Right. Jung argued against the catholic doctrine that evil is merely the absence of good. For him evil was substantial whether encountered within or from without. Katabasis (discussed above) is a descent into hell. Not everyone ascends from there. The good life requires courage and personal heroism.
Having gotten the balance between passivity and aggression under control, I have now, today, inadvertently set myself the task of balancing my Cosmopolitan and Trinity… from mother, with my Tradition and Trimūrti… from father.
A rich cultural background that. Do you find there are gaps between the cosmopolitan, tradition, Trinity and Trimurti that you must fill? If so, how do you do that?
But the spirit of the depths approached me and said, “Climb down into your depths, sink!”
C. G. Jung. The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon) (Kindle Location 2976). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
“If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother. As a man you are part of mankind, and therefore you have a share in the whole of mankind, as if you were the whole of mankind. If you overpower and kill your fellow man who is contrary to you, then you also kill that person in yourself and have murdered a part of your life. The spirit of this dead man follows you and does not let your life become joyful. You need your wholeness to live onward.”
Jung, C. G… The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon) (p. 200). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
How about this paraphrase?
“If you are aggravated against your ex-wife, think that you are aggravated against the ex-wife in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your ex-wife. As a man you are part of mankind, and therefore you have a share in the whole of mankind, as if you were the whole of mankind. If you overpower and kill your ex-wife who is contrary to you, then you also kill that person in yourself and have murdered a part of your life. The spirit of this dead woman follows you and does not let your life become joyful. You need your wholeness to live onward.”
Or one could substitute the name of a particular person who aggravates you. The principle here parallels what Jesus taught in the so-called Sermon on the Mount according to The Gospel of Matthew e.g. “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift."
post in progress
If you are aggravated with the one who stole your wallet, you are really aggravated with your own self who stole your wallet… eh wait -
does Jung take this a bit, maybe, too far?
Too Christian?
If you get slapped in the face, be sure to slap your face some more. That will teach Satan…
It’s hard to take it further than Jesus did. And if one takes it as far as Jesus one will likely end up a hero, a saint and a martyr. Jung didn’t end up that way, so I don’t suppose he lived according to the principle he proposes here all the time. I think it’s more a matter of recognizing that, to your example, the thief lives in you too.
As Terence said: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”, or “I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.”
" The “collective unconscious” that constitutes the basis for shared religious mythology is in fact the behavior, the procedures, that have been generated, transmitted, imitated and modified by everyone who has ever lived, everywhere. Images of these behaviors and of the transcendent “place” where they occur (the universe of chaos and order) constitute metaphors, symbolic images. "
Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, page 93
Jordan Peterson adamantly claims the same. To me that’s gigantic hubris. To claim just because it’s in you that it must also be in all humans. Definitely not the case.
Some are more evil than others.
(I am an astrologer, I see differences of the souls inclinations every day)
What’s most absurd to me is the claim. As if one could know, based on what one is, what others are. It irritates me that people are so egocentric in their reason.
Jesus - he also brought the sword. I doubt not he could be an abrasive man if he figured someone wasn’t worth the effort of sacrifice.
But on the whole, I disagree entirely with the idea that the personal shadow is an exact copy of the shadow of everyone else.
I’ve made this point before, that some shadows are darker than others. Much darker.
We should not burden our children by expecting them to be capable of as much evil as the worst of history. I don’t think that’s true in most cases and I don’t think it is moral.
I don’t doubt there are individual differences. But I also think that we have in common an evolved human nature with particular capacities and constraints. Empathy wouldn’t be possible if not for this.
I have a personal example : I consider my ex-wife a cunt. But I doubt everyone considers their ex a cunt.
But it may be true, if I call her a cunt, I may be a cunt too. (not speaking biologically; or of the part of the female anatomy.)
Jung said, “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”
Imagine, living my entire life in America without ever owning a gun! I embraced non-violence as a child. When I read Ghandi and Tolstoy at age 20, I felt an immediate affinity with them that has never left me.
And yet I have had dreams of slaying crowds of people. Was I a hero like Hercules or Samson with a jaw-bone of an ass? Or was I a mass murderer? It has been my recognition of my own capacity for evil that has motivated me to choose the good.
Jung dreamed he assassinated the hero Siegfried.
Jung and Peterson agree that the potential for malevolence lives unconsciously within us all. Exactly what we ought teach our children about that, if anything, and at what stage and how, is debatable. But, naivete is not a viable option for an adult in this world. It leaves a person susceptible to victimization and blind to their own potential for evil.
A good person is one who is striving to better their self by doing good.
Sometimes I think Jung was full of it. Trees don’t grow to heaven, and their roots only grow in the ground. And hell is not “down there,” and heaven is not “up there.” Not the Christian heaven, that is.
As a young kid in Kentucky, that’s hard for me to personally imagine. Guns were as common as gardens.
So did I. But I did enjoy BB gun fights.
It was Thoreau for me.
I’m a vivid dreamer, but have never had a dream where I was violent.
Jung had a lot of crazy dreams.
It’s naive to accept Jung and Peterson without question.
And a good person can be someone just living life, without being a goody-goody-two-shoes.
Your uncomprehending dismissal based on a concrete literal reading of Jung’s metaphor is what I would expect from a fundamentalist or objectivist.
Do you remember every dream? Is it possible you repressed dreams in which you acted violently? Or do you deny the possibility you could be subject to repression?
When you don’t understand something it seems you dismiss it as “crazy” or claim the other is “full of it” as if that’s an explanation.
That’s true. Who’s doing that?
“Just living life”. What does that mean? An unexamined life?
So you think people just accidentally fall into being a good person? The “noble savage”? Could that be a naively romantic view?
Only those who live in darkness don’t cast a shadow.
Not so much fill, as traverse… I have found that they both work well together… the Cosmopolitan and the Traditional, without having to exert much effort or thought about it all… it’s not as complicated a predicament as I thought.
So you have become a “traveler” who has learned how to move adroitly between the psycho-social worlds of your mother and father. What is that like? Can you give me an example of how you make it work?
Wholeness may amount to reconciling the two births we experience. The first birth is one of expulsion from the womb, an experience which enters the mind as fear of exclusion and promise of individuation. The second birth is the realization of our connectivity, of the ecology of life, which enters the mind as empathy, in marriages and in community. Both births work together either for the good of the whole or its separations in violence and war. Wholeness must be a reconciliation of our physical experiences as portrayed in metaphor and myth.
Indeed, wholeness is often conceived of as a reconciliation or conjunction of opposites: yin and yang, female and male, unknown and known, chaos and order. In mythology this is achieved by the hero confronting the dragon of chaos.
The motif of a second birth or rebirth or being born again is often evoked as a stage in the hero’s journey. The first birth is of course physical and the second spiritual. This goes back at least to the shamanistic initiation processes of tribal cultures. It is similarly ritually symbolized in Christian baptism.
One may well ask whether the symbol of rebirth has meaning for the individual in the secular world? The transformation of an individual across their lifespan can be thought of as a series of rebirths. The child is reborn as an adolescent. The adolescent is reborn as an adult. The adult is reborn via a midlife crisis, etc.
Although in secular life these milestones may or may not be ritualized formally, they still may be represented to us as rebirth in dreams.