outweigh the suggestive influence of the environment—that is, a real and fundamental change in individuals, whether for good or for bad. Such changes can come only from the personal encounter between man and man, but not from communistic or Christian baptisms en masse, which do not touch the inner man. How superficial the effect of communal propaganda actually is can be seen from recent events in Eastern Europe. The communal ideal reckons without its host, overlooking the individual human being, who in the end will assert his claims.

To be clear, Jung was not a hyper-individualist. As with most of his ideas, he believed there must be a balance between the "opposites". A strong community requires strong individuals, and a strong individual requires a strong community.

A community, such as a creed or Communist ideal, which ignores the individual will fail; and an individual separating himself from his family, nation, etc. is equally foolish. It is his relationship to the group he is a part of that helps define the man as an individual.

Quote:

How can this development be brought to a standstill or put into reverse? It is useless to pillory the socialist dictatorship as utopian and to condemn its economic principles as unreasonable, because, in the first place, the criticizing West has only itself to talk to, its arguments being heard only on this side of the Iron Curtain, and, in the second place, any economic principles you like can be put into practice so long as you are prepared to accept the sacrifices they entail. You can carry through any social and economic reforms you please if, like Stalin, you let three million peasants starve to death and have a few million unpaid labourers at your disposal.

Just as reason can not destroy the religious function, it is insufficient when dealing with Communism.

Quote:

The absolute State has an army of fanatical missionaries to do its bidding in matters of foreign policy, and these in their turn can count on a fifth column who are guaranteed asylum under the laws and constitutions of the Western States.
...
The West has unfortunately not yet woken up to the fact that our appeal to idealism and reason and other desirable virtues, delivered with so much enthusiasm, is mere bombination in the void. It is a puff of wind swept away in the storm of religious faith, however twisted this faith may appear to us. We are faced, not with a situation that can be overcome by rational or moral arguments, but with an unleashing of emotional forces and ideas engendered by the spirit of the times; and these, as we know from experience, are not much influenced by rational reflection and still less by moral exhortation. It has been correctly realized in many quarters that the alexipharmic, the antidote, should in this case be an equally potent faith of a different and non-materialistic kind, and that the religious attitude grounded upon it would be the only effective defence against the danger of psychic infection. Unhappily, the little word “should,” which never fails to appear in this connection, points to a certain weakness, if not the absence, of this desideratum. Not only does the West lack a uniform faith that could block the progress of a fanatical ideology, but, as the father of Marxist philosophy, it makes use of exactly the same intellectual assumptions, the same arguments and aims.

This is an incredible passage.

The counter to Marxism is not rational or moral criticism; because Marxism feeds on those same arguments. The antidote is an "equally potent faith of a different and non-materialistic kind".

And as he pointed out previously, it's the "laws and constitutions of the Western States" that allows these subversives to operate and take hold unmolested, taking advantage of Western ideals of justice.

Quote:

In early times and until comparatively recently there was, therefore, talk of “powers ordained by God” (Romans 13:1). Today this conception is antiquated. The Churches stand for traditional and collective convictions which in the case of many of their adherents are no longer based on their own inner experience but on unreflecting belief, which is notoriously apt to disappear as soon as one begins thinking about it. The content of belief then comes into collision with knowledge, and it often turns out that the irrationality of the former is no match for the ratiocinations of the latter. Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled pistis into us—that is, trust and loyalty.

"Unreflecting belief" is not enough to counter the material world. The "true religious experience" is not faith, but the inner experience that created that faith, that instilled in the individual the trust and loyalty in a higher power.

"I don't need to believe [in God]; I know" -- C.G. Jung, 1959 (two years before his death)

Quote:

That is to say, the standpoint of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if taken literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge. But if, for instance, the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement.
…
The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once?

Explaining and defending religion from a rational, literal, material perspective is a fool's game. It must be understood symbolically.

This is why you see Jordan Peterson gaining so much popularity with his talks on religion and subjective truth. He doesn't get bogged down in trying to defend Biblical stories literally.

Quote:

Both demand unqualified submission to faith and thus curtail man’s freedom, the one his freedom before God and the other his freedom before the State, thereby digging the grave for the individual. The fragile existence of this—so far as we know—unique carrier of life is threatened on both sides, despite their respective promises of spiritual and material idylls to come—and how many of us can in the long run fight against the proverbial wisdom of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”?
...
What, then, has the West, with its political and denominational schisms, to offer to modern man in his need? Nothing, unfortunately, except a variety of paths all leading to one goal which is practically indistinguishable from the Marxist ideal. It requires no special effort of understanding to see where the Communist ideology gets the certainty of its belief that time is on its side, and that the world is ripe for conversion. The facts speak a language that is all too plain in this respect. It will not help us in the West to shut our eyes to this and not recognize our fatal vulnerability. Anyone who has once learned to submit absolutely to a collective belief and to renounce his eternal right to freedom and the equally eternal duty of individual responsibility will persist in this attitude, and will be able to march with the same credulity and the same lack of criticism in the reverse direction, if another and manifestly “better” belief is foisted upon his alleged idealism.
...
Common to both is the materialistic and collectivist goal, and both lack the very thing that expresses and grips the whole man, namely, an idea which puts the individual human being in the centre as the measure of all things.

Again Jung points out the similarities between Christianity (as a creed) and Communism. And when these or other paths are so similar to the Marxist ideal, man is hard-pressed not to take "the bird in the hand", i.e., the materialistic, worldly path.

Quote:

This proud picture of human grandeur is unfortunately an illusion and is counterbalanced by a reality that is very different. In this reality man is the slave and victim of the machines that have conquered space and time for him; he is intimidated and endangered by the might of the military technology which is supposed to safeguard his physical existence; his spiritual and moral freedom, though guaranteed within limits in one half of his world, is threatened with chaotic disorientation, and in the other half is abolished altogether.
[…]
All his achievements and possessions do not make him bigger; on the contrary, they diminish him, as the fate of the factory-worker under the rule of a “just” distribution of goods clearly demonstrates.

Our progress in the material world has not liberated us, since we've neglected our spirituality and morality. We now have world-destroying military technology standing on top of spiritual and moral decay, making our fate even more precarious than ever.

Quote:

As I have already pointed out, the dictator State, besides robbing the individual of his rights, has also cut the ground from under his feet psychically by depriving him of the metaphysical foundations of his existence. The ethical decision of the individual human being no longer counts—what alone matters is the blind movement of the masses, and the lie thus becomes the operative principle of political action. The State has drawn the logical conclusions from this, as the existence of many millions of State slaves completely deprived of all rights mutely testifies.
...
As can easily be seen, “community” is an indispensable aid in the organization of masses and is therefore a two-edged weapon. Just as the addition of however many zeros will never make a unit, so the value of a community depends on the spiritual and moral stature of the individuals composing it. For this reason one cannot expect from the community any effect that would outweigh the suggestive influence of the environment—that is, a real and fundamental change in individuals, whether for good or for bad. Such changes can come only from the personal encounter between man and man, but not from communistic or Christian baptisms en masse, which do not touch the inner man. How superficial the effect of communal propaganda actually is can be seen from recent events in Eastern Europe. The communal ideal reckons without its host, overlooking the individual human being, who in the end will assert his claims.

To be clear, Jung was not a hyper-individualist. As with most of his ideas, he believed there must be a balance between the "opposites". A strong community requires strong individuals, and a strong individual requires a strong community.

A community, such as a creed or Communist ideal, which ignores the individual will fail; and an individual separating himself from his family, nation, etc. is equally foolish. It is his relationship to the group he is a part of that helps define the man as an individual.

Quote:

How can this development be brought to a standstill or put into reverse? It is useless to pillory the socialist dictatorship as utopian and to condemn its economic principles as unreasonable, because, in the first place, the criticizing West has only itself to talk to, its arguments being heard only on this side of the Iron Curtain, and, in the second place, any economic principles you like can be put into practice so long as you are prepared to accept the sacrifices they entail. You can carry through any social and economic reforms you please if, like Stalin, you let three million peasants starve to death and have a few million unpaid labourers at your disposal.

Just as reason can not destroy the religious function, it is insufficient when dealing with Communism.

Quote:

The absolute State has an army of fanatical missionaries to do its bidding in matters of foreign policy, and these in their turn can count on a fifth column who are guaranteed asylum under the laws and constitutions of the Western States.
...
The West has unfortunately not yet woken up to the fact that our appeal to idealism and reason and other desirable virtues, delivered with so much enthusiasm, is mere bombination in the void. It is a puff of wind swept away in the storm of religious faith, however twisted this faith may appear to us. We are faced, not with a situation that can be overcome by rational or moral arguments, but with an unleashing of emotional forces and ideas engendered by the spirit of the times; and these, as we know from experience, are not much influenced by rational reflection and still less by moral exhortation. It has been correctly realized in many quarters that the alexipharmic, the antidote, should in this case be an equally potent faith of a different and non-materialistic kind, and that the religious attitude grounded upon it would be the only effective defence against the danger of psychic infection. Unhappily, the little word “should,” which never fails to appear in this connection, points to a certain weakness, if not the absence, of this desideratum. Not only does the West lack a uniform faith that could block the progress of a fanatical ideology, but, as the father of Marxist philosophy, it makes use of exactly the same intellectual assumptions, the same arguments and aims.

This is an incredible passage.

The counter to Marxism is not rational or moral criticism; because Marxism feeds on those same arguments. The antidote is an "equally potent faith of a different and non-materialistic kind".

Quote:

In early times and until comparatively recently there was, therefore, talk of “powers ordained by God” (Romans 13:1). Today this conception is antiquated. The Churches stand for traditional and collective convictions which in the case of many of their adherents are no longer based on their own inner experience but on unreflecting belief, which is notoriously apt to disappear as soon as one begins thinking about it. The content of belief then comes into collision with knowledge, and it often turns out that the irrationality of the former is no match for the ratiocinations of the latter. Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled pistis into us—that is, trust and loyalty.

"Unreflecting belief" is not enough to counter the material world. The "true religious experience" is not faith, but the inner experience that created that faith, that instilled in the individual the trust and loyalty in a higher power.

"I don't need to believe [in God]; I know" -- C.G. Jung, 1959 (two years before his death)

Quote:

That is to say, the standpoint of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if taken literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge. But if, for instance, the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement.
…
The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once?

Explaining and defending religion from a rational, literal, material perspective is a fool's game. It must be understood symbolically.

This is why you see Jordan Peterson gaining so much popularity with his talks on religion and subjective truth. He doesn't get bogged down in trying to defend Biblical stories literally.

Quote:

Both demand unqualified submission to faith and thus curtail man’s freedom, the one his freedom before God and the other his freedom before the State, thereby digging the grave for the individual. The fragile existence of this—so far as we know—unique carrier of life is threatened on both sides, despite their respective promises of spiritual and material idylls to come—and how many of us can in the long run fight against the proverbial wisdom of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”?
...
What, then, has the West, with its political and denominational schisms, to offer to modern man in his need? Nothing, unfortunately, except a variety of paths all leading to one goal which is practically indistinguishable from the Marxist ideal. It requires no special effort of understanding to see where the Communist ideology gets the certainty of its belief that time is on its side, and that the world is ripe for conversion. The facts speak a language that is all too plain in this respect. It will not help us in the West to shut our eyes to this and not recognize our fatal vulnerability. Anyone who has once learned to submit absolutely to a collective belief and to renounce his eternal right to freedom and the equally eternal duty of individual responsibility will persist in this attitude, and will be able to march with the same credulity and the same lack of criticism in the reverse direction, if another and manifestly “better” belief is foisted upon his alleged idealism.
...
Common to both is the materialistic and collectivist goal, and both lack the very thing that expresses and grips the whole man, namely, an idea which puts the individual human being in the centre as the measure of all things.

Again Jung points out the similarities between Christianity (as a creed) and Communism. And when these or other paths are so similar to the Marxist ideal, man is hard-pressed not to take "the bird in the hand", i.e., the materialistic, worldly path.

Quote:

This proud picture of human grandeur is unfortunately an illusion and is counterbalanced by a reality that is very different. In this reality man is the slave and victim of the machines that have conquered space and time for him; he is intimidated and endangered by the might of the military technology which is supposed to safeguard his physical existence; his spiritual and moral freedom, though guaranteed within limits in one half of his world, is threatened with chaotic disorientation, and in the other half is abolished altogether.
[…]
All his achievements and possessions do not make him bigger; on the contrary, they diminish him, as the fate of the factory-worker under the rule of a “just” distribution of goods clearly demonstrates.

Our progress in the material world has not liberated us, since we've neglected our spirituality and morality. We now have world-destroying military technology standing on top of spiritual and moral decay, making our fate even more precarious than ever.

[ProGambler]

Great post again.

[luckyfever]

Enigma, thanks for sharing. Would you consider Jordan Peterson's teachings to be the practical application of Jung's thoughts?

[Super_Fire]

"I don't need to believe [in God]; I know" -- C.G. Jung, 1959 (two years before his death)

[Enigma]

(01-17-2018 07:18 PM)luckyfever Wrote:  

Enigma, thanks for sharing. Would you consider Jordan Peterson's teachings to be the practical application of Jung's thoughts?

That's a decent summary of it, since many of the core tenets of Peterson's philosophy come directly from Jung, like interpreting the Bible metaphorically, changing society by changing the individual, etc. Jung was also a big fan of Nietzsche, a major critic of Communism, etc.

At the same time, Jung was a big believer in things like dream interpretation, meditation, active imagination, etc., which I haven't heard Peterson talk about. Jung was also a big critic of Freud later in life, for instance.

But like you said, his is the more "practical" version, a sort of distillation of Jung with some other major influences thrown in.