Is Jung's "Red Book" Relevant to the 21st Century?
Last weekend the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco had a conference on Jung's _Red Book_. A number of other such conferences are taking place around the Jungian world this year.
I found the various lectures to be useful for getting a better appreciation of the cultural context of Jung's work, as well as the literary influences and forms found in the _Red Book_. There was also some appreciation of Jung's integrity and courage as, after the break with Freud, he decided that he had no choice but to pursue a journey in search of Soul. In doing so Jung developed "active imagination" as a new way for the creative ego to experience the full force and presence of the unconscious without being swallowed up by it. Thus the individual Jung became a locus in which Soul could become conscious of its own necessity.
One question that I believe was not sufficiently addressed was the potential parallels between Jung's situation and our own. At the time he wrote the Red Book, the European culture of the Enlightenment with its apparent triumph of science and rationality was already experiencing the first "advance shock waves" of the massive culture-quakes that would define the new century.. Chaos, non-linearity, fragmentation, absurdism, Dada, atonal music--all of the arts were beginning to register a consciousness no longer sure of its identity or center. At the same time the social structure of Europe and its colonial system would be shattered by two world wars, the first of which was presaged by two of Jung's dreams.
Culturally and I believe psychologically the 20th century began in 1914 and ended around 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the "bipolar" world. We are now facing radical shifts in economics, climate, communications, social relations--so many areas. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and emergent artificial intelligence will challenge the very notion of what it is to be human.
Now we each face the challenge of allowing Soul's images and energy to find a place through us, to achieve a face, to articulate a voice in which Soul can answer its deepest questions through our mindful and courageous presence.
For each of us our own Red Book awaits.
- Harry Henderson's blog
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Comments
The end of a "bipolar" world?
You can't have meant it Harry! You seem to be equating the collapse of the Sovet Union to the end of the 'bipolar' world.
Certainly the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tearing down of the Berlin wall were symbols of the ending of one form of bipolarism - the opposites then focussed on how society is organised and how money is controlled. The question was 'is the individual to be given more liberty or governed more from a centralised system?'
But the demise of that bipolar world has been very easily overtaken in the rise and growth of new (but ancient) bipolarism. The new question is not societal organisation but authority. The question becomes now - 'does authority reside fundamentally within the individual or within a 'god-source' who speaks through ancient texts ?' (whispers from the Records circle here) Human responsibility to live co-operatively is needed to live within either camp, but the trouble is that human nature is viewed from the heartland of each position, in very different ways, namely am I to attempt to live creatively out of my own authority or do I sumbit to an authority outside of me?
This is a deeper and far more problematic bipolarism than the societal one. If societal bipolarism was instrumental in birthing WW2, Korea and Vietnam what horrors could the 'new' bipolarism spawn after Afghanistan?
Jung could be more pertinent than ever for future generations who may feel increasing heat of this dilemma.
Polarities
Norman, I think we may have a question of semantics here. On the one hand, it seems America in particular always seems to need a single great Other/Enemy. In some sense the Cold War was replaced by the ill-defined "war on Terror(ism)." But of course "Terrorism" is not a country but an idea, so where does one target one's missiles? Somewhere in the shadows!
When the USSR fell some people declared that the U.S. was now the world's only superpower. (Lots of triumphalism on the Right.) Superpower? The U.S. is barely extricating itself from Iraq as it seems to be tied down increasingly in Afghanistan. I would suggest there are no longer any superpowers, but rather a mosaic of old, still potent powers (Europe, U.S.,Russia) and emerging ones (China, India, perhaps Brazil). I would call this a "multipolar" world.
The situation is similar with regard to economic power. There is, far as I know, no secret cabal of a few people who pull all the strings. Rather, there seems to be an autonomous emergent power that can be manipulated by an elite who can make big gains at least in the short term, but whose long term result is a kind of entropy that threatens to leave most of the world's people at the bottom of a flat world. I don't know how it's going in the UK, but over here this kind of concern isn't really admitted to such political debate as we have.