Consider first reading the attached brief statement of C.G. Jung on the meaning of 'enantiodromia.'
I hesitate to express publicly what to many would sound like 'crazy' thoughts. But are imo very relevant for our critical social times. Unusual times call up what may seem to be unusual resources. Mine is one concerned person's view of the present dangers our culture faces. I realize each item I present calls for more discussion and thought by persons far brighter than I. But I share what I have the best I can. These are imo very extreme times with demanding problems like cultures have not faced for many centuries.
I think we are seeing what Jung describes happening in our American culture in our extreme yet evolutionarily necessary times. A large percent of the collective mind, probably at least thirty percent, has given up trying to be rational regarding what they take to heart is social and political 'truth.' They understandably have lost confidence in the status quo of one or more of our institutions: political, government, science, education and religion. And in discouragement have given way to some dangerous, seductive and enticing irrational beliefs.
Please hear me out. The answer is not to think we need to be more fiercely rational, to somehow destroy our essentially natural human irrationality. As tempting an approach as that is it's neither possible or desirable.
None of us escapes the possibility of being led into some irrational, meaning non-sensical and illogical, view of what is 'true'. This after all is perfectly and dangerously consistent with our ever present and partly irrational human nature. We deny this fact to our own peril in these present times, ie that we are each and all partly irrational (without reasoned material support) in some of our strongest most emotional assumptions and beliefs. We can without realization, ie unconsciously, drift too far toward the abyss of irrationality and cult-like unfounded authoritarian-based trust.
This dynamic imo is the best explanation of the tragedy of ordinary well educated people in Nazi Germany in early 1940's. They plunged into an irrational mindset and belived lies with which they were inundated. No one in times like this, no matter how clear thinking we believe we are, is exempt from our minds being pulled in by such an irrational and unconscious( truly not knowing) vortex.
As Jung says here the only prevention to falling into accepting the irrational as total truth regarding some matter is to first honestly accept that a limited, or balanced, amount of irrational belief is necessary for human spiritual/psychological personal and cultural health. This strong need for the irrational denied in our materialistic culture has led us to a very precarious imbalance in this newly forming epoch and can spell disaster if not detected, made conscious, to our rational processes.
Until recent times our religions, and to some extent the arts and literature, have been a successful outlet for our need of the irrational. (Believing that there is an all knowing/ all powerful God who sits outside of us in a heaven and occasionally intervenes in human life is an example an irrational idea our Western culture has generally believed for many centuries.) And our rational side rightfully led many of us in the recent century to doubt such irrational assumptions however important they once were for needed balance. Many have not lost belief in the Sacred but have necessarily and honestly rejected this traditional now inappropriate and failing 'image of God.' Times are now seeking to birth a truer more alive 'image or symbol of God' than the once effective fading one.
These changes of recent centuries then over time circled us back to the opposite of the irrational; ie believing we can rely on rational reasoning alone for discerning all important 'truth' and values. And that our physical rational senses are the 'only' avenue of real and needed truth or information.
Unfortunately we can't as humans defer to that simplistic notion of our actual complicated inner nature. For our psyche/soul aspect cannot healthily live extendedly in such a stressed imbalance of rational vs irrational, of consciousness vs unconsciousness. We are both of these and they ever naturally seek an effective balance within us however painful the process becomes in life.
So this historic development left our 'modern' culture with a strong imbalance in our rational vs irrational nature. We have become over the centuries too extreme in the certainty of our rationality and reasoning, of our amazing intellect and its exploding technology and information. But our lack of openly acknowledging and considering the reality of the irrational has opened the floodgates for much of our culture to have a monstrous need (and excuse) to dangerously believe and totally trust certain irrational beliefs without question. This is especially so regarding social, political, ethical and religious matters. Note these are strongly held emotional areas of the human psyche which more easily succumb to our irrational nature. I suspect the more a person claims to be totally rational about such things the more likely they are to be believing destructive untruths.
Forgetting political angles for a moment, two outstanding dangerous examples of irrationality taking root are that receiving vaccines as medically prescribed to combat a real virus pandemic is a wrong, weak, unhealthy or unethical thing to do. Another is that the thoroughly investigated presidential election of 2020 was' rigged and stolen ' from one candidate and given wrongly to another. Such needed illusory beliefs originate from deeper levels of our psyche than only surface politics but they can certainly be emotionally manipulated by unethical authority figures.
Then a question becomes what dynamics must happen to bring order and some protection from this collective threat of our culture splitting and collapsing due to overly irrational beliefs and fears? When a fall into irrationality, as we now see, happens to a large part of the culture there is then serious danger of a full collapse into destructive irredeemable chaos. This would be a kind of new dark age where we lose the intellectual, cultural and psychological gains made over many centuries.( We are no more protected from such an end than ancient cultures were.)
So what is needed for our redemption? First, the collective irrational beliefs must be rationally recognized and resisted by as many persons as possible without giving in to violence. And secondly it also raises the essential and urgent need for some kind of outer/inner event which clearly embraces both the rational and irrational nature of our human minds/souls in some new unexpected way. Such a phenomenon can shake us and bring us toward a newly balanced more healthy culture.
But the sticky thing is we humans can't will or orchestrate by science/medicine/military/academics or politics, such a psychological/spiritual phenomenon. Our advanced technology has no such capacity nor does our best and strongest rational reasoning or institutional religions. Yes, you may guess, it is from the imaginative irrational realm where such phenomena have in ancient times risen to redeem such occasions as ours now and also much of the world. Such a happening can result in a culture rising to new levels of collective consciousness.
One example of this spiritual/psychological dynamic in history was the surprising symbolic phenomenon of the 'birth of God as a human' emerging among lowly people in the near East some two thousand years ago. Times are right it seems for as powerful but likely different symbol, effective for these new times, to emerge from the irrational realm of our collective psyche.
The need seems to me this strong and urgent now. So then we seem called by fate to now keep our personal rational aspect strong and active while also acknowledging we must better trust and anticipate that irrational factors beyond our rational grasp must be autonomously activated and the results witnessed and absorbed. Such cooperating rational and irrational factors could pull us back safely from the abyss that threatens now to swallow us all.
May we be very alert and may that which is God be merciful.
Jim Hibbett
