07/23/2026
โโข.What Is This Quintessence Of Dust?
"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
To die: to sleep; No more;
And by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand
natural shocks
That flesh is heir to."
William Shakespeare
๐๐ข๐ฎ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ต โข Act III โข Scene I (1604)
โข
"What will the future bring? From time immemorial this question has occupied men's minds, though not always to the same degree. Historically, it is chiefly in times of physical, political, economic and spiritual distress that men's eyes turn with anxious hope to the future, and when anticipations, utopias, and apocalyptic visions multiply."
"Most people confuse 'self-knowledge' with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone who has ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body with its physiological and anatomical structure, of which the average person knows very little too. Although he lives in it and with it, most of it totally unknown to the layman, and special scientific knowledge is needed to acquaint consciousness with what is known of the body, not to speak of all that is ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต known, which also exists.
What is commonly called 'self-knowledge' is therefore a very limited knowledge, most of it dependent on social factors, of what goes on in the human psyche. Hence one is always coming up against the prejudice that such and such a thing does not happen 'with us' or 'in our family' or among our friends and acquaintances, and on the other hand, one meets with equally illusory assumptions about the alleged presence of qualities which merely serve to cover up the true facts of the case.
In this broad belt of unconsciousness, which is immune to conscious criticism and control, we stand defenseless, open to all kinds of influences and psychic infections. As with all dangers, we can guard against the risk of psychic infection only when we know what is attacking us, and how, where and when the attack will come. Since self-knowledge is a matter of getting to know the individual facts, theories help very little in this respect. For the more a theory lays claim to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts."
"Under the influence of scientific assumptions, not only the psyche but the individual man and, indeed, all individual events whatsoever suffer a leveling down and a process of blurring that distorts the picture of reality into a conceptual average. We ought not to underestimate the psychological effect of the statistical world picture: it displaces the individual in favor of anonymous units that pile up into mass formations."
"The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (๐ณ๐ข๐ช๐ด๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ฅ'รฉ๐ต๐ข๐ต). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the ex*****on of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpieces of the State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgement, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied."
"Under these circumstances it is small wonder that individual judgement grows increasingly uncertain of itself and that responsibility is collectivized as much as possible, i.e., is shuffled off by the individual and delegated to a corporate body. In this way the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which in its turn usurps the function of the real life carrier, whereas, in actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea like the State. Both are hypostatized, that is, have become autonomous. The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. Thus the constitutional State drifts into the situation of a primitive form of society, namely the communism of a primitive tribe where everybody is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or an oligarchy."
Excerpts from Carl Jung's
๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ช๐ด๐ค๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐๐ฆ๐ญ๐ง (1957)
โข
"To Be" โข Art by Stefan Gesell
โRLRโ (2022 Recycle โข Redux)
