This week we continue our study into the nature of statism (“state-ism”) and political servitude based on the insights found in The Undiscovered Self by Dr. Carl Jung. Last time we discovered that without some sense of ethics and morality outside of the authority of men to which we humans are beholden, human ethics ultimately descends into whatever monstrosity it can justify through secular reasoning. Far from being a check on atomic warfare and extermination camps, science becomes the process by which genocides are justified. The necessity of religion then is that it provides an eternal ethical code which humans are beholden to obey, which provides some outlying limit that society simply will not allow. This in turn limits the ability of those in power to act, to do whatever they want even if it is justified on paper. We pick up with the ramifications of the ideology of Statism on the mind and soul of man:
The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa. (pg. 72)
Often today we hear the supposed dangers of individualism as if believing in the inherit value and dignity of each individual person and their right to live their lives peacefully according to the dictates of their own conscience is a threat to society. But here Dr. Jung draws a distinction here between the individual and the atomization caused by the State. What many people today call “individualism” is not individualism, it is atomization. And it is not caused by capitalism, or classical liberalism, or religion. It is caused, intentionally, by the State as a means of mass control.
Under the pressures and propaganda of the State the human is reduced to a number whose life and dreams can be manipulated at will in order to achieve the utopian fantasies of those in power. The programs of State are always sold as being good for the individual but treat him or her as but one of the mass collectives by which the statist statisticians define society – Black, White, male, female, foreigner, native, etc. The goal is to destroy the inherent individuality of each person, to convince them that they are defined by the social classes invented by academics and scientists in service of government authority. Once they surrender their individual desires and thoughts to the mass identity and approved beliefs for their groups, authentic human relationships begin to breakdown under the weight of ideology. We find ourselves more isolated and more easily taken advantage of than ever before.
This is what Dr. Friedrich von Hayek once referred to as “rationalistic pseudo-individualism which also leads to practical collectivism.” Everyone and everything are neatly defined and categorized according to their biology and sociology with nothing lost but their humanity, their individuality. The State tells you that it thinks of you as a person when in reality it thinks of you as but a number – a statistic devoid of a soul.
True individualism counters this and lays the foundations for true communities to develop voluntarily upon the basis of mutual relationships and peace across all boundaries. Without this freedom you can never obtain any form of true social, racial, economic, or political integration. People forced to live with those they hate and distrust do not come to love their enemies, they discover newer reasons to hate them even more than ever before. But when human individuality is recognized, you see the old ways of distrust and hate begins to breakdown. Not all at once, but over time as people interact with others on a basis of mutual choice and mutual benefit, they learn to respect each other. Respect leads to trust. Trust leads to friendship. Friendship destroys hate, intolerance, ignorance, and bigotry. Communities are formed out of the ashes of distrust and upon the foundations of humanity.
So where does one begin to counter the atomization of the State and assert the individual value of each human? With your Self, Jung explains:
There can be no doubt that in the democracies too the distance between man and man is much greater than is conducive to public welfare or beneficial to our psychic needs. True, all sorts of attempts are being made to level out glaring social contrasts by appealing to people’s idealism, enthusiasm and ethical conscience; but, characteristically, one forgets to apply the necessary self-criticism, to answer the question: Who is making the idealistic demand? Is it, perchance, someone who jumps over his own shadow in order to hurl himself avidly on an idealistic program that promises him a welcome alibi? How much respectability and apparent morality is there, cloaking with deceptive colors a very different inner world of darkness? One would first like to be assured that the man who talks of ideals is himself ideal, so that his words and deeds are more than they seem. (pgs. 72-73)
You begin with yourself. Do not deny your own failures, do not excuse your own flaws, do not ignore your own sins. Rather, recognize your own fallen nature. Before you cast the first stone of judgment and vengeance upon others for their sins, become sinless yourself. Before you seek to change the world to become your utopia, first perfect your own self and make your own home a utopia. Before you seek to judge others, first cleanse your own inner vessel of all injustice. In other words, before you try and change the world, clean your own room. If you can’t, if this work is beyond you, then who are you to tell others how to live? With no authority to tell others how to live, how can you claim the power of the government to force people to live any specific way?
You can’t.
And with the general acceptance of that truth, the State crumbles.
Source: thelatterdayliberator.com