This article is a continuation of a series evaluating the insights into statism and political servitude as found in The Undiscovered Self by Dr. Carl Jung. All citations are for pages from that text. In the last few articles we read, Dr. Jung explained that the size of the State was so massive that the individual man, unless he was “as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself,” would be left existentially, and sometimes literally, crushed by the sheer might of the State. Dr. Jung also explained how the State could seduce people into a lifelong childhood by promising to provide all the person may need in exchange for the promise of subservience and obedience to those in political power. The result of this would be a terrible “physical and spiritual slavery” that would reduce individuals to begging for their individual freedom from “his executioners, the spokesmen of the masses,” – the politicians in power who have neither a need nor desire to hear voices of those crying for liberty. (pg. 42-43)
Arrayed against this stood the power of religion with its ability to use mythic symbolism to teach morality and motivate human conduct through channels of influence and power not only separate from the State but, very often, at total odds with it. However, true religion requires great effort to study, to meditate upon, and to transform the inner Man. And because it is harder and ignorance is easier, many men find themselves lost in darkness looking for something to give him easy clarity and easy purpose. This is where we pick up with Dr. Jung talking about how “our opponents” – the politicians who wield the power and institutions of the State – benefit from this attitude to get us to love our chains:
“This is not surprising, since practically all the trump cards are in the hands of our opponents. They can appeal to the big battalions and their crushing power. Politics, science and technology stand ranged on their side. The imposing arguments of science represent the highest degree of intellectual certainty yet achieved by the mind of man. So at least it seems to the man of today, who has received hundred-fold enlightenment concerning the backwardness and darkness of past ages and their superstitions. That his teachers have themselves gone seriously astray by making false comparisons between incommensurable factors never enters his head. All the more so as the intellectual elite to whom he puts his questions are almost unanimously agreed that what science regards as impossible today was impossible at all other times as well.
Above all, the facts of faith, which might give him the chance of an extramundane standpoint, are treated in the same context as the facts of science. Thus, when the individual questions the Churches and their spokesmen, to whom is entrusted the cure of souls, he is informed that membership in a creed – a decidedly worldly institution – is more or less de rigueur for religious belief; that the facts of faith which have become questionable for him were concrete historical events; that certain ritual actions produce miraculous effects; and that the sufferings of Christ have vicariously saved him from sin and its consequences (i.e., eternal damnation). If, with the limited means at his disposal, he begins to reflect on these things, he will have to confess that he does not understand them at all and that only two possibilities are open to him: either to believe implicitly, or to reject such statements because they are flatly incomprehensible.” (pg. 45, paragraphization added.)
The dichotomy of natural vs. supernatural – enlightenment vs. dark age superstition as Dr. Jung put it – is a perpetuated false dichotomy that serves the purposes of asserting false superiority, not revealing truth, and it leads to a manifold of errors. It exists so those who refuse to acknowledge God can use it to explain why their supposed all-encompassing rationalist and secular philosophy is unable to answer some of even the most basic questions about human existence. Think of the many people today who declare that they cannot believe in religion because of the way it clashes with the truths discovered by science.
The following quote from the article Yes, there is a war between science and religion provides us a perfect example of what Dr. Jung is talking about above, “I’ll construe ‘science’ as the set of tools we use to find truth about the universe, with the understanding that these truths are provisional rather than absolute.” The common error here is one that is repeated endlessly, that science reveals truths about the Universe. This, of course, is patently absurd.
As Dr. Jung says above, religion and science are incommensurable, meaning that there are no common factors between the two by which they can be judged against one another. Science reveals facts about the way that the Universe appears to function. It doesn’t reveal truths about anything. Truth exists in discovering the purpose and essence of existence, not in describing its mechanical functions. Understanding the combustion engine doesn’t reveal the true purpose behind owning a car and understanding evolution doesn’t reveal the truth of Creation. The confusion between knowing facts and knowing truth leads many into errors and ignorance.
The effect of having our intellectual horizons so stunted by scientism – the faith that fact is the same as truth and that any scientific assertion of the moment is to be treated as Absolute Truth – is that it renders us unable to assert our individuality. We are no longer able to grasp the greater truths of the Universe because the limits of our comprehension have been reduced to mere mechanistic assertions about what does and doesn’t “work.” We find we have been mentally and spiritually crippled, unable to experience or understand truths beyond the limited comprehension and blindness we have been taught to have.
The ultimate outcome of all this intellectual hamstringing is that morality is strangled, reduced to the domain of mere statistics and collective action – the very domain wherein the State dominates and exerts control. Our individual humanity is crushed by the faith humans put in the numbers the Machine spits out telling them which designs of those experts in power we must serve today.