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What is happening now in the world? What's going on in our country? What is happening in the souls of people? It is worth watching the news once to be horrified: the policy of the state, the ignorance of officials, the silent consent of the people (however, everything is as usual: “the people are silent”). Fragment from the book "The Unrevealed Self" by Carl Gustav Jung (1957).
In the chapter "The unenviable position of the individual in the modern world", the Swiss psychiatrist tries to understand why the individual loses his features and becomes a victim of equalization, how such abstract concepts as the state and society manage to take the place of a specific individual and subordinate the meaning and purpose of his life to his policy, and why the leader, born of an amorphous mass, most often turns out to be not that saving person who can clearly and sensibly look at the situation, but the one who, being a slave to his own inventions, “inevitably becomes a victim of his own excessively inflated ego-consciousness.” Good soil for reflections.
The unenviable position of the individual in the modern world
What will the future bring with it? From time immemorial, this question has occupied a person, although not always to the same extent. History testifies that a person with anxiety and hope turns his gaze to the future in times of physical, political, economic and spiritual turmoil, when many hopes, utopian ideas and apocalyptic visions are born. One recalls, for example, the chiliastic expectations of the contemporaries of Emperor Augustus at the dawn of the Christian era, or the spiritual changes in the West that accompanied the end of the first millennium from the birth of Christ. In our time, as the second millennium draws to a close, we again live in a world filled with apocalyptic images of universal destruction. What is the significance of the division of humanity into two camps, whose symbol is the Iron Curtain? What will become of our civilization and of humanity itself if hydrogen bombs start to explode or if the spiritual and moral darkness of state absolutism engulfs all of Europe?
We have no reason to consider the possibility of such an outcome unlikely. In any Western country there are small groups of subversive elements who, using our humanity and striving for justice, keep a match at the fuse cord ready, and only the critical mind of a separate, highly developed and mentally stable segment of the population can stop the spread of their ideas. The "thickness" of this layer should not be overestimated. It is different in each country, depending on the national temperament of the population. In addition, the "thickness" of this layer depends on the level of education in a given country and on extremely strong economic and political factors. If a plebiscite is used as a criterion, then according to the most optimistic estimates, the "thickness" of this layer will be forty percent of the total number of voters. But even a more pessimistic assessment will be completely justified, since the gift of common sense and critical thinking does not belong to the most characteristic distinctive features of a person, and even where it really takes place, it is not constant and unshakable, and, as a rule, weakens as the proliferation of political groups. The masses suppress the discernment and thoughtfulness of which a single individual is still capable, and inevitably leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny, if only the constitutional state is slack. weakens as political groups grow. The masses suppress the discernment and thoughtfulness of which a single individual is still capable, and inevitably leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny, if only the constitutional state is slack. weakens as political groups grow. The masses suppress the discernment and thoughtfulness of which a single individual is still capable, and inevitably leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny, if only the constitutional state is slack.
The use of rational arguments can only have a chance of success if the emotionality of this particular situation does not exceed a certain critical level. If the intensity of passions rises above a critical level, then any possibility that the word of reason will take effect disappears, and slogans and illusory desires-fantasies replace it. That is, a kind of collective madness sets in, which quickly turns into a mental epidemic. In such conditions, those elements that in the era of the rule of reason are considered asocial and the existence of which society only tolerates, rise to the very top. Such individuals are by no means the rare unusual specimens that can only be found in prison or mental hospital. By my estimates, for every outright insane, there is at least ten hidden ones, the madness of which rarely manifests itself in an open form, and the views and behavior, with all the external normality, imperceptibly for their consciousness are exposed to the influence of pathological and perverse factors. For obvious reasons, there is no such medical statistics for latent psychoses. But even if their number is slightly less than ten times higher than the number of obvious psychopaths and criminals, their small number relative to the total mass of the population is more than compensated for by the extreme danger of these people. Their mental state is akin to that of a group in collective excitement, and is subject to biased assessments and fantasy desires. When such people are in their environment, they adapt to each other and, accordingly, feel at home. From their own experience, they have learned the "language" of situations of this kind and know how to manage them. Their chimeric ideas, fueled by fanatical outrage, appeal to collective irrationality and find fertile ground in it; they express all those motives and all the dissatisfaction that are hidden in more normal people under the cover of prudence and discernment. Therefore, despite their small percentage, they a great danger as sources of infection represent, precisely because the so-called normal person has only a limited level of self-knowledge. which in more normal people are hidden under the cloak of prudence and discernment. Therefore, despite their small percentage, they a great danger as sources of infection represent, precisely because the so-called normal person has only a limited level of self-knowledge. which in more normal people are hidden under the cloak of prudence and discernment. Therefore, despite their small percentage.
Most people confuse "self-knowledge" with knowing their conscious ego personality. Any person who has at least some kind of ego-consciousness has no doubt that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own content, and does not know the unconscious and its contents. People define their self-knowledge by the measure of the average person's knowledge of themselves from their social environment, but not by real mental facts, which, for the most part, are hidden from them. In this sense, the psyche is like a body, about the physiology and anatomy of which the average person also knows little. Although an ordinary person lives in a body and with a body, most of it is completely unknown to him, and special scientific knowledge is required to familiarize consciousness with what is known about the body.
This means that what is commonly called "self-knowledge" is in fact a very limited knowledge, most of which depends on social factors, on what is happening in the human psyche. Therefore, a person always has a prejudice that certain things are not happening “with us,” not “in our family,” or not with our friends and acquaintances. On the other hand, a person has a no less illusory conviction about the presence of certain qualities in him, and this conviction only hides the true state of affairs.
In this wide zone of the unconscious, which is reliably protected from criticism and control of consciousness, we are completely defenseless, open to all kinds of mental influences and mental infections. As with any hazard, we can prevent the risk of mental infection only if we know what exactly will attack us, as well as where, when and how the attack will occur. Since self-knowledge is a matter of knowing specific facts, theory can hardly help here. For, the more a theory claims to be universally true, the less it is capable of serving as a basis for a correct assessment of individual concrete facts. Any theory based on everyday experience is inevitably statistical; it outputs the ideal mean and rejects all exceptions at both ends of the scale, replacing them with abstract meaning. This theory is quite true, only in life things do not always go according to it. Despite this, the abstract meaning of the theory appears as an unshakable fundamental fact. Any exceptions to the extreme, although they are no less real, are not included in the theory at all, because they refute each other. For example, if I calculate the weight of each pebble on a pebble beach and get an average weight of five ounces, that figure will tell me little about the actual nature of the pebbles. Anyone who, based on my research, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try, they will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. only in life things do not always go according to it. Despite this, the abstract meaning of the theory appears as an unshakable fundamental fact. Any exceptions to the extreme, although they are no less real, are not included in the theory at all, because they refute each other. For example, if I calculate the weight of each pebble on a pebble beach and get an average weight of five ounces, that figure will tell me little about the actual nature of the pebbles. Anyone who, based on my research, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try, they will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. only in life things do not always go according to it. Despite this, the abstract meaning of the theory appears as an unshakable fundamental fact. Any exceptions to the extreme, although they are no less real, are not included in the theory at all, because they refute each other. For example, if I calculate the weight of each pebble on a pebble beach and get an average weight of five ounces, that figure will tell me little about the actual nature of the pebbles. Anyone who, based on my research, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try, they will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. Any exceptions to the extreme, although they are no less real, are not included in the theory at all, because they refute each other. For example, if I calculate the weight of each pebble on a pebble beach and get an average weight of five ounces, that figure will tell me little about the actual nature of the pebbles. Anyone who, based on my research, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try, they will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. Any exceptions to the extreme, although they are no less real, are not included in the theory at all, because they refute each other. For example, if I calculate the weight of each pebble on a pebble beach and get an average weight of five ounces, that figure will tell me little about the actual nature of the pebbles. Anyone who, based on my research, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try, they will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. whoever, on the basis of my findings, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. whoever, on the basis of my findings, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. whoever, on the basis of my findings, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces. whoever, on the basis of my findings, decides that they can pick up a five-ounce pebble on the first try will be seriously disappointed. Indeed, it may be that even after long hours of searching, he still does not find a pebble weighing exactly five ounces.
The statistical method shows us facts in light of the ideal mean, but does not give us an idea of their empirical reality. While the average certainly reflects some aspect of reality, it can falsify truth in the most insidious way. This primarily applies to theories based on statistics. Meanwhile, the distinguishing feature of the fact is its individuality. Roughly speaking, the real picture consists only of exceptions to the rule and, accordingly, in absolute reality, incorrectness completely reigns.
This should be remembered every time it comes to the fact that theory can be a guide on the path of self-knowledge. There is not and cannot exist any self-knowledge based on theoretical assumptions, since the object of this knowledge is the individual's relative exclusion and the phenomenon of "wrong". Therefore, the characteristic features of the individual are not universal and correct, but rather unique. It should be perceived not as a standard unit, but as something unique and one of a kind, which, in principle, cannot be fully cognized and cannot be compared with anything else. At the same time, man, as a representative of the human race, can and should be described as a statistical unit; otherwise nothing in common can be said about him. To solve this problem, it should be considered as a unit of comparison.
Under the influence of scientific assumptions, not only the psyche, but also the individual person and even individual events become victims of "equalization" and "erasure of differences", which distort the picture of reality, turning it into a conceptual average. We should not underestimate the psychological impact of the statistical picture of the world: it rejects the individual, replacing him with faceless units that he gathers into mass formations. Instead of a concrete individual, we have the names of organizations and, as a culmination, the abstract idea of the State as a principle of political reality. At the same time, the moral responsibility of the individual is inevitably replaced by the state interests of the raison d'etat ( State necessity, the good of the state (fr.) - ed.). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of individuals, we have the well-being of society and an increase in living standards. The purpose and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) is no longer in individual development, but in the policy of the State, which is imposed on the individual from the outside and consists in the implementation of an abstract idea that tends to attract all life. The individual is increasingly denied the right to make a moral decision about how he should live his own life. He is fed, clothed, trained and disciplined as a unit of society, he is settled in the appropriate unit of housing and gives him pleasure and satisfaction in the form in which the crowd perceives them. The rulers, in turn, are the same units of society as the subjects, and differ from the latter only in that they represent the mouthpiece of the state doctrine. They do not have to have common sense, they may just be good specialists, completely useless outside their area of specialization. Public policy determines what should be taught and what should be taught.
The almighty doctrine of the State itself is partly a victim of people manipulating in the interests of the state, occupying the highest positions in the government and concentrating all power in their hands. Any person who got, either through fair elections, or by a whim of fate, to one of these posts, no longer obeys anyone; he himself is the "policy of the state" and can follow in a direction determined by him. Following Louis XIV, he can say: "The state is me." Therefore, he is the only one, or at least one of those very few individuals who could use their individuality if only they knew how to separate themselves from the doctrine of the State. However, they tend to be slaves to their own inventions. Such one-sidedness is always psychologically compensated by unconscious subversive tendencies. Slavery and rebellion are inseparable. As a result, power struggles and extreme suspicion permeate the entire body from top to bottom. Moreover, striving to compensate for its chaotic formlessness, the mass always gives rise to a "leader" who, as history teaches us, inevitably becomes a victim of its own excessively inflated ego-consciousness.
Such a development of events becomes logically inevitable at the moment when the individual joins the mass and ceases to be an individual. In addition to the agglomeration of huge masses, in which the individual dissolves in any case, one of the main reasons for the psychological mass consciousness is scientific rationalism, which deprives the personality of the foundations of its individuality and its dignity. As a social unit, personality loses its individuality and becomes a simple abstract statistic. It can only play the role of an easily replaceable and completely insignificant "part". If you look at it from the outside and rationally, then this is what it is, and from this point of view, arguments about the value or significance of the individual will be completely absurd.
Looking at the individual from this point of view, his importance does diminish, and anyone who wants to challenge this position will quickly find a lack of arguments. The fact that an individual perceives himself or his family members or close friends as significant personalities only underlines the somewhat comical subjectivity of his feelings. For what do a few people mean compared to ten thousand or a hundred thousand, let alone a million? I am reminded of a thoughtful statement by a friend of mine, with whom we were stuck in a huge crowd. He then unexpectedly exclaimed: "Here is the most reliable basis for disbelief in immortality: all this bunch of people wants to be immortal!"
The larger the crowd, the more insignificant the individual. And if an individual is overwhelmed by the feeling of his own insignificance and powerlessness, and he feels that his life has lost its meaning, which, in the end, is not identical with the well-being of society and a high standard of living, then he is already close to becoming a slave of the State and, himself willing and unaware, his ardent adherent. A person whose gaze is directed only to the outside world, and who cringes at the sight of "large battalions", has nothing to oppose to the information that his senses and his mind convey to him. This is exactly what is happening now: we are all fascinated with admiration for statistical truths and large numbers; we are daily informed of the insignificance and futility of the individual personality, if it is not represented and personified by any mass organization. And vice versa, those characters who strut around the world stage with an air of importance and whose voices are heard by everyone and everyone, to an uncritically thinking public seem to have been lifted up on the wave of some mass movement or public opinion. So the crowd either applauds them or curses them. Since mass thinking plays a dominant role here, there is no certainty whether these people express their opinion, for which they are personally responsible, or whether they are just a mouthpiece expressing the opinion of the collective. to an uncritically thinking public seem to have been lifted up on the wave of some mass movement or public opinion. So the crowd either applauds them or curses them. Since mass thinking plays a dominant role here, there is no certainty whether these people express their opinion, for which they are personally responsible, or whether they are just a mouthpiece expressing the opinion of the collective. to an uncritically thinking public seem to have been lifted up on the wave of some mass movement or public opinion. So the crowd either applauds them or curses them. Since mass thinking plays a dominant role here, there is no certainty whether these people express their opinion, for which they are personally responsible, or whether they are just a mouthpiece expressing the opinion of the collective.
In such conditions, one can hardly be surprised that it is more and more difficult for an individual to form an opinion about himself, and that responsibility has become as collective as possible, that is, the individual has removed it from himself and delegated it to the team. Thus, the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which, in turn, usurps the functions of the bearer of real life, although, in fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea, like the idea of the State ... Both of these ideas have been reified, that is, they have become autonomous. The state, in particular, has become a semi-living being, from which everyone expects everything. In fact, it is just a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. So the constitutional state slides into a primitive form of society.
