[b]C.G. Jung
Man as we realize if we reflect for a moment, never perceives anything fully or comprehends anything completely. He can see, hear, touch, and taste; but how far he sees, how well he hears, what his touch tells him, and what he tastes depend upon the number and quality of his senses. These limit his perception of the world around him. By using scientific instruments he can partly compensate for the deficiencies of his senses. For example, he can extend the range of his vision by binoculars or of his hearing by electrical amplification. But the most elaborate apparatus cannot do more than bring distant or small objects within range of his eyes, or make faint sounds more audible. No matter what instruments he uses, at some point he reaches the edge of certainty beyond which conscious knowledge cannot pass.[/b]
What do you think, is he on to something here? Something, say, important?
The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.
I can live with that.
We can keep from a child all knowledge of earlier myths, but we cannot take from him the need for mythology.
Not that some of us don’t give it our best shot.
Even a scientist is a human being. So it is natural for him, like others, to hate the things he cannot explain. It is a common illusion to believe that what we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself.
Indeed, and going back to, for example, an explanation for existence itself.
I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time.
That’s what we No God folks have left to cling to. When, for instance, we come face to face with the fucking abyss.
Apart from the agglomeration of huge masses 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. As a social unit he has lost his individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. He can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance. Looked at rationally and from outside, that is exactly what he is, and from this point of view it seems positively absurd to go on talking about the value or meaning of the individual.
The modern industrial state. In other words, the best [or the least worst] of all possible worlds.