Jung stresses that the psyche is not confined to the individual, groups have a collective psyche that forms the spirit of the age, or Zeitgeist. This collective psyche readily forms a collective shadow, which can be exceedingly dangerous. For example, in the second World War, the Nazis formed a collective shadow which they projected onto the Jewish people, whom they then saw as being worthless and evil.
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How did the connection between the inner, psychic event and the outer, physical event come about? Jung suggested the idea of ‘acausal parallelism’, by which he meant that everything is actually happening in the same time. He felt that there was an acausal archetypal order of this kind at the root of all phenomena. Thus, two events could be connected in some way without one necessarily having to be the direct cause of the other. He later used the word ‘synchronicity’ to express this idea.
I like life. It’s something to do. Somewhere on this globe every 10 seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
Two days after being shot twice by unknown gunmen, Bob Marley performed at “Smile Jamaica,” a free concert to promote peace in Jamaica. When asked why he performed afterwards, Marley replied “the people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?” “How can I?”
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
“When I was young, I expected people to give me more than they could – continuous friendship, permanent emotions. Now I have learned to expect less of them than they can give – a silent companionship. And their emotions, their friendship, and noble gestures keep their full miraculous value in my eyes; wholly the fruit of grace.”
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
“We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone. We should therefore act as if we were alone, and in that case should we build fine houses, etc.? We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.”
Normally we are sure of nothing so much as a sense of self, of our of our own ego.
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Normally we are sure of nothing so much as a sense of self, of our of our own ego.
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Despite the incompleteness of my presentation, I venture to offer even at this early stage a few remarks to round off our present enquiry. The programme for attaining happiness, imposed on us by the pleasure principle, cannot be fully realised, but we must not – indeed cannot – abandon our efforts to bring its realisation somehow closer. To reach this goal we may take very different routes and give priority to one or the other of two aims: the positive aim of gaining pleasure or the negative one of avoiding its opposite. On neither route can we attain all we desire. Happiness, in the reduced sense in which it is acknowledged to be possible, is a problem concerning the economy of the individual libido. There is no advice that would be beneficial to all; everyone must discover for himself how he can achieve salvation.
Source: Civilization and its discontents. By Sigmund Freud
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