Posts Tagged ‘depth psychology’

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Protest then and now….

August 24, 2019

We were lucky when I was young. In the 1980s it is true that leaders in the English speaking world suddenly decided that supporting corporations and hitting the poor would solve all our problems, but they also were rational enough not to want atomic war and global destruction. They understood what nuclear war meant. Basically the protestors and the dominant groups were in harmony – all of us preferred not to have nuclear war and the end of the world. As a result, we all lived through this potential universal death.

Even when it came to environment, the dominant groups largely thought saving the earth was good and possible, and that if it cost a few bucks extra that could be done. Even Margaret Thatcher thought global warming should be tackled, while she was in office – even if she later thought saving capitalism was more important than saving the planet. Apparently after retiring she wrote “Kyoto was an anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American project which no American leader alert to his country’s national interests could have supported.”

Apparently she was persuaded by the usual groups of people. Exxon, Koch, Cato, Institute of Economic Affairs etc. who sold her the 80s mantra, we can do everything if we just don’t get in the way of corporate profit. No work, no planning, is necessary (unless its planning to destroy the power of ordinary people).

This was the transition to the change in which leaders began to value elite profit more than survival. They cannot imagine a future without corporate capitalism and economic growth and I guess that tips them out of reason and their position becomes there is no alternative – we have to destroy everything else in order to survive. Something of a contradiction, we might think.

However, our recent leaders don’t seem even this rational. Trump for example is encouraging corporations to pollute and poison people even more than they might want. The current leader of Brazil apparently started by claiming that the land clearing he had promised for the Amazon was not happening and then trying to suppress the bearer of news:

“The state-run National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has reported a 88-per cent increase in deforestation in June year-over-year, and said that cleared area increased 278 per cent between July 2018 and July 2019.”
“Jair Bolsonaro claimed that the statistics were “lies” meant to tarnish the image of Brazil and its government. He went on to fire INPE head Ricardo Galvao after suggesting that he was working for a foreign non-profit group.”

When the massive fires arrived, he apparently first of all claimed they were not happening, despite the evidence of satellite photographs, later claiming the fires were lit by green NGOs. It seems obvious that people who wanted to clear the Amazon, and reduce oxygen, would be happy with the fires.

Our NSW government is a simple mess of contradictions, but if you want support from them, then do some land clearing, help destroy people’s lived environment in the cities for profit and you will be fine. Our two main parties in Australia, seem to want not just to maintain coal pollution, but to increase it. Again because it would profit some people.

What does money profit anyone if they loose the world to spend it in? The contradiction drives people crazy.

Faced with this lack of sense and coherence, contemporary righteous politicians seem to have decided that they will do as much destruction as possible.
If they are going down they will take the world with them, and maybe they will be wealthy enough to buy some kind of survival, or support from those who are wealthy enough to be building fortress bunkers. This is an unusual combination of psychological factors, but it is now ingrained. Maybe corporations really to select for psychopathology?

The common attitude seems to be that normal folk are disposable and easily deceived, and service directed at them is pointless – apparently these people do not share the same world or wealth. I guess this attitude could also function as a psychological defence against climate change – they might suffer or die, but we will not.

What do you do in such a situation, to fight a leadership wedded to destruction?

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Ruskin and Economics I

November 13, 2018

There is no ideal single book to learn about Victorian ‘sage’ John Ruskin’s economics, but there are lots of scattered ideas in various books. Some say that at the time he had more influence on British Labour politics than Marx…. Ruskin is not always admirable perhaps, but he braved a lot of criticism and ostracism to make these points

Ruskin argues economics should be about both the conditions of survival and the generation of wealth rather than riches. ‘Riches’, he defines as appropriation from another, ‘wealth’ the general benefit: wealth is tied in with the cultivation of souls and the provision of beauty: “There is no wealth but life.” Riches can brought about through death and injustice. As such, wealth involves the higher pleasures natural to humans. Not surprisingly, for Ruskin, economics should encourage manufacture and appreciation of art and beauty, but also of care for others.

True economics also grows out of social affections and associations and a recognition of those affections and ties.

“Independence you had better cease to talk of, for you are dependent not only on every act of people whom you never heard of, who are living all around you, but on every past act of what has been dust for a thousand years. So also does the course of a thousand years to come depend upon the little perishing strength that is in you.”

Economic theory is about relationship and structures relationship. Ruskin argues that, recognizing this, the rich have obligations to the poor and their workers. He is paternalistic, although often his model involves a woman tending her household. He considers the relationship between an employer and a worker to be ideally, and perhaps necessarily, one of voluntary kinship. To him contemporary capitalists simply avoided their responsibilities to others (praising their own ‘individuality’) to the detriment of the nation. They were helped in this avoidance by a liberal economics which strips all that is valuable about human life, relationship and art away. Liberal economics reduces life to covetous calculation and demand. Laissez faire, which avoids or breaks any human ties with others is simply the principle of death and the destruction of common-wealth. It is also the death of real economics.

Breaking human ties also means that the higher pleasures cannot survive in capitalism. Capitalists have no thought for beauty, unless they monopolise it for themselves as a tool of status and as a demonstration of their ability to exclude others from its benefits. If profit is brought by destruction and ugliness (physical and mental) then that is what relationship denying capitalists will produce. Their riches depends on ‘illth’ – the very opposite of wealth, and this can be seen in despoiled landscape and the ruined bodies and souls of the labouring classes. Any difference between the labouring and the rich classes comes about by this illth and their conditions of living for labourers. It is a matter of violence, not virtue.

True economics is concerned with the circumstances of everyone not just the rich, and this concern also grows out of cultivation of nobility of soul. Labour is necessary, but only so far as it enables life outside of labour and manages holidays. Labour in a good economy should be joyful and creative, rather than confined to dank and ugly slums. It should also be about craft and responsibility, tasks which refine the soul, rather than the monotony of machinc production or rote tasks. The cultivation of craft and purity of produce is ultimately what delivers the wealth of real ‘goods’ that can be consumed well.

However, good consumption requires instruction, and higher values; another moral question for a real economy is whether people can use what is produced nobly or not. The point being that wealth does not consist in producing or owning massive numbers of possessions, but in the possessions that increase life and its value. This also implies that economics has to be in harmony with ecologies and its effects on the future.

“God has lent us the earth for our life. It is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us…as to us. And we have no right, by anything we might do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath… Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard of things that are to come… Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for”

An economics which puts relationships, beauty, cultivation of souls, ecology, well made lasting goods, and the long-term future in front of us, certainly seems unusual.

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Winnie the Pooh and Climate Change

June 25, 2018

I recently attended an insightful presentation by Nick Drew called ‘Crisis response in the Hundred Acre Wood’ which obviously made use of Winne-the-Pooh, in particular the story “In which Piglet is entirely surrounded by water”. Nick is not to blame for the account’s inadequacies and inaccuracies.

If you don’t know the story, it can be found online say at
https://www.acc.umu.se/~coppelia/pooh/stories/ch9.html

One of the main points of the presentation was the story described four possible responses to climate change, present in each of the characters.

Piglet: was worried and frightened. He fantasizes about being in comfort with others and discussing the situation. He was concerned about others, but thinks they will all be alright, and was convinced there was nothing he could do for himself other than get rescued. So surrounded by water he put a message in a bottle and threw it out the window – relying entirely on chance. Luckily he was in a story and it worked out.

Christopher Robin was quite excited by the flood, and measured the rise of the water with care each morning. Yes it was rising. Despite being mature and knowledgeable one, he was not really that concerned about anyone else – he was thinking about them and where they were, but he was safe on his high ground and it was fun.

Owl was stuck in abstract and largely irrelevant knowledge and vocabulary. He had absolutely no concern about others, he was not empathetic to their plight and was unafraid, there was no real problem – after all he could fly. His comfort of piglet is notable by his complete unawareness of its failure.

Pooh, works with the situation as it develops. He acts first through finding his feet wet, then through hunger and then narcissism – thinking the message in the bottle with all the ‘P’s in it must be about him. Determined to read the message he invents a boat (which naturally he calls “The floating Bear”) – which doesn’t quite work as it should, but it works well enough (“For a little while Pooh and The Floating Bear were uncertain as to which of them was meant to be on the top”). He is not scared of getting lost. When he gets to Christopher Robin who reads the note and finds Piglet is in trouble, Pooh decides to rescue Piglet and how to do it…. The message is that this is the way to respond. Because of Pooh’s inspiration others co-operate to help even if badly.

One of the things we might want to consider is that before the flood, everyone is wrapped in their own concerns, but after the flood, as seems to be the case in many disasters, people co-operate and come together – and indeed Nick narrated how after some flood this had been the case – although the flood was much worse than that in this story – people were told not to drink the water even after boiling. This cooperation is not what our apocalyptic movies suggest. In them people fight and perhaps even eat each other. Indeed, in movies often it is other people also trying to survive who are the main problem, not the disaster.

So Winnie-the-Pooh may be more accurate and useful. In this case, the disaster is unavoidable, so how do we create more Poohs to help afterward and possibly to act beforehand?

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Materialism, Spirit and Shadow

December 31, 2017

[Re-edited 14 Feb 2018, responding to comments]

I’m sometimes surprised when people say that we live in a ‘material age’. It is true that we are governed by an economics and politics that only values money, profit and power, but that is not usually the subject of people’s disapproval, they usually object to science. To be clear, I’m not arguing that we live in an effective spiritual age – I’m not sure such has ever happened – but we hardly live in a scientifically materialist age. The urge for spiritual experience is as great as ever, and its dangers are as great as ever.

We (and it’s a Western ‘we’ here, apologies to everyone else) have probably lived in one of the most exciting spiritual and theological periods of human history. Since 1880 or thereabouts the flourishing of spiritual thought and action(of various levels of sophistication), has been extraordinary – partly because of the, perhaps beneficial, decline of religious authority.

In theological terms we have had Mary Baker Eddy, Albert Schweitzer, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Wolfhardt Pannenberg, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teilhard de Chardin and Mathew Fox to name some of the original and more well-known writers. That’s just off the top of my head and I’m not a theologian; I’m sure people will think of other influential originals. We have had important movements such as liberation theology, death of god, process theology, ‘traditionalism’, feminist theology, historical Jesus, and green/gaian theology. We have had the popular recovery of alchemy, hermeticism, gnosticism, kabbalah, sufism, goetic magic and altered states of consciousnes. We have had the ongoing (and again popular), cross fertilisation between Christianity and Buddhism (to the betterment of both in my opinion, with the shift of Buddhism from suppression of desire to active compassion, and the recovery of Christian meditation and oneness). We have had the influx of Indian religious practice, and we may have some popular understanding of Taoism. We have popular contributions from science (Haldine, Bateson, Capra), philosophy, (Bradley, Wittgenstein, Edith Stein, Heidegger, Barfield, Agamben, Vattimo), anthropology and comparative religion (Frazer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Victor Turner, Evans Pritchard, Rene Girard (ok this list could go on :), literature (From Kazantzakis to Dan Brown and C.S. Lewis) and of course psychology (Jung, Maslow, Ornstein, Houston, Mindfulness, AA etc). We’ve had arena’s full of popular spiritual writers and practitioners. We have probably had more channelled texts than at any time in history (from the ‘Book of the Law’ to the ‘Course in Miracles’). The world is full of spiritual healers. We have even had important and influential ‘joke’ spiritualties like Discordianism (All hail Eris!). Again this is not to say that all are beneficial; that is the point, because something claims to be spiritual does not automatically mean it is a good guide to life or ‘spirit’.

If ‘materialism’ means not limited and not dogmatic, then we have had a materialistic age. However, if ‘materialism’ means non-spiritual then this has not even remotely been a non-spiritual age. It has been an age of flourishing experiment rather than authority, and an age in which few people have been burnt at the stake for heresy. We should probably celebrate it, rather than denigrate it.

However, this does not mean we have had an age without shadow. Clearly not as the ‘spiritual’, (like everything human) is rarely without shadow or its specific ‘evils’, and it is dangerous to think that because something is spiritual it is automatically good or constructive. Part of the spiritual problem is that spirit sometimes can only see its own as spirit and protects its own and only its own, and attacks all else. Hence, perhaps, the apparent inability of ‘spiritual people’ to perceive current spiritual flourishing, and the (perhaps necessary) descent to dogma.

As for the ‘darkness’: we now know about child rape in church and the protection of rapists for the spiritual good of authority, of the insistence on obedience and not thinking, of spiritual desolation in proposed saints, of spiritual violence against the failing world. There was Nazism, and if you don’t think Nazism was a spiritual movement you have not read enough of the original Nazis. We have the activity of some Christian and Islamic Fundamentalists who work in a unity of hatred to bring about the apocalypse in the middle east, with the second coming of Jesus and the birth of perfection in the death of millions of sinners and infidels, and we have religious terrorists, sexists and racists – every ‘evil’ you can think of will have some spiritual defenders.

We have many spiritual programmes that primarily seem to seek personal wealth as the mark of divine favour, and who often condemn the poor as unspiritual or undisciplined. I would tend to agree with the proposition that people are mislead by much of this kind of spirituality; that is part of the shadow I am discussing. But simply stating that one is not so mislead, and that the followers of such movements are, does not mean one is without shadow. We perhaps need to ask whether this condemnation of others is an inherent part of the shadow of spirit, which helps to justify the elite who ‘get it’ and their position as beings of influence?

Then we have Platonist spirituality where focusing on the ideal spirit, or absolute perfect forms, can lead to denigration and attacks on the ‘fallen’ ‘imperfect’ real/material world and help foster ecological crises and the destruction of Nature. In this wordview only death opens perfection as we escape the material we hate. Only a dead or transcended world seems a good world. Or we can say everything is in the hands of God, and nothing harmful will eventuate from human action – spirit is already perfect and that is all that matters. People can attack their bodies, their minds and their empathy for others, in the name of spiritual perfection. We can see murder of the ‘evil others’ on whom we have projected our spiritual shadow, as the solution to problems – particularly if our God is good because ‘he’ is all-powerful and prone to vengeance. In that case, what difference is there between our spirituality and existential fear? Our righteousness seeks to prove we are on the right side, by condemning others before we ourselves are condemned. The shadow is massive.

The idea that all that is spiritual is totally of the light, or immaterial, is dangerous. Especially when it is phrased as if people on the right path cannot be deceived. Again, this can be a basis for murderous righteousness. The idealist shadow can penetrate all modes of life, making the possible seem deadly material by comparison, and lead to the sacrifice of both humanity and nature for a perfection which exists elsewhere – and possibly only imaginally.

If we need more spirituality then we need as much care in identifying its shadow and integrating it as we do in all other parts of life. We may well need a material spirituality, in which the world itself is part of the sacred and, if we transcend, it is as in alchemy, and endless circulation in which we bring back the spirit to this world and unify the two – neither being complete without the other. We respect what is, as we live amongst it.

To repeat, just because something can be called spiritual, it does not mean it is unalloyedly good or beneficial for either humans or nature. This has to be discovered rather than claimed in advance – anything can have unintended effects.

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Psychology and language as forms of control: gender, race etc

August 9, 2017

Psychology is always ingrained in politics, because politics is about the ways that people think that the world, and its people, work.

In general psychologies will support the ruling groups – no real surprise there. Aristocratic psychologies say that members of the aristocracy possess particular virtues and innate abilities which justify their position, and that non-aristocrats generally do not have them. Capitalist psychologies explain that people are primarily selfish, competitive and accumulative, and so on. In this psychology, the wealthy are wealthy because of their abilities and virtues which are not possessed by the poor. Racist psychologies explain that the master race is inherently better at whatever is required for ruling and the other races are naturally subordinate, lazy and stupid. Patriarchal psychologies attribute all public virtues to men, and explain that women need, or want to be, controlled, and are naturally inferior or subordinate, only interested in children etc.

Evidence can easily be found to explain and support these positions. It usually is.

I suspect that most of these psychologies are actually based upon violence. Patriarchy is a good example as, statistically, men have more mass, more musculature and more leverage than women. Socially they are trained in, or have experience, applying violence, while women are discouraged or forbidden from learning. Hence women, as a whole, are subordinate to males of their class. Culture and social practice increases and reinforces the subordination. People who don’t feel they match the categories in play have to be careful, or they will suffer.

I tend to accept those depth psychologies which suggest that we all have characteristics which are defined as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ – the question becomes do we integrate them, or do we suppress our ‘opposites’. Patriarchy tends to inculcate the idea that men are either better women than women, or that the male ‘feminine’ parts (like real women) should be suppressed. Depth psychology is more in favour of awareness, integration or synthesis. I also suspect that as nature and environment tend to be identified with women, they are also suppressed as a matter of course in patriarchy. In a racist society similar forces could be at work. We could associate some of the repressed parts of our ‘selves’ with the supposedly other race.

The point is that whatever your theory of psychology, it will likely flow from your politics, and affect your politics and affect your sense of self.

Language is also political.

This should not be surprising either. Language expresses and conditions how we perceive and categorise or classify the world.

Patriarchs fight hard for the right to talk of people as ‘Man’ or ‘Mankind’ and to use the pronoun ‘he’ for the general person. This is because this classification renders the default and important person male. It implies males make history and culture, while women are entirely secondary. The language incorporates power relations. If you don’t believe it try calling a male patriarch ‘she’ and see what happens.

Logically those opposed to patriarchy, prefer to talk of ‘people’ rather than ‘men’ and humanity rather than ‘Man’, and use gender neural pronouns to talk of people as a whole. This form of classification also strikes me as more accurate.

Personally if a person asks you to use ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘hir’ or whatever to refer to them, I think it is polite to do so. It is not polite to obliterate an entire gender.

The distinction often made in the social sciences between sex and gender, is a technical distinction, not to obliterate gendering but to clarify issues and remind us that gender descriptions and requirements may vary with culture and with individuals. Gender has also used been used in linguistics and grammar for a long, long, time as some languages classify things without sex as having gender.

Naturally this distinction challenges patriarchy, because patriarchy looks pretty stupid if gender categories/classifications are not absolute, and is therefore resisted by patriarchal gender police.

In general, social categories tend to provide people with their place in society giving other people expectations about what they can expect from those people and defining how they can behave towards them.

If you want to govern large numbers of people then constructing and enforcing the categories in which they insert themselves and from which they construct their identities, is a great step towards that governance.

So if you support patriarchy it helps you if you can make sure gender categories are tight, and people define themselves in terms of gender. If you run a racist society it is helpful if you can make sure racial categories are tight and people define themselves in terms of race and so on.

Language and psychology are rarely politically neutral.

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Climate Justice???

July 25, 2017

The idea of “Climate Justice” perturbs me. It seems self-destructive, or self- undermining.

‘Justice’ as it works, usually involves two kinds of processes:

1) Defining someone as evil and punishing them for it. This requires violence for enforcement and the mechanisms for applying that violence. This is especially difficult between States, without a willingness to go to war or at the least break contact. By demanding that people be labelled criminal or evil, mechanisms of justice create both resentment and self-righteousness. It encourages projection or shadow behavior, in Jungian terms, whereby we ignore our own failings by blaming someone else. In this set up there is only good and evil, whereas in a complex ecological and social systems there is neither, there is mainly mutual implication.

2) Appeals to fairness. But it is never fair that we have to give up anything while others benefit… hence we do nothing. Piers Ackerman was arguing the other day that it is unfair for Australia to do something when we produce so little CO2 (even thought we produce massive amounts per head of population). This is a common anti-global warming tactic, which avoids responsibility.

Justice arguments are continually used by India and China to justify their massive expansion of coal. They are used by the Australian government to justify the Adani mine – shared prosperity for all, the war on poverty and so on. They are routinely used by people to argue that Australia can make no difference, so those people who request that we act are making unjust, or unfair, demands upon us, consequently we don’t have to act.

As a result of these problems or co-options, it might be better to avoid ‘justice’ altogether and phrase action in terms of “climate generosity”, attempting to come from humans ‘good’ side (and through modes of status acquisition through gifting) rather than our punitive side.

Climate Generosity requires that we do more than is necessary or just – we are generous, we act beyond what is required of us, without much hesitation. We are magnanimous, excessive.

Climate generosity does not have to involve allocations of guilt and blame and suggests that we are ‘in this together’ and ‘working together’, and thus acknowledges the systemic nature of the problem.

Generosity upsets the power relations based on old habits, while justice requires enforcers. Generosity combines both individual and social action, and appeals to the greater good of everyone, without demanding victory. It does not say ‘we won’t act until its fair’, it simply sets an example to be emulated or ignored. It gets on with the job, and cultivates a sense of responsibility.

If we only do what is just then we will not do anything much, we will only go to the boundaries of what is needed – we will be continually check to make sure others are not freeloading or acting unfairly. We will not act first.

However, if we replace justice by generosity, then we can go over those boundaries – “yes it might be cheaper and just to sell goal, but how about we help you build renewables? How about we cut back more of our emissions than would be our fair or just share? Why should we wait for others to act so that it is fair, lets be generous and act now!”

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Jung and Gods

July 23, 2017

In his analysis of Nazi Germany in 1935-6 Jung argued that that the true symptom of what was going on was possession by an archetype; an archetype which had its roots in German history; the archetype of Wotan. It was a return of the Gods. Wotan was characterized by restlessness, movement, violence, sacrifice, ruthless heroism and so on. In this view Hitler was an unaware shaman who stirred these dormant unconscious forces into action.

This leads to the question of what are the current archetypes being stirred up….

I suggest two possibilities:

First: the “killer god.” The God that demands wars, sacrifices, serial killings, while pretending that he protects his followers. He demands the suppression of thought, of any aspiration beyond death – making the dream of death, and the death bringer, the only valid reality. Face death, your death, your friends death, the death of martyrs, the death of society, the death of the planet. There is nothing but death. It is heroic to kill. Serial killers become dark and dedicated heroes. Kill while you have the chance.

We watch endless deaths on TV every night as drama; Sometimes these lawgivers are as brutal as the killers, they demonstrate the virtues of death, even is they punish the original numinous perpetuator, death still wins.

The message is to give up, resistance is futile. Good is death, evil is death. Death is all. Do not bother to listen. Death is all.

Second: The other archetype we are likely to become possessed by is Hermes, God of communication, lies, theft, promises and magic; all of which arise from communication, yet we need communication. Hermes is necessary but ambiguous.

Hermes talks all the time. He is the internet. He is the whisper that flies around the world. He is the force that gives you constant misinterpretation, and allows you to blame others for your own mistakes.
He will steal things from you and persuade you he hasn’t got them, or you gave them to him – and you will love him for it. He is the god of smooth talk, the blatant lies we ignore, and endless advertising – he is the cunning adorable heart of capitalism, or priestly religion, that tells you if you just give him your trust, your life and your property, you will gain happiness and satisfaction.

He is the god of “the Secret”; he espouses the idea that if you think, say and desire hard enough then what you wish for will be come true. And if you don’t get it, all you need to is give him more of your money, or listen to him with more attention, because he has your best interests at heart…

Hermes is the magician, the conjurer, the quick of hand and feet. He is the person who promises esoteric knowledge beyond the ken of ordinary people. He is Nyarlathotep telling you that he is unambiguously the good guy.

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Alchemy

June 19, 2017

Alchemy was an art of all kinds of transmutation and ‘perfection’: of metals, human bodies, souls, agriculture, pottery, politics and so on.

Those alchemists working on metals, usually attempted to transform Mercury, rather than lead, into gold. The lead is a popular story and I’m not sure when it originated. However, the mercury may not be what we call mercury, it is the ‘Mercury of the Philosophers’ which is something completely different but like mercury…. alchemy is confusing in that way.

As many people are aware, Isaac Newton was an alchemist and spent far more effort on alchemy and biblical interpretation than on physics which was simply a sideline. Some have argued that alchemy was important in supporting Newton with the otherwise unpopular idea of action at a distance. Robert Boyle and lots of other members of the original Royal Society were also alchemists, although Newton was the most traditional of all of them and incredibly secretive about what he was doing – as he was with everything. The others tended to exchange notes and procedures.

I have read of people using nuclear reactors to do transmutation of the elements but ,as everyone notes, that is way too expensive at the moment – although it can be taken as demonstrating that alchemy is possible 🙂

There are alchemists operating today doing the work on metals, although they seem to be more interested in medical alchemy than gold making. There are also those who see alchemy as more of a psychological or spiritual procedure.

This psychologizing has a surprisingly long history but, while it simplifies, it basically arises because alchemists generally did not see a difference between interior work and exterior work. Everything was connected, the change in the alchemist was as important as the change in the material, and the two were linked. Everything was mutable. Psychologising also serves the function of explaining why any particular alchemist did not make the transmutation, and further explained and justified the altered states of consciousness that arise through inhaling and tasting various substances and concentrating on being a human thermostat for weeks on end. It may also be true of course 🙂

However, separating the spirit work into its own domain becomes more usual during and after the 17th century. By the late 19th century it was often considered that work on the spirit was the secret of alchemy, probably because it became increasingly difficult to see spirit and matter as related.

More interestingly, Carl Jung argued that Western alchemical symbols arose as a kind of collective dream, acting as compensations for the kind of psyche produced by official Christianity. If that is the case, then alchemy can, even today, act as a map of psychological transformation – what he called individuation. James Hillman expanded on this, pointing out that alchemical symbols actually give us a very concrete embodied way of seeing, feeling and engaging with psyche.

I personally think that alchemical symbols can give us a way of thinking about transformations of all kinds, and that they are particularly useful for thinking about chaotic, complex and messy processes. But that is a subject for another blog post sometime.

Addenda from 2021

This is basically here because it might be relevant about alchemy and spirituality:

As far as I can tell, alchemists tend not to divide the world into ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’, ‘matter’ or ‘mind’ or whatever. The spiritual is as much a part of the work as the physical. ‘Spiritual’ is grounded in ‘physical’ and vice versa. The alchemical ‘Raymond Lull’ seems to have argued that spirit and matter are a continuum. The modern alchemist Frater Albertus, says something like alchemy is about “raising vibrations” which makes sense in that context….

However, alchemy does divide into foci: there are people who primarily work on transmutation of metals (or ennobling, or improving, metals), there are those who work on medicine (improving the body, and increasing life span), and there are those who primarily work on spirit or psyche, purifying and transmuting themselves. There may be other varieties. I suggest you see which appeals to you most, but remember you cannot apparently succeed in one without the other. If spirit ascends it comes back to matter and raises its state.

However, I’m not an adept. So I could well be wrong.

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Spirituality in the Anthropocene

February 26, 2017

I keep reading and hearing people saying, or implying, that what we need is a spiritual approach to fix the problems we face. I hear this a lot in the Depth Psychology community in particular.

I think this is fundamentally wrong. Spirituality is not automatically a solution, and ‘rationality’ is not always a problem. Human knowing is very often fallible, irrespective of its source, and this should be remembered, otherwise both spirituality and reason become props for the ego, its limitations and defence, rather than ways of accessing knowledge or relatedness.

The potential problems with spirituality seem as important to me, in terms of our ecological problems, as is the use of science or technology to ‘control’ nature.

For example, in Western and many other traditions, spirituality has been used to deny the reality of nature, or used as a means to get out of nature or to diminish nature. Christianity and Islam have both taught that our true life is elsewhere. It is not in nature. Nature is a snare, at best a distraction to be mastered. Reality is found after death.

Intensely spiritual people can believe and intuit strongly that everything is in the hands of God, and that humans can do nothing to hurt the cosmos. They can be both calm and beautiful as they destroy the world. They could for example, think it is their duty to cut down forests and destroy fertile fields to bring forth their temples, unaware of what they are doing, or even condemning those who protest as heretics or unspiritual. They can be passionately devoted to killing people or animals as sacrifices to the Gods.

Perhaps one of the most harmful ideas ever proposed, is the spiritual idea/experience usually associated with Plato, that the real is perfect and unchanging and not of this world. This may completely alienate people from any engagement with life and the natural world as it is, as that is constantly in flux, birth, death and decay. The acceptance of such an idea, and the spiritual practices around it, may mark our initial separation from Nature, and our attempts to control it rather than live with it.

There is nothing inherent in spirituality which leads to a beneficial interrelationship with natural processes. Spirituality can impose a hostile order on the world as much as any reason.

Similarly, while we may want to forget, war can be intensely a matter of spirituality. Not just for zen samurai, Vikings, Nazis, shaolin monks, warring Tibetan temples, jihading Muslims, Crusading Christians, and Aztec warriors gathering sacrificial prisoners, but to ordinary people who may frequently tell you that they felt more alive, more connected and more meaningful when the war was on. Not all people feel this way, of course, some live in terror and die in agony. However, this aspect of spirit should not be forgotten.

People can see the position put forward here as an attack on valuable experiences. However, I want to suggest that ‘peak experiences’ or ‘spiritual experiences’ have little to do with ‘spirituality’. They are, in some ways, frequently ‘mundane’, they seem to happen irrespective of whether a person is particularly spiritual or not. They might imply connection, or simply the sheer strange presence of something different from yourself. Spirituality has little to do with this, and is more like a theory of everything or an approach to the world.

Whatever it is, spirituality is often assumed to be good, and in opposition to whatever is bad – many people seem very confident of that. Indeed, contemporary spirituality is often defined by opposition. It is opposed to logos, it is not science, it is not reason, it is not materialism. People also seem to assume that logos, reason and so forth have the dominant position in the world, and are therefore responsible for the destruction we observe. However, even a brief look at our politics should lead to that particular theory being cast aside. Reason, whatever its failings, is not even vaguely dominant. If it was then we would be seeing some attempts to deal with climate change. Science is largely captive to State and commercial interests.

Given the oppositions people set up, it becomes too easy for spiritually aligned people to say science is the problem, and spirituality is the solution, when they may well be both parts of the problem and solution. The Sacred and the Profane are perhaps not separate… Personally I was relieved to discover that anthropologists decided this distinction was not present in many societies.

Historically, spirituality has grown up alongside (and with) logos, science, materialism, reason; and similarly they grow out of it. As mutually dependent, both ‘sides’ are as responsible for our problems as anything else.

Jungians might be expected to sit with these opposites, rather than to declare one side responsible for harm and the other good. We might find that both are necessary, to correct the other, or we might find that we discover something new.

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Souls, Cyborgs and Symbiotes

January 3, 2017
I’ve been reading Donna Haraway again and that leads to certain reflectionsThe three terms – ‘souls’, ‘cyborgs’ and ‘symbiotes’ seem to summarise different approaches towards the body and the world, and I suggest that the idea of ‘symbiotes’ suggests a fruitful way of acting towards the ourselves and the world, which could provide a better framework for problem solving and general understanding

‘Soul’, as the term is usually used, implies that everything important (or eternal) about the human is separated from, and independent of, the material world. Usually with this theory the world and the body are obstacles to the perfection of the soul, distractions at best, to be dominated or despised in any case. The body and nature tend to be seen in terms of ‘their’ unholy demands and needs, even as inherently hostile. They must be shut up, shut down or disciplined. Death opens the way to freedom, as the world is a prison and punishment

In this theory, the soul seems usually to be assumed to be what I’ll call ‘the ego’, clear conscious thought untroubled by the world, independent of all physics. The “I am”. Things that disrupt the imagined perfection and singularity of the soul are usually held to stem from the flesh… sex, hunger, pain, disease and so on.

Oddly, there is plenty of Christian theology which suggests that humans are trinities (soul, spirit and flesh) not binaries. However these variants easily get lost despite the importance of their writers (St Paul, Augustine etc). Furthermore, the idea of the resurrection of the dead implies that God wants us to be a body, so bodies could be holy. Other religions are equally flesh despising: *some* forms of Hinduism and Buddhism for example. Christianity is not altogether to blame for this situation.

Some post Jungians (Hillman, Moore etc) use the term ‘soul’ to emphasise the mystery of the psyche, its messiness, and the importance of image and feeling; but it is probably never a good idea to use a familiar term for an unfamiliar meaning, as the old meanings can come through implicitly. I’d prefer to stay with Jung’s ‘psyche’, as that is much now a rarer word and can be given precisely these connotations and does not have to make claims to immortality or purity of some sort or other.

The cyborg idea seems to derive from soul tradition. In it, the human, is independent of any particular body. It can be downloaded into machinic immortality. The body becomes a tool to be engineered or altered to have new capacities, subject to the demands of the ego. Nature has no independent rights. “Pave the earth” seems a cyborg slogan.

Cyborg theory like soul theory, implies that intelligence can be disembodied (‘light’) or unaffected by embodiment. Yet, it seems reasonably obvious (assuming evolutionary theory) that all intelligence must have developed to deal with ‘real world situations’, and these include the exploratory capacities of bodies, interaction between bodies, and the range of sensory inputs available.

This does not mean that intelligence is transparent and accurately perceives the world, just that it has been good enough to solve the problems of previous evolutionary paths (not necessarily the problems of future or current paths).

Haraway, as I’ve argued elsewhere, used the cyborg manifesto to argue against a ‘goddess feminism’ that stripped women of technology and idealised nature, but she got caught in the soul trap of cyborgism. She has over the last 10 or so years, revised her metaphor to talk of companion species, or of symbiotes.

Her point is, that in a ‘natural’ world people depend on other creatures and ecologies, they exist along with other beings/events. We have relationships with pets and other animals. Sometimes deep relationships, relationships of unknown complexity and mutuality, even with predators. Bodily, we are composed of cellular and sub cellular life forms existing in colonies. Our mind is multiple, composed of many functions acting together and apart. There is no clear point of ego; mind exists in the circumstances, or contexts, of its existence; it is not separate but dependent. We are part of greater social intelligences as well. Everything is diffuse with strange boundaries. This does not mean that we, and others, cannot try and enforce boundaries to protect ourselves, that too is ‘natural’, but it is hard, sometimes self-destructive, and not always necessary.

This realisation is important for the way we relate to our bodies and nature. In soul theory bodies are only slaves, obstructions, or illusions. The normal mode of response in this framework, is to despise them, and drive them to labour under the dominance of someone’s ego.

In cyborg theory, nature, the self and the body is a tool to be exploited, and abandoned when it fails the utilitarian demands of the ego – again labour is the metaphor and relationship.

In symbiote theory, we depend on our body and the world. That body and world has its own multiple intelligences and imperatives. It does not always do what we want (what we want may be incorrect, we may need to talk with and learn from our obstacles. ‘The body’ may have its own paths to healing, it may rebel intelligently against our slave-driving or our enforced refusal of relationship).

At worst our body is like a pet; we can love it and pet it, relate to it, look after it (as it looks after us). We can treat it with respect as a symbiote, a fellow creature, and we open ourselves to relationships of many kinds, not just labour.

Most pet owners will probably treat their pets better than they treat their bodies. Perhaps they should extend that affection, love and care to ‘their’ bodies and the world, and see what happens?

It will be hard and will take time, but this might be an idea which transforms everything.

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