I finished a book called The Undiscovered Self by Carl Gustav Jung.
I read another book by Jung called Memories, Dreams, Reflections. He’s the psychiatrist guy who had a grandfather that was a Freemason and Grand Master of the Swiss lodge. Jung also collaborated with Sigmund Freud, but that kind of ended when Freud wanted to make dogma out of sexual theory.
Jung regarded himself primarily as a doctor, a psychiatrist. [1]
My grandfather changed the elements of the arms, probably out of a spirit of resistance toward his father. He was an ardent Freemason and Grand Master of the Swiss lodge. [2]
I can still recall vividly how Freud said to me, “My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark. [3]
When, then, Freud announced his intention of identifying theory and method and making them into some kind of dogma, I could no longer collaborate with him; there remained no choice for me but to withdraw. [4]
The Undiscovered Self book that I read is translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull. It’s a twelfth printing by Little, Brown and Company with a copyright of 1957, 1958.
The first thing in the book that I found interesting is on pages 4 and 5. Jung talks about the crushing mass:
The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness. [5]
To be Earth Emperor it’s important that you get rid of as many individuals as you can, cause it’s a lot easier to control one mass than a bunch of individuals.
One way you can get rid of individuals is with scientific education.
Scientific education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world, in which the individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role. [6]
To create mass-mindedness you can use scientific rationalism.
Apart from agglomerations of huge masses of people, in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass-mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of his foundations and his dignity. [7]
On pages 24 and 25 Jung talks about the dictator State, fanatics and that anyone who opposes the dictator State is a heretic:
The dictator State has one great advantage over bourgeois reason: along with the individual it swallows up his religious forces. The State has taken the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevailing trend towards mass-mindedness. The result, as always in such cases, is overcompensation in the form of fanaticism, which in its turn is used as a weapon for stamping out the least flicker of opposition. Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest. The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honored as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him. [8]
Jung talks about the State and the Church on page 27, and for the “Church” you can substitute any religion for it, including atheism, if you want:
The State, like the Church, demands enthusiasm, self-sacrifice and love, and if religion requires or presupposes the “fear of God,” then the dictator State takes good care to provide the necessary terror. [9]
Thus, atheism was formally declared to be a religion by the United States Supreme Court in 1961, together with Buddhism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others that do not teach a belief in the existence of God ([Wendel] Bird 1979). The Atheist Church of America and the American Ethical Union, for example, are both bona fide tax-exempt religious organizations. [10]
Something I thought to be cool is on page 30:
Both the dictator State and denominational religion lay quite particular emphasis on the idea of community. This is the basic ideal of “communism,” and it is thrust down the throats of the people so much that it has the exact opposite of the desired effect: it inspires divisive mistrust. [11]
The mindless don’t remember very well. They think in terms of large numbers, but they forget about the many times when a well-organized mob ended up doing very bad things.
Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but the fatally shortsighted habit of our age is to think only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman. Unfortunately, this realization does not seem to have penetrated very far — and our blindness in this respect is extremely dangerous. People go on blithely organizing and believing in the sovereign remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans. [12]
On page 57 Jung asks three questions for people who are into Christ:
Did Christ ever call his disciples to him at a mass meeting? Did the feeding of the five thousand bring him any followers who did not afterwards cry “Crucify him!” with the rest, when even the rock named Peter showed signs of wavering? And are not Jesus and Paul prototypes of those who, trusting their inner experience, have gone their own individual ways, disregarding public opinion? [13]
On page 59 Jung talks about how many people want to have fun and be happy all the time like children (that’s a good thing when you’re Earth Emperor, cause those people are then giving up their power to you, and more power means more control):
In the clamor of the many there lies the power to snatch wish-fulfillments by force; sweetest of all, however, is that gentle and painless slipping back into the kingdom of childhood, into the paradise of parental care, into happy-go-luckiness and irresponsibility. All the thinking and looking after are done from the top; to all questions there is an answer; and for all needs the necessary provision is made. The infantile dream state of the mass man is so unrealistic that he never thinks to ask who is paying for this paradise. The balancing of accounts is left to a higher political or social authority, which welcomes the task, for its power is thereby increased; and the more power it has, the weaker and more helpless the individual becomes. [14]
Something else that I thought to be cool is on page 105:
Wherever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator State, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units. [15]
What I learned from this book is that as Earth Emperor it’s important to be an individual. To be an individual you have to stand on your very own feet, and you have to be willing to fulfill the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge.
Unless he stands firmly on his own feet, the so-called objective values profit him nothing, since they then only serve as a substitute for character and so help to suppress his individuality. [16]
Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?
To this question there is a positive answer only when the individual is willing to fulfill the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge. If he follows through his intention, he will not only discover some important truths about himself, but will also have gained a psychological advantage: he will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest. He will have set his hand, as it were, to a declaration of his own human dignity and taken the first step towards the foundations of his consciousness — that is, towards the unconscious, the only accessible source of religious experience. [17]
Daniel Kemp
Footnotes:
1. Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffé. Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston. (New York : Pantheon Books, c1963), x
2. Ibid., 232
3. Ibid., 150
4. Ibid., 167
5. Carl Gustav Jung, The Undiscovered Self. Translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull. (Boston : Little, Brown and Company, c1958), 4-5
6. Ibid., 12
7. Ibid., 15-16
8. Ibid., 24-25
9. Ibid., 27
10. Ian T. Taylor, In the Minds of Men : Darwin and the New World Order. (Toronto : TFE Publishing, c1984), 394-395
11. Carl Gustav Jung, The Undiscovered Self. Translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull. (Boston : Little, Brown and Company, c1958), 30
12. Ibid., 55-56
13. Ibid., 57
14. Ibid., 59
15. Ibid., 105
16. Ibid., 55
17. Ibid., 88-89
