On Technology

I’m reading Volume 9i  of Carl Jung’s Collected Works for my Jungian certification and ran across this today, which relates in part to some of my recent musings about Facebook and other social networking technology:

I put it to the enlightened rationalist: has his rational reduction led to the beneficial control of matter and spirit? He will point proudly to the advances in physics and medicine, to the freeing of the mind from medieval stupidity and–as a well-meaning Christian–to our deliverance from the fear of demons. But we continue to ask: what have all our other cultural achievements led to? The fearful answer is there before our eyes: man has been delivered from no fear, a hideous nightmare lies upon the world. So far reason has failed lamentably, and the very thing that everybody wanted to avoid rolls on in ghastly progression. Man has achieved a wealth of useful gadgets but, to offset that, he has torn open the abyss, and what will become of him now–where can he make a halt?

After the last World War we hoped for reason: we go on hoping. But already we are fascinated by the possibilities of atomic fission and promise ourselves a Golden Age–the surest guarantee that the abomination of desolation will grow to limitless dimensions. And who or what is it that causes all this? It is none other than that harmless (!), ingenious, inventive, and sweetly reasonable human spirit who unfortunately is abysmally unconscious of the demonism that still clings to him. Worse, this spirit does everything to avoid looking himself in the face, and we all help him like mad. Only, heaven preserve us from psychology–that depravity might lead to self-knowledge! [. . .]

It seems to me, frankly, that former ages did not exaggerate, that the spirit has not sloughed off its demonisms, and that mankind, because of its scientific and technological development, has in increasing measure delivered itself over to the danger of possession. True, the archetype of the spirit is capable of working for good as well as for evil, but it depends upon man’s free–i.e., conscious–decision whether the good also will be perverted into something satanic. Man’s worst sin is unconsciousness, but it is indulged in with the greatest piety even by those who should serve mankind as teachers and examples.

When shall we stop taking man for granted in this barbarous manner and in all seriousness seek ways and means to exorcise him, to rescue him from possession and unconsciousness, and make this the most vital task of civilization? Can we not understand that all the outward tinkerings and improvements do not touch man’s inner nature, and that everything ultimately depends upon whether the man who wields the science and the technology is capable of responsibility or not? Christianity has shown us the way, but, as the facts bear witness, it has not penetrated deeply enough below the surface. What depths of despair are still needed to open the eyes of the world’s responsible leaders, so that at least they can refrain from leading themselves into temptation? (para. 454-455)

what are you doing?

In depth psychology, we refer to the Wise Old Man as an archetypal figure who is often encountered by the Hero in folk and fairy tales, symbolizing our wiser, self-reflecting selves that have the key to the way out of the problems we get ourselves into. The Wise Old Man often asks questions, because questions are tools for the self-reflective function of the psyche.

“What are you doing?” and “Why are you doing this?” are two of my favorite questions. In the passage of Jung quoted here, Jung is asking the rational man, the scientific and technological man, “What are you doing? What is the result of all your ‘progress?’” and I think these are wonderful questions. Jung shows here that we either use technology or it uses (i.e., ‘possesses’) us. I doubt there is anyone who hasn’t been lured into a deep dive into unconsciousness by the television, the interwebs, the DVR, and realized only later due to the sick feeling in the pit of the stomach that there were better things we might or should have done with our time.

In this way we are no different from our most primitive ancestors who believed in absolute possession by evil spirits. We who are too sophisticated for the idea of possession can’t understand the lure of Facebook, Twitter, or whatever other technologies we use as treatment programs or substances to dull the anxiety of being alive, the tension of the opposites and conflicts we contain, and our terror of the unknown. By looking down on the primitive impulse to fear possession, we overlook our own proneness to it.

Being human, I understand why we are overcome by inertia through our technological temptations. Being also divine, I look at myself with dismay.

Intermission

I’ve been very bad about updating lately due to the demands of everyday life, not the least of which is that I’ve started work for my certificate in Jungian studies and am writing a paper for the seminar that occurs this week. I find it impossible to do justice to the Jacob and Esau series while also writing for the seminar, so thought I’d have an intermission during which I post some of what I’ve been reading over the past month.

creating a life

I’ve been reading Creating a Life by Jungian analyst James Hollis and Jung’s Symbols of Transformation at the same time. Hollis is the head of the Jungian studies program I’ll undertake over the next two years. Creating a Life is the book a person should read after reading about (and hopefully undertaking) the developmental tasks of middle age (40+ years), for it points you in the right direction after the razed earth policy mid-life seems to demand.

I appreciate Hollis’s honesty about the work of a therapist, because it made me feel much better about having quit my work as one. He writes:

“Were therapists required by “truth in advertising” legislation to tell their reality, then virtually no one would ever enter therapy. The therapist would be obliged to say at least three things in return to the suffering supplicant:

First, you will have to deal with this core issue the rest of your life, and at best you will manage to win a few skirmishes in your long uncivil war with yourself. Decades from now you will be fighting on these familiar fronts, though the terrain may have shifted so much that you may have difficulty recognizing the same old, same old.

Second, you will be obliged to disassemble the many forces you have gathered to defend against your wound. At this late date it is your defenses, not your wound, that cause the problem and arrest your journey. But removing those defenses will oblige you to feel all the pain of that wound again.

And third, you will not be spared pain, vouchsafed wisdom or granted exemption from future suffering. In fact, genuine disclosure would require a therapist to reveal the shabby sham of managed care as a fraud, and make a much more modest claim for long-term depth therapy or analysis. “

Hollis concludes this topic by suggesting that depth therapy or analysis will not cure anyone, but will, at least, make life more interesting by helping one discover the “complex riddles wrapped within” and thus, hopefully, bring them and other inner contents into consciousness.

purgatorio

I found Creating a Life comforting, even though I know that bringing these contents into consciousness heralds an inevitable, purgatorial descent in mid-life that is shunned by most. Having surrendered most of the so-called convictions I acquired and lived by in my 20s and 30s, I experienced my 40s as a psychological postapocalyptic wasteland peopled by fellow pilgrims who were very, very few and quite far between. I thought I was alone in grieving the dearth of mentors in whom the Wise Old Man or Crone archetypes had been made manifest, but Hollis showed me that I don’t perceive or grieve the loss of mentors alone. He writes that we have very few initiated adults among us because most will not take the path of ego-annihilation demanded by the initiation process.

When Jesus said that none were worthy to follow Him unless they took up their cross first, He meant it. One can never be raised in the image of the God-man until he has first suffered and died, suspended between heaven and hell, eternity and this mortal world. Yet because of the pain of this suffering and in spite of our best intentions, we end up trudging along the paths our parents and grandparents trod before us. We don’t want to suffer; we will not die. We keep feeding the ego with its constant cries of “I want, I need,” catering to its demands and claims and its need for status and collective approval. We end up being older, more tired and fearful versions of our old selves. Our lights grow dim from flickering; we shrink back from the challenge before us and eventually shrivel into mere shadows of the selves we were meant to be.

As I have said while writing about Jacob and Esau and as we will see as I progress with the series, nobody–and I mean nobody–attains wholeness while forging through life on an ego-based, selfish path. This is why, as Stephen Covey says, we are called to imagining and implementing “win-win” solutions in every single conflict. Anything less does not demand the little deaths demanded by compromise. The fact that we are polarized as a nation along political, religious, cultural and socioeconomic lines illustrates just how unconscious we are to saving our own lives, how impossible the likelihood that we will yield and thus grow.

a bloody blundering

My 12-year-old daughter asked me the other day whether I’d choose to go back in time if I could, if I’d want a “do-over” for any part of my life. I imagined being 12 or 16 or 28 or 36 again, mulling over the mistakes and blunders I’ve made, the people I’ve hurt, the stupid decisions I’ve made. Did I want to go back and change something, anything? After awhile I told her that I wouldn’t want to go back under any circumstance, for in spite of these mistakes and regrets, the first half of my life was, as Hollis writes, “a great and inevitable mistake, a bloody blundering.” An inevitable mistake, a mistake that had to be made.

To be young is to be a fool living among fools, no matter how wise we imagine we are. The wisest old folks you know (if you can find any) will tell you they were fools when they were younger; the trick is to learn from having been one and to press on toward wisdom and clarity. This is how it is with me; I’m pressing on, creating a life for myself. As it says in Proverbs, “if you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you are foolish, you alone will bear it.” Having carried the results of my own follies for all the years since I did them, I’m wiser for having carried them. I’m lingering in a place where I am happy and miserable, content and full of yearning, clear-eyed but stumbling blindly, sane in the craziest way possible, grateful to be where I am at this moment in time, this ripe moment, this beautiful, pregnant moment.

The Half-Blood Prince

 

From a psychological perspective, I found the latest Harry Potter movie to be one of the best I have ever seen for illustrating the different paths the orphan hearted can take once they are awake to their own pain. We have Harry Potter, an orphan raised without love, and Tom Riddle (who becomes Lord Voldemort), also an orphan raised without love. Harry takes the path of the heroic orphan, Tom that of the tragic one. Harry uses his loss and pain while Tom abuses others for his. One is a giver, the other a taker.

The young actor who plays Tom as a boy is brilliant; look at the petulant, angry expression on his face when he first meets Dumbledore, and then look at the transformation as Tom realizes that he can make use of Dumbledore. Through Dumbledore he can learn how to harness his powers and get revenge for his suffering. Through Dumbledore he can experience vindictive triumph.

Finally, look at Dumbledore’s character and aims: in both relationships his goal has been to teach young wizards how to use their powers for good. He’s a wise old wizard doing what wise old wizards do. Yet even a wise old wizard like Dumbledore can’t predict outcomes.

To celebrate his 75th birthday, Carl Jung hewed a four-sided stone mandala he set outside his house in Bollingen. One of the sides said this:

I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal to everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons.

We are all orphans in a part of ourselves. The question is how we manifest our orphan heart and whether we are heroic or tragic orphans in that part of ourselves.