[H]

but it is a mark of what is generally going to happen.

It's like you say, more a mark of how soon it will happen and how well it's going to be received.

And I agree, this is one of the main reasons why many long-overdue improvements are stalled. I remember having a similar conversation with Wilshire about progress. Unimpeded progress is not the norm.

Right, I mean, at it's best, you'd want a society that is conservative enough to not throw away things of value, but liberal enough to actually change with the times and adapt to new circumstances.  How you actually achieve that balance is tricky though.  Especially with how entrenched people are now-a-days.

[SmilerLoki]

Right, I mean, at it's best, you'd want a society that is conservative enough to not throw away things of value, but liberal enough to actually change with the times and adapt to new circumstances.

I don't think it's possible to control the rate of societal evolution (at least not in a productive manner). On the other hand, it's very possible to take it into account.

[H]

I don't think it's possible to control the rate of societal evolution (at least not in a productive manner). On the other hand, it's very possible to take it into account.

Hmm, that is complex.  I think it is possible to move it in small degrees, which is probably as "good" as it gets.  If it's plausible to be able to nudge people in a given direction, then I think it's plausible that you can nudge larger groups of people and so society.

However, if you foster entrenchment, nothing good is going to come of it.

[SmilerLoki]

However, if you foster entrenchment, nothing good is going to come of it.

That's for certain.

[H]

Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness—that means cynically and with innocence. What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism…. Our whole European culture is moving for some time now, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade, as toward a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.

He that speaks here has, conversely, done nothing so far but to reflect: as a philosopher and solitary by instinct who has found his advantage in standing aside, outside. Why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals—because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these “values” really had.

We require, at some time, new values.

Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?

Point of departure: it is an error to consider “social distress” or “physiological degeneration,” or corruption of all things, as the cause of nihilism. Ours is the most honest and compassionate age. Distress, whether psychic, physical, or intellectual, need not at all produce nihilism (that is, the radical rejection of value, meaning, and desirability). Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations. Rather: it is in one particular interpretation, the Christian moral one, that nihilism is rooted.

The end of Christianity—at the hands of its own morality (which cannot be replaced), which turns against the Christian God: the sense of truthfulness, highly developed by Christianity, is nauseated by the falseness and mendaciousness of all Christian interpretations of the world and of history; rebound from “God is the truth” to the fanatical faith “All
is false”; an active Buddhism.

Skepticism regarding morality is what is decisive. The end of the moral interpretation of the world, which no longer has any sanction after it has tried to escape into some beyond, leads to nihilism.

“All lacks meaning.” (The untenability of one interpretation of the world, upon which a tremendous amount of energy has been lavished, awakens the suspicion that all interpretations of the world are false.)

-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Well shit, if that isn't hitting a nail on the head...

[TaoHorror]

I was a "fan" of the man in my younger years - deconstruction of Christianity/Judaism paired with a dystopic vision of what it'll be like without it. It's a lie, it's self-limiting/enslavement/reduction, but the road out of it leads to nothingness.

[H]

I was a "fan" of the man in my younger years - deconstruction of Christianity/Judaism paired with a dystopic vision of what it'll be like without it. It's a lie, it's self-limiting/enslavement/reduction, but the road out of it leads to nothingness.

It's interesting, because (and I don't mean this to attempt to put forth the idea that somehow I was smart or anything even approaching it) in my necessarily depressive teenage and later years, it seemed clear to me that rationality was not a surrogate savior to, say, religion.  I had no ability to understand how or why though.  It's interesting to read that kind of why, now, later in life when it is actually less helpful to me due to circumstance but allowing what might be a more substantive perceptive.

I think the word lie and the word truth though, in a subjective sense, are semantic traps, perhaps.

[TaoHorror]

I was a "fan" of the man in my younger years - deconstruction of Christianity/Judaism paired with a dystopic vision of what it'll be like without it. It's a lie, it's self-limiting/enslavement/reduction, but the road out of it leads to nothingness.

It's interesting, because (and I don't mean this to attempt to put forth the idea that somehow I was smart or anything even approaching it) in my necessarily depressive teenage and later years, it seemed clear to me that rationality was not a surrogate savior to, say, religion.  I had no ability to understand how or why though.  It's interesting to read that kind of why, now, later in life when it is actually less helpful to me due to circumstance but allowing what might be a more substantive perceptive.

I think the word lie and the word truth though, in a subjective sense, are semantic traps, perhaps.

I was summing up what I think he was saying briefly, not saying I agree/disagree with it. Calling it a lie is too simplistic, ofc. I'm not as gifted as Nitz with his command of succinctness, I'm more awkward.

[H]

I was summing up what I think he was saying briefly, not saying I agree/disagree with it. Calling it a lie is too simplistic, ofc. I'm not as gifted as Nitz with his command of succinctness, I'm more awkward.

Aren't we all?  If I was even a 64th as smart...the things that could be done...who knows?

I think the crux might come in to the intersection of what is true, what could be true, and what should be true.  True, as in, actually Being.

[H]

Psychology deals with ideas and other mental contents as zoology, for instance, deals with the different species of animals. An elephant is “true” because it exists. The elephant is neither an inference nor a statement nor the subjective judgment of a creator. It is a phenomenon. But we are so used to the idea that psychic events are wilful and arbitrary products, or even the inventions of a human creator, that we can hardly rid ourselves of the prejudiced view that the psyche and its contents are nothing but our own arbitrary invention or the more or less illusory product of supposition and judgment. The fact is that certain ideas exist almost everywhere and at all times and can even spontaneously create themselves quite independently of migration and tradition. They are not made by the individual, they just happen to him—they even force themselves on his consciousness. This is not Platonic philosophy but empirical psychology.

C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion

[Wilshire]

Its funny that he used an Elephant

Well described though. Much more succinct than anything Bakker comes up with.

[H]

Its funny that he used an Elephant

Well described though. Much more succinct than anything Bakker comes up with.

No offense meant to Bakker, but Jung was probably one of the 1% (or less) of the smartest humans who ever lived.  I just don't think Bakker is in that league, smart as he is...

[themerchant]

Psychology deals with ideas and other mental contents as zoology, for instance, deals with the different species of animals. An elephant is “true” because it exists. The elephant is neither an inference nor a statement nor the subjective judgment of a creator. It is a phenomenon. But we are so used to the idea that psychic events are wilful and arbitrary products, or even the inventions of a human creator, that we can hardly rid ourselves of the prejudiced view that the psyche and its contents are nothing but our own arbitrary invention or the more or less illusory product of supposition and judgment. The fact is that certain ideas exist almost everywhere and at all times and can even spontaneously create themselves quite independently of migration and tradition. They are not made by the individual, they just happen to him—they even force themselves on his consciousness. This is not Platonic philosophy but empirical psychology.

C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion

Isn't this just what is said at the start of the SA series specifically this point "The fact is that certain ideas exist almost everywhere and at all times and can even spontaneously create themselves quite independently of migration and tradition"

[themerchant]

Do non-mathematicians spawn mathematical ideas?

What's an example of an idea that exists almost everywhere and at all times?

[H]

Do non-mathematicians spawn mathematical ideas?

What's an example of an idea that exists almost everywhere and at all times?

Sure, before there was formal "math" as we'd call it, Egyptians and many other cultures were able to do some pretty mathematical things.  I mean, I guess in that sense, they were mathematicians, but there was no such thing as formal math, so what they were doing was really instinctively (or subconsciously) preforming mathematical operations?  Perhaps in the same way that, say, a basketball player doesn't consciously preform the mathematics of the requisite arc needed to reach the basket with the ball.  But in the sense, they reflexively (instinctively?) do just that.  So, now I really have no idea what a mathematician even is anymore...

I believe he is talking more about mythological, i.e. psychological phenomena though.  For example, the "engendering" of psychic phenomena (as male or female), or even just the universal experience of the numinosum, even if in form of different psychological symbols.  The work from which I took the quote pretty much presupposes that you have already become familiar with Jung's earlier work on archetypes and so pretty well agree (by continuing to follow Jung's thought process through) that they are real.  This is just part of what makes it so difficult to understand a great deal of his work.  In addition to it simply being rather complicated in and of itself...