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 the State has replaced God in the hearts and minds of men. Where men used to worship Gods, humans now worship Governments and, because of the nature of human government, the end result of this process has been the bloodiest, most horrific bloodshed and mass oppression in human history. Continuing to build on the insights of Dr. Jung, we will now explore how and why we empower the Cult of the State through our actions.
Dr. Jung starts off by explaining how modern people find themselves divided between their conscious beliefs – the things they’ve been taught to think and understand about the world all their lives – and the subconscious truths that they know instinctively. The conflict between these two, if not reconciled, leads not only to a divided individual, warring between his conscious and unconscious selves, but a neurotic and divided society where the individual personal war is acted out externally through mass political action. When the majority of your society is mentally unbalanced, your entire society becomes insane.
“Separation from his instinctual nature inevitably plunges civilized man into the conflict between conscious and unconscious, spirit and nature, knowledge and faith, a split that becomes pathological the moment his consciousness is no longer able to neglect or suppress his instinctual side. The accumulation of individuals who have got into this critical state starts off a mass movement purporting to be the champion of the suppressed. In accordance with the prevailing tendency of consciousness to seek the source of all ills in the outside world, the cry goes up for political and social changes which, it is supposed, would automatically solve the much deeper problem of split personality. Hence it is that whenever this demand is fulfilled, political and social conditions arise which bring the same ills back again in altered form. What then happens is a simple reversal: the underside comes to the top and the shadow takes the place of the light, and since the former is always anarchic and turbulent, the freedom of the “liberated” underdog must suffer Draconian curtailment. All this is unavoidable, because the root of the evil is untouched and merely the counterposition has come to light.” (Self, pg. 58)
I don’t think I’ve read a better explanation of the chaos in the streets – the protests and counter-protests, the violence, brutality, and hatred promoted as justice, the continual vacillation of society between political parties, always looking for one to save them from the other, of the poison of modern politics. Unable to solve what is essentially an internal problem – the emotional, mental, and spiritual malaise that seems to have infected all of society – we have externalized it. The problem originates not with us, but some Other group or problem and the masses must organize to destroy the existing order and reform it by eliminating the scapegoated Other and bring society into conformity with the ideal. By doing this the masses, and the individual who belongs to that mass, hope to heal the division within their self.
Because we have externalized and politicized our own mental instability, the natural organization to which one looks to exert such a powerful reformation is of course the government, the State. With its “big battalions and crushing power” we make the dream a reality by punishing the heretic and compelling the resistant though overwhelming force, with ultimate faith in the belief that if we can heal the external world then we can heal our internal self.
In this political competition, the political parties take turns acting as the individual shadow and light of the masses. For the Democrat, the Republican becomes the shadow – the monster upon which the Democrat can externalize all those internal monsters which she hates about herself. The Democratic Party becomes the light side which will act as the vehicle by which the member will achieve peace in political utopia. This holds true for the Republican vis-à-vis the Democrats. The Other is always lurking there, corrupting the process and poisoning the palpable possibility of perfection. If only the opposition would just get out of the way!
But of course, they don’t. Monsters don’t do that. So, they need to be derided and destroyed. You don’t compromise with monsters. You don’t leave them to live their own lives. You slay monsters.
Of course, none of this ever works. Nothing is made better because you’ve exchanged your partisan light for the enemy shadow by electing the man or woman who you have idolized. The true problem, the internal problem, has never been healed. It merely becomes fodder for politicians to take advantage of in the next round of elections. Our individual and mass neuroses are their paths to power, wealth, and glory.
Because of this, politicians may claim to want to heal society’s wounds, but in reality, they do nothing but exacerbate them. The more external fraction, faction, and failure that can be sowed, the more desperate and anxious and fearful the masses can be made, the more those same masses will look to those in power to save them. The most politicians do is change the names of the problems, often convincing the broken and indoctrinated masses that good is evil and evil is good in the process. This only deepens the neuroses of society and the individual as evil corrupts, brings misery, and leads to self and social destruction.
There is hope though. There are those who, by the nature of their beliefs perceive and interact with the world on entirely different terms than those laid out by the State. May we look at the power of true faith to combat the indoctrination and insanity of the State.