I posted the below Carl Jung quote, on my metaphysical school site, and, suddenly, I was thinking about the characters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, along with the often mob mentality I've seen on social media. Jung said an archetype is a typical character of human nature and in groups we can subcumb to the lowest emotion within that collective conscious.
This made me think about the collective thoughts regarding Trump and Clinton. Especially, if we consider some of the names they are being associated with like crooked, liar, or narcissistic. Especially, when we think about ourselves in relationship to them. Are they a reflection of our society? Of us? If so why? They didn't come out of nowhere. We're not experiencing them for no reason. I feel that they are here to make us look at ourselves - our society - our world - good or bad. They are a phenomenon; a pure archetypal manifestation of a real part of our collective psyche.
Are we to learn more about ourselves because of it? Can we make changes? Maybe so, if we owe up to it. If we don't, it will not go away. It will return to the collective unconscious in order to gather more force and will come back with a greater prominence. That's what lessons do: keep teaching us until we get it. Often with more difficulty.
---------Quote
A group experience takes place on a lower level of consciousness than the experience of an individual. This is due to the fact that, when many people gather together to share one common emotion, the total psyche emerging from the group is below the level of the individual psyche. If it is a very large group, the collective psyche will be more like the psyche of an animal, which is the reason why the ethical attitude of large organizations is always doubtful. The psychology of a large crowd inevitably sinks to the level of mob psychology. If, therefore, I have a so-called collective experience as a member of a group, it takes place on a lower level of consciousness than if I had the experience by myself alone. ~ C.G. Jung (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - Collected Works 9i)
No comments:
Post a Comment