Guest guest Posted October 22, 2004 Report Share Posted October 22, 2004 mike dickman write me: <<I get the feeling - on a million different levels - that the whole world is going completely insane... That - right down to individuals now - it's just a question now of grab what you can and get out - Après nous, le déluge. Us folk got to stick together.>> Yes, we do. But as (and the article (printed BELOW) was great, the one of selfishness) individuality as individuation -- chosen, conscious thinking apart from the mob instinct (think of Harry Potter and Firenze) : tuning into intuition, not fearing the uc, but not falling full into participation mystique. Logos and eros thus act to illuminate the Creator's darkness. Or so that's what seems to me. x's deborah But the individual as the only carrier of life and existence is of paramount importance. He cannot be substituted by a group or by a mass. Yet we are rapidly approaching a state in which nobody will accept individual responsibility any more. We prefer to leave it as an odious business to groups and organizations, blissfully unconscious of the fact that the group or mass psyche is that of an animal and wholly inhuman. What we need is the development of the inner spiritual man, the unique individual whose treasure is hidden on the one hand in the symbols of our mythological tradition, and on the other hand in man's unconscious psyche. CGJUNG The psychological processes, which accompany the present war, above all the incredible brutalization of public opinion, the mutual slanderings, the unprecedented fury of destruction, the monstrous flood of lies, and man's capacity to call a halt to the bloody demon - are suited like nothing else to powerfully push in front of the eyes of thinking men the problem of the restlessly slumbering chaotic unconscious under the ordered world of consciousness. This war has pitilessly revealed to civilized man that he is still a barbarian. . . But the psychology of the individual corresponds to the psychology of the nation. What the nation does is done also by each individual, and so long as the individual does it, the nation also does it. Only the change in the attitude of the individual is the beginning of the change in the psychology of the nation. ~CGJUNG (CW7,4, trans, mod.) ------------------------------------- The death of intimacy A selfish, market-driven society is eroding our very humanity Jacques Saturday September 18, 2004 The Guardian It has become almost an article of faith in our society that change is synonymous with progress. The present government has preached this message more than most, while it is a philosophy that most people seem to live by. It is nonsense, of course. Change has never always been good. And recent surveys indicating that we are less happy than we used to be suggest a profound malaise at the heart of western society and modern notions of progress. The findings are not surprising. The very idea of what it means to be human - and the necessary conditions for human qualities to thrive - are being eroded. The reason we no longer feel as happy as we once did is that the intimacy on which our sense of well-being rests - a product of our closest, most intimate relationships, above all in the family - is in decline. In this context, three trends are profoundly changing the nature of our society. First, the rise of individualism, initially evident in the 1960s, has made self the dominant interest, the universal reference point and one's own needs as the ultimate justification of everything. We live in the age of selfishness. Second, there has been the relentless spread of the market into every part of society. The marketisation of everything has made society, and each of us, more competitive. The logic of the market has now become universal, the ideology not just of neoliberals, but of us all, the criterion we use not just about our job or when shopping, but about our innermost selves, and our most intimate relationships. The prophets who announced the market revolution saw it in contestation with the state: in fact, it proved far more insidious than that, eroding the very notion of what it means to be human. The credo of self, inextricably entwined with the gospel of the market, has hijacked the fabric of our lives. We live in an ego-market society. Third, there is the rise of communication technologies, notably mobile phones and the internet, which are contracting our private space, erasing our personal time and accelerating the pace of life. Of course, we remain deeply social animals. We enjoy many more relationships than we used to: cafe culture has become the symbol of our modern conviviality. But quantity does not mean quality. Our relationships may be more cosmopolitan but they are increasingly transient and ephemeral. Our social world has come to mirror and mimic the rhythms and characteristics of the market, contractual in nature. Meanwhile, the family - the site of virtually the only life-long relationships we enjoy - has become an ever-weaker institution: extended families are increasingly marginal, nuclear families are getting smaller and more short-lived, almost half of all marriages end in divorce, and most parents spend less time with their pre-school children. The central site of intimacy is the family - as expressed in the relationship between partners, and between parents and children. Intimacy is a function of time and permanence. It rests on mutuality and unconditionality. It is rooted in trust. As such, it is the antithesis of the values engendered by the market. Yet even our most intimate relationships are being corroded by the new dominant values. There is an increasingly powerful tendency to judge love and sex by the criteria of consumer society - in other words, novelty, variety and disposability. Serial monogamy is now our way of life. Sex has been accorded a status, as measured by the incidence of articles in newspapers, not to mention the avalanche of online porn, that elevates it above all other considerations. Unsurprisingly, love - which belongs in the realm of the soul and spirit rather than the body - becomes more elusive. It is the deterioration in the parent-child relationship, though, that should detain us most. This, after all, is the cradle of all else, where we learn our sense of security, our identity and emotions, our ability to love and care, to speak and listen, to be human. The parent-child, especially the mother-child, relationship stands in the sharpest contrast of all to the laws of the market. It is utterly unequal, and yet there is no expectation that the sacrifice entails or requires reciprocation. On the contrary, the only way a child can reciprocate is through the love they give, and the sacrifice they make, for their own children. But this most precious of all human relationships is being amended and undermined. As women have been drawn into the labour market on the same scale as men, they are now subject to growing time-scarcity, with profound consequences for the family, and especially children. The birth rate has fallen to historic new lows. That most fundamental of human functions, reproduction, is beleaguered by the values of the ego-market society. Couples are increasingly reluctant to make the inevitable " sacrifices " - cut in income, loss of time, greater pressure - that parenthood involves. Parents are now spending less time with their babies and toddlers. The effects are already evident in schools. In a study published by the government's Basic Skills Agency last year, teachers claim that half of all children now start school unable to speak audibly and be understood by others, to respond to simple instructions, recognise their own names or even count to five. In order to attend to our own needs, our children are neglected, our time substituted by paying for that of others, videos and computer games deployed as a means of distraction. And the problem applies across the class spectrum. So-called " money-rich, time-scarce " professionals are one of the most culpable groups. Time is the most important gift a parent can give a child, and time is what we are less and less prepared to forgo. It is impossible to predict the precise consequences of this, but a growing loss of intimacy and a decline in emotional intelligence, not to mention a cornucopia of behavioural problems, are inevitable. Judging by this week's survey of the growing emotional problems of teenagers, they are already apparent. Such changes, moreover, are permanent and irrecoverable. A generation grows up knowing no different, bequeathing the same emotional assumptions to its offspring. But it is not only in the context of the changing texture of human relationships that intimacy is in decline. We are also becoming less and less intimate with the human condition itself. The conventional wisdom is that the media has made us a more thoughtful and knowledgeable society. The problem is that what we learn from the media is less and less mediated by personal experience, by settled communities that provide us with the yardstick of reality, based on the accumulated knowledge of people whom we know and trust. Indeed, society has moved in precisely the opposite direction, towards an increasingly adolescent culture which denigrates age and experience. In the growing absence of real-life experience we have become prey to what can only be described as a voyeuristic relationship with the most fundamental experiences. Death - which most of us now only encounter in any intimate way in our 40s, through the death of a parent - has become something that we overwhelmingly learn about and consume through the media. But as such it is shorn of any pain, any real understanding, wedged between stories about celebrity or the weather, instantly forgotten, the mind detained for little more than a minute, the grief of those bereaved utterly inconceivable, the idea that their lives have been destroyed forever not even imaginable in our gratification-society: pain is for the professionals, not something to detain the ordinary mortal. The decline of settled community and the rise of the media-society has desensitised us as human beings. We have become less intimate with the most fundamental emotions, without which we cannot understand the meaning of life: there are no peaks without troughs. Life becomes shopping. So what is to be done, I hear the policy-wonks say. Nothing much, I guess. But the observation is no less important for that. What, after all, could be more important than our humanity? Perhaps if enough people realise what has happened, what is happening, we might claw back a little of ourselves, of what we have lost. · Jacques is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. martinjacques1@... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 22, 2004 Report Share Posted October 22, 2004 Dear Deborah, I can well understand yours and everybody's feeling that we are all crazy. maybe we are? My question is not what is the matter, but what on earth do we think we can do about this state of affairs.?? We all know the problems...its the solutions we disagree on. I quote: " So what is to be done, I hear the policy-wonks say. Nothing much, I guess. But the observation is no less important for that. What, after all, could be more important than our humanity? Perhaps if enough people realize what has happened, what is happening, we might claw back a little of ourselves, of what we have lost. " Look at it from a different angle. The people who are making this mess of things are US. We are the one's that have caused what we now want to erase. Our actions or inactions, our love or lack of love got us into this mess. I know it is so " simple-minded " to agree with Jung that we can change people only one person at a time. We must first become conscious ourselves before we take on humanity in toto. I myself am thoroughly sick of the ranting and raving of how awful everything is. I already know that. I see it. I don't need a litany of wrong doings amongst us, day after day. We have met the enemy and he is us. We are not going to change the mass of humanity by our will. As all times in the past, we will have to struggle one by one. It will be only people of faith who will bother struggling, the rest seem to have given up and are wallowing in their own desperation. It each person so repulsed by today, were to decide now to become who they were meant to be, and then went out and influenced one other. We could at least make a start, instead of throwing up our hands in despair. We all talk about love, maybe we should figure out how to show it to someone else. maybe we could accept just one other person as they are right now and make them feel our love. We will have " saved' one member of humanity. We know what we need to do, but we wander around wringing our hands. What earthly good does that do anyone? Don't tell me how awful everything is, point me to a person who need my help to love himself. It won't be the first time on this planet that we must learn how to love.We have a lot to learn and re-learn. I am so everlastingly sick of hearing how awful everything is. Negativity will not help us out of this mess. it has never before and won't now.Nor will fear. By complaining about the state of the world, the complainers are congratulating themselves for being so aware and conscious.( they are not like other folks, we see the mess) Well good for us. Now its time to do more that reiterate, list, cry over humanity and to devote oneself to lead, follow or get out of the way as we try to help those most in need of help...those without hope. I don't need Jacques, thank you. Anyone with eyes to see and a heart to hurt can see for themselves. So Deborah, you and I are on the same page. Let the dead bury the dead and lets get on with it, each in our own little spot on earth. Fear on the other hand,as we grab all we can and get together as was written ( " tongue in cheek " ) is I am afraid how many feel already, and seriously.. That is the biggest battle, the fear each member of the human race seems to be infected with. The first call is to ourselves. Toni insane mike dickman write me: <<I get the feeling - on a million different levels - that the whole world is going completely insane... That - right down to individuals now - it's just a question now of grab what you can and get out - Après nous, le déluge. Us folk got to stick together.>> Yes, we do. But as (and the article (printed BELOW) was great, the one of selfishness) individuality as individuation -- chosen, conscious thinking apart from the mob instinct (think of Harry Potter and Firenze) : tuning into intuition, not fearing the uc, but not falling full into participation mystique. Logos and eros thus act to illuminate the Creator's darkness. Or so that's what seems to me. x's deborah But the individual as the only carrier of life and existence is of paramount importance. He cannot be substituted by a group or by a mass. Yet we are rapidly approaching a state in which nobody will accept individual responsibility any more. We prefer to leave it as an odious business to groups and organizations, blissfully unconscious of the fact that the group or mass psyche is that of an animal and wholly inhuman. What we need is the development of the inner spiritual man, the unique individual whose treasure is hidden on the one hand in the symbols of our mythological tradition, and on the other hand in man's unconscious psyche. CGJUNG The psychological processes, which accompany the present war, above all the incredible brutalization of public opinion, the mutual slanderings, the unprecedented fury of destruction, the monstrous flood of lies, and man's capacity to call a halt to the bloody demon - are suited like nothing else to powerfully push in front of the eyes of thinking men the problem of the restlessly slumbering chaotic unconscious under the ordered world of consciousness. This war has pitilessly revealed to civilized man that he is still a barbarian. . . But the psychology of the individual corresponds to the psychology of the nation. What the nation does is done also by each individual, and so long as the individual does it, the nation also does it. Only the change in the attitude of the individual is the beginning of the change in the psychology of the nation. ~CGJUNG (CW7,4, trans, mod.) ------------------------------------- The death of intimacy A selfish, market-driven society is eroding our very humanity Jacques Saturday September 18, 2004 The Guardian It has become almost an article of faith in our society that change is synonymous with progress. The present government has preached this message more than most, while it is a philosophy that most people seem to live by. It is nonsense, of course. Change has never always been good. And recent surveys indicating that we are less happy than we used to be suggest a profound malaise at the heart of western society and modern notions of progress. The findings are not surprising. The very idea of what it means to be human - and the necessary conditions for human qualities to thrive - are being eroded. The reason we no longer feel as happy as we once did is that the intimacy on which our sense of well-being rests - a product of our closest, most intimate relationships, above all in the family - is in decline. In this context, three trends are profoundly changing the nature of our society. First, the rise of individualism, initially evident in the 1960s, has made self the dominant interest, the universal reference point and one's own needs as the ultimate justification of everything. We live in the age of selfishness. Second, there has been the relentless spread of the market into every part of society. The marketisation of everything has made society, and each of us, more competitive. The logic of the market has now become universal, the ideology not just of neoliberals, but of us all, the criterion we use not just about our job or when shopping, but about our innermost selves, and our most intimate relationships. The prophets who announced the market revolution saw it in contestation with the state: in fact, it proved far more insidious than that, eroding the very notion of what it means to be human. The credo of self, inextricably entwined with the gospel of the market, has hijacked the fabric of our lives. We live in an ego-market society. Third, there is the rise of communication technologies, notably mobile phones and the internet, which are contracting our private space, erasing our personal time and accelerating the pace of life. Of course, we remain deeply social animals. We enjoy many more relationships than we used to: cafe culture has become the symbol of our modern conviviality. But quantity does not mean quality. Our relationships may be more cosmopolitan but they are increasingly transient and ephemeral. Our social world has come to mirror and mimic the rhythms and characteristics of the market, contractual in nature. Meanwhile, the family - the site of virtually the only life-long relationships we enjoy - has become an ever-weaker institution: extended families are increasingly marginal, nuclear families are getting smaller and more short-lived, almost half of all marriages end in divorce, and most parents spend less time with their pre-school children. The central site of intimacy is the family - as expressed in the relationship between partners, and between parents and children. Intimacy is a function of time and permanence. It rests on mutuality and unconditionality. It is rooted in trust. As such, it is the antithesis of the values engendered by the market. Yet even our most intimate relationships are being corroded by the new dominant values. There is an increasingly powerful tendency to judge love and sex by the criteria of consumer society - in other words, novelty, variety and disposability. Serial monogamy is now our way of life. Sex has been accorded a status, as measured by the incidence of articles in newspapers, not to mention the avalanche of online porn, that elevates it above all other considerations. Unsurprisingly, love - which belongs in the realm of the soul and spirit rather than the body - becomes more elusive. It is the deterioration in the parent-child relationship, though, that should detain us most. This, after all, is the cradle of all else, where we learn our sense of security, our identity and emotions, our ability to love and care, to speak and listen, to be human. The parent-child, especially the mother-child, relationship stands in the sharpest contrast of all to the laws of the market. It is utterly unequal, and yet there is no expectation that the sacrifice entails or requires reciprocation. On the contrary, the only way a child can reciprocate is through the love they give, and the sacrifice they make, for their own children. But this most precious of all human relationships is being amended and undermined. As women have been drawn into the labour market on the same scale as men, they are now subject to growing time-scarcity, with profound consequences for the family, and especially children. The birth rate has fallen to historic new lows. That most fundamental of human functions, reproduction, is beleaguered by the values of the ego-market society. Couples are increasingly reluctant to make the inevitable " sacrifices " - cut in income, loss of time, greater pressure - that parenthood involves. Parents are now spending less time with their babies and toddlers. The effects are already evident in schools. In a study published by the government's Basic Skills Agency last year, teachers claim that half of all children now start school unable to speak audibly and be understood by others, to respond to simple instructions, recognise their own names or even count to five. In order to attend to our own needs, our children are neglected, our time substituted by paying for that of others, videos and computer games deployed as a means of distraction. And the problem applies across the class spectrum. So-called " money-rich, time-scarce " professionals are one of the most culpable groups. Time is the most important gift a parent can give a child, and time is what we are less and less prepared to forgo. It is impossible to predict the precise consequences of this, but a growing loss of intimacy and a decline in emotional intelligence, not to mention a cornucopia of behavioural problems, are inevitable. Judging by this week's survey of the growing emotional problems of teenagers, they are already apparent. Such changes, moreover, are permanent and irrecoverable. A generation grows up knowing no different, bequeathing the same emotional assumptions to its offspring. But it is not only in the context of the changing texture of human relationships that intimacy is in decline. We are also becoming less and less intimate with the human condition itself. The conventional wisdom is that the media has made us a more thoughtful and knowledgeable society. The problem is that what we learn from the media is less and less mediated by personal experience, by settled communities that provide us with the yardstick of reality, based on the accumulated knowledge of people whom we know and trust. Indeed, society has moved in precisely the opposite direction, towards an increasingly adolescent culture which denigrates age and experience. In the growing absence of real-life experience we have become prey to what can only be described as a voyeuristic relationship with the most fundamental experiences. Death - which most of us now only encounter in any intimate way in our 40s, through the death of a parent - has become something that we overwhelmingly learn about and consume through the media. But as such it is shorn of any pain, any real understanding, wedged between stories about celebrity or the weather, instantly forgotten, the mind detained for little more than a minute, the grief of those bereaved utterly inconceivable, the idea that their lives have been destroyed forever not even imaginable in our gratification-society: pain is for the professionals, not something to detain the ordinary mortal. The decline of settled community and the rise of the media-society has desensitised us as human beings. We have become less intimate with the most fundamental emotions, without which we cannot understand the meaning of life: there are no peaks without troughs. Life becomes shopping. So what is to be done, I hear the policy-wonks say. Nothing much, I guess. But the observation is no less important for that. What, after all, could be more important than our humanity? Perhaps if enough people realise what has happened, what is happening, we might claw back a little of ourselves, of what we have lost. · Jacques is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. martinjacques1@... " Our highest duty as human beings is to search out a means whereby beings may be freed from all kinds of unsatisfactory experience and suffering. " Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 22, 2004 Report Share Posted October 22, 2004 Hello Everyone: Please keep this dialogue going. I really appreciate your candid and honest sharing. It's a relief to me. Thanks so much. In the dance, Frances > > Dear Deborah, > > I can well understand yours and everybody's feeling that we are all crazy. > maybe we are? My question is not what is the matter, but what on earth do we > think we can do about this state of affairs.?? We all know the problems...its > the solutions we disagree on. > > I quote: > > " So what is to be done, I hear the policy-wonks say. Nothing much, I guess. > But the observation is no less important for that. What, after all, could be > more important than our humanity? Perhaps if enough people realize what has > happened, what is happening, we might claw back a little of ourselves, of > what we have lost. " > > Look at it from a different angle. The people who are making this mess of > things are US. We are the one's that have caused what we now want to erase. > Our actions or inactions, our love or lack of love got us into this mess. > > I know it is so " simple-minded " to agree with Jung that we can change people > only one person at a time. We must first become conscious ourselves before we > take on humanity in toto. > > I myself am thoroughly sick of the ranting and raving of how awful everything > is. I already know that. I see it. I don't need a litany of wrong doings > amongst us, day after day. > > We have met the enemy and he is us. We are not going to change the mass of > humanity by our will. As all times in the past, we will have to struggle one > by one. > It will be only people of faith who will bother struggling, the rest seem to > have given up and are wallowing in their own desperation. > > It each person so repulsed by today, were to decide now to become who they > were meant to be, and then went out and influenced one other. We could at > least make a start, instead of throwing up our hands in despair. > We all talk about love, maybe we should figure out how to show it to someone > else. maybe we could accept just one other person as they are right now and > make them feel our love. We will have " saved' one member of humanity. > > We know what we need to do, but we wander around wringing our hands. What > earthly good does that do anyone? Don't tell me how awful everything is, point > me to a person who need my help to love himself. It won't be the first time on > this planet that we must learn how to love.We have a lot to learn and > re-learn. > > I am so everlastingly sick of hearing how awful everything is. Negativity will > not help us out of this mess. it has never before and won't now.Nor will fear. > > By complaining about the state of the world, the complainers are > congratulating themselves for being so aware and conscious.( they are not like > other folks, we see the mess) Well good for us. Now its time to do more that > reiterate, list, cry over humanity and to devote oneself to lead, follow or > get out of the way as we try to help those most in need of help...those > without hope. > > I don't need Jacques, thank you. Anyone with eyes to see and a heart to > hurt can see for themselves. > So Deborah, you and I are on the same page. Let the dead bury the dead and > lets get on with it, each in our own little spot on earth. > > Fear on the other hand,as we grab all we can and get together as was written > ( " tongue in cheek " ) is I am afraid how many feel already, and seriously.. That > is the biggest battle, the fear each member of the human race seems to be > infected with. > > The first call is to ourselves. > Toni > > insane > > > > > mike dickman write me: > > <<I get the feeling - on a million different levels - that the whole world > is going completely insane... That - right down to individuals now - it's > just a question now of grab what you can and get out - Après nous, le > déluge. > Us folk got to stick together.>> > > Yes, we do. But as (and the article (printed BELOW) was great, the > one of selfishness) individuality as individuation -- chosen, conscious > thinking apart from the mob instinct (think of Harry Potter and Firenze) : > tuning into intuition, not fearing the uc, but not falling full into > participation mystique. > Logos and eros thus act to illuminate the Creator's darkness. > > Or so that's what seems to me. > > x's deborah > > But the individual as the only carrier of life and existence is of paramount > importance. He cannot be substituted by a group or by a mass. Yet we are > rapidly approaching a state in which nobody will accept individual > responsibility any more. We prefer to leave it as an odious business to > groups and organizations, blissfully unconscious of the fact that the group > or mass psyche is that of an animal and wholly inhuman. What we need is the > development of the inner spiritual man, the unique individual whose treasure > is hidden on the one hand in the symbols of our mythological tradition, and > on the other hand in man's unconscious psyche. CGJUNG > > > > The psychological processes, which accompany the present war, above all the > incredible brutalization of public opinion, the mutual slanderings, the > unprecedented fury of destruction, the monstrous flood of lies, and man's > capacity to call a halt to the bloody demon - are suited like nothing else > to powerfully push in front of the eyes of thinking men the problem of the > restlessly slumbering chaotic unconscious under the ordered world of > consciousness. This war has pitilessly revealed to civilized man that he is > still a barbarian. . . But the psychology of the individual corresponds to > the psychology of the nation. What the nation does is done also by each > individual, and so long as the individual does it, the nation also does it. > Only the change in the attitude of the individual is the beginning of the > change in the psychology of the nation. ~CGJUNG (CW7,4, trans, mod.) > > ------------------------------------- > > > > The death of intimacy > > A selfish, market-driven society is eroding our very humanity > > Jacques Saturday September 18, 2004 The Guardian > > It has become almost an article of faith in our society that change is > synonymous with progress. The present government has preached this message > more than most, while it is a philosophy that most people seem to live by. > It is nonsense, of course. Change has never always been good. And recent > surveys indicating that we are less happy than we used to be suggest a > profound malaise at the heart of western society and modern notions of > progress. The findings are not surprising. The very idea of what it means to > be human - and the necessary conditions for human qualities to thrive - are > being eroded. The reason we no longer feel as happy as we once did is that > the intimacy on which our sense of well-being rests - a product of our > closest, most intimate relationships, above all in the family - is in > decline. In this context, three trends are profoundly changing the nature of > our society. First, the rise of individualism, initially evident in the > 1960s, has made self the dominant interest, the universal reference point > and one's own needs as the ultimate justification of everything. We live in > the age of selfishness. > > Second, there has been the relentless spread of the market into every part > of society. The marketisation of everything has made society, and each of > us, more competitive. The logic of the market has now become universal, the > ideology not just of neoliberals, but of us all, the criterion we use not > just about our job or when shopping, but about our innermost selves, and our > most intimate relationships. The prophets who announced the market > revolution saw it in contestation with the state: in fact, it proved far > more insidious than that, eroding the very notion of what it means to be > human. The credo of self, inextricably entwined with the gospel of the > market, has hijacked the fabric of our lives. We live in an ego-market > society. > > Third, there is the rise of communication technologies, notably mobile > phones and the internet, which are contracting our private space, erasing > our personal time and accelerating the pace of life. Of course, we remain > deeply social animals. We enjoy many more relationships than we used to: > cafe culture has become the symbol of our modern conviviality. But quantity > does not mean quality. Our relationships may be more cosmopolitan but they > are increasingly transient and ephemeral. Our social world has come to > mirror and mimic the rhythms and characteristics of the market, contractual > in nature. Meanwhile, the family - the site of virtually the only life-long > relationships we enjoy - has become an ever-weaker institution: extended > families are increasingly marginal, nuclear families are getting smaller and > more short-lived, almost half of all marriages end in divorce, and most > parents spend less time with their pre-school children. > > The central site of intimacy is the family - as expressed in the > relationship between partners, and between parents and children. Intimacy is > a function of time and permanence. It rests on mutuality and > unconditionality. It is rooted in trust. As such, it is the antithesis of > the values engendered by the market. > > Yet even our most intimate relationships are being corroded by the new > dominant values. There is an increasingly powerful tendency to judge love > and sex by the criteria of consumer society - in other words, novelty, > variety and disposability. Serial monogamy is now our way of life. Sex has > been accorded a status, as measured by the incidence of articles in > newspapers, not to mention the avalanche of online porn, that elevates it > above all other considerations. Unsurprisingly, love - which belongs in the > realm of the soul and spirit rather than the body - becomes more elusive. > > It is the deterioration in the parent-child relationship, though, that > should detain us most. This, after all, is the cradle of all else, where we > learn our sense of security, our identity and emotions, our ability to love > and care, to speak and listen, to be human. > > The parent-child, especially the mother-child, relationship stands in the > sharpest contrast of all to the laws of the market. It is utterly unequal, > and yet there is no expectation that the sacrifice entails or requires > reciprocation. On the contrary, the only way a child can reciprocate is > through the love they give, and the sacrifice they make, for their own > children. > > But this most precious of all human relationships is being amended and > undermined. As women have been drawn into the labour market on the same > scale as men, they are now subject to growing time-scarcity, with profound > consequences for the family, and especially children. The birth rate has > fallen to historic new lows. That most fundamental of human functions, > reproduction, is beleaguered by the values of the ego-market society. > Couples are increasingly reluctant to make the inevitable " sacrifices " - cut > in income, loss of time, greater pressure - that parenthood involves. > > Parents are now spending less time with their babies and toddlers. The > effects are already evident in schools. In a study published by the > government's Basic Skills Agency last year, teachers claim that half of all > children now start school unable to speak audibly and be understood by > others, to respond to simple instructions, recognise their own names or even > count to five. In order to attend to our own needs, our children are > neglected, our time substituted by paying for that of others, videos and > computer games deployed as a means of distraction. And the problem applies > across the class spectrum. So-called " money-rich, time-scarce " professionals > are one of the most culpable groups. Time is the most important gift a > parent can give a child, and time is what we are less and less prepared to > forgo. > > It is impossible to predict the precise consequences of this, but a growing > loss of intimacy and a decline in emotional intelligence, not to mention a > cornucopia of behavioural problems, are inevitable. Judging by this week's > survey of the growing emotional problems of teenagers, they are already > apparent. Such changes, moreover, are permanent and irrecoverable. A > generation grows up knowing no different, bequeathing the same emotional > assumptions to its offspring. > > But it is not only in the context of the changing texture of human > relationships that intimacy is in decline. We are also becoming less and > less intimate with the human condition itself. The conventional wisdom is > that the media has made us a more thoughtful and knowledgeable society. The > problem is that what we learn from the media is less and less mediated by > personal experience, by settled communities that provide us with the > yardstick of reality, based on the accumulated knowledge of people whom we > know and trust. Indeed, society has moved in precisely the opposite > direction, towards an increasingly adolescent culture which denigrates age > and experience. In the growing absence of real-life experience we have > become prey to what can only be described as a voyeuristic relationship with > the most fundamental experiences. > > Death - which most of us now only encounter in any intimate way in our 40s, > through the death of a parent - has become something that we overwhelmingly > learn about and consume through the media. But as such it is shorn of any > pain, any real understanding, wedged between stories about celebrity or the > weather, instantly forgotten, the mind detained for little more than a > minute, the grief of those bereaved utterly inconceivable, the idea that > their lives have been destroyed forever not even imaginable in our > gratification-society: pain is for the professionals, not something to > detain the ordinary mortal. > > The decline of settled community and the rise of the media-society has > desensitised us as human beings. We have become less intimate with the most > fundamental emotions, without which we cannot understand the meaning of > life: there are no peaks without troughs. Life becomes shopping. > > So what is to be done, I hear the policy-wonks say. Nothing much, I guess. > But the observation is no less important for that. What, after all, could be > more important than our humanity? Perhaps if enough people realise what has > happened, what is happening, we might claw back a little of ourselves, of > what we have lost. > > · Jacques is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Asia > Research Centre. > > martinjacques1@... > > > > " Our highest duty as human beings is to search out a means whereby beings may > be freed from all kinds of unsatisfactory experience and suffering. " > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 23, 2004 Report Share Posted October 23, 2004 Well spoke, Toni. Thank you for all you said. Yes-- I'm thinking that simple mindedness of Jung's 1 X 1 -- beginning with each individual -- isn't so much simple as what IS. It's our condition. I guess maybe that's what Vonnegut in Slaughter-House-Five keeps referencing in the serenity prayer (interesting history of that prayer : http://open-mind.org/Serenity.htm ) , cynical as he may be. Still, somehow he has heart. Jung spoke of humility. This is that necessary humility. The old question of making peace with a creator that lets you die, that sets the air on fire in Dresden. That allows genocide and terrorism. That is the first peace to make, it seems to me. Death for most of us is a distant thing we don't encounter much until the second half of life. The few who do in our culture, those who lose a close loved one, are, after the wake, the ceremony, the cards and flowers, left to face it mostly alone, living among people who don't share their wound... who mostly deny its possibility in their own actions. (And only otherwise romanticize it.) But this is the pain we carry. Physically we die, and physically we will lose all we ever come to love in this world. Churches are meant to provide companionship, but they also tend to play on those strings Hardy wrote about. Most also want to provide a physical, literal answer for psychical things. They don't make an honest peace with the creator. Jung is honest about this... he understood that opening to the heart and the reality of the psyche is the way to make peace. We come full circle, and understand that to serve the literal as " spiritual " is the simplest of simplemindedness. And the 1 X 1 the most difficult and -- true. I think too often we have cults of power rather than any true religious function. When I hear people say " I don't belong to a church but I believe in god, " it's like an apology. Why? Brown in his Making of Late Antiquity speaks of those early century's changing consciousness. Deity moves from nature and forces into holy men. Magicians, really. With magic words and seals. And the next millennium is spent searching for some lost Enochian primal language, thinking it might be the Word (and I only understand the Word when I hear Philo sing it.. But the impetus was that inner voice, that awareness of consciousness that had burst forth from the unconscious (and into 'awareness' of itself ) at some point. What do we do with it, this special condition humans have so strongly? Listen to it to the point of schizophrenia? Sacrifice to it? Let us allow it to rule? Consider it a demon, Prove All Things? This is where that 1 X 1 begins, and some of our seemingly sophisticated responses to it are very primitive. I'm just thinking outloud. But all this is predicated on understanding what Jung meant when he said the demon is a symptom of consciousness. What demon is this? How we define it and our attitude towards it -- that's what we examine here, I think. What we must examine. In ourselves, in our leaders. It is also that which our culture denies. That which Christianity has traditionally turned into angels and Old Lucifer. The Roman Emperors from which that early Church evolved understood the power of that inner voice when Augustus declared himself (as derived from the Genius, a sort of mojo genius loci) a god. I'm speaking from a strange perspective, I know. So was Jung. I thank the gods he spoke and made this journey less lonely. Meanwhile, our mike wrote this today... and I don;t think he will mind a share. After all, summoned or not ----- Original Message ----- From: cloudhand Get real, Siggi - Freud would have been furious - hard-nosed pragmatists are invading the fabulous dream industry he founded Isn't it extraordinary? In India and China and Tibet - even in the Arabo-semitic quarters of the so-called 'middle' east - you have an accretion of " knowledge " (theories by any other name) dating back in traceable lineage for thousands and thousands of years. In the west, all previous theories are 'wrong' and only this new fad is 'right'... There is no " both/and " ; only " either/or " ... " With us or against us " in short... No wonder we fall flat on our noses every time. A tale: An earnest young American in the early 70s is explaining to a Zen Master that, far from the sun and the moon rising every morning and evening in the more or less east and setting in the more or less west some time later, in fact, the earth rotates about its axis while revolving around the sun. 'Ah!' says said Zen Master. 'You have seen this?' 'Yes - It's common knowledge. We learn it at school throughout the enlightened world.' 'Ah so! But with own eyes you have seen this, yes?' 'Well no... But everybody knows it's true...' 'Everybody know, yes... But nobody see, huh?... Thin I think interesting theory, maybe true. What I see every morning, every evening is sun rise in east, moon rise in east and both set in west. That i see. That i know. Not think. " We are so stupid. The theory of gravity, the theory of evolution, the theory of the laws of thermodynamics... for us are proven fact... The earth is not flat. The heavens are not peopled with gods. You cannot possibly transform into light. People (and pigs) do not fly... Everybody 'knows' this, and what people 'knew' before is touted as ignorance and superstition... But superstition is ANY unexamined belief, not just the wogga-wogga ones. Tibetans - via the great Indian Mahasiddha ( " greatly accomplished one " ) Naropa - use dream somewhat differently. To them, since our experience of all and everything can actually only be projection, dream is a damn good way of getting to know this. In dream, your body is here, doing nothing at all except wind down - breathe and relax - but your mind may be anywhere at all from the subtlest of paradisical states to the the most terrifying of the hells and many others besides, and the experiences you are having there are absolutely real to you as you are having them. Like the lucid dreamers, they teach you to wake up within the dream-state - to wake up to the fact that you are dreaming, and then to manipulate the quality of the dream... If you're dreaming one, make it many, if it's good, make it bad, if bad, good... Till you realise how mind works (which is what puts them apart from your lucid dreamer punters who all seem to get stuck in the belief that they can " manipulate reality " (ever heard of a lucid dreamer millionaire, president, great being?))...Till you realise that it is mind - awareness - that makes this colour-form-sound-gestalt 'male' or 'tree' and that one 'dinner' or 'flower' or 'bus'... That without the awareness those things do not 'exist' as such as anything - any thing - they simply are... in potential... but can in no wise be verified. The moment they are verified - caught in the very act of verification - they MUST become a this or a that relative to the eye of the beholder. A drop of water to a god is the elixir; to a titanic spirit it is a weapon and a strtagem; to a human it is a drop of water and it depends where and what it is - could be anything from a nuisance to a last chance; to an animal it might be home, even the entire experienced universe; to a hungry ghost it will change into something foul or unattainable the moment it is thought of; and to a hell wraith it is another cause for excruciating suffering. In itself it does not change, it is simply a datum - a piece of 'given' information, a fluctuation in the basic energy-field of all that is... The dragon dance of space dancing space into space as every-fleeting space... becoming... When clung to, it becomes 'solid' and inescapable; when accepted and left to itself, it becomes openness... EVERYthing is a dream, and thought Fritzie Perls came closest, in my anything but humble opinion, to showing what dream was, the occident hasn't even begun to know what dreams are actually telling you or how you should use them... (should/could/might conceivably) Phew! Long squawk! Over n out (over nowt?) " To look with the eyes and see with the heart is the secret of the Philosopher's Stone. " ~Petrus Bonus -------------------------------------------------- I answered: You great beauty, touching paradox. A leap and a glimpse, my small mind has. Jung spoke of humility. This is that necessary humility. Thank you. x's deborah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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