Notes From The President and Editor

Dear Friends of The C.G. Jung Society of Vermont,

This is just a quick note to let you know that, yes, we have a July issue this month.

Sue Mehrtens has submitted an essay found in our Essays section entitled Jung's Timeliness and Thoughts on Our Current Reality.

In This Month we have included the schedule for Fran Stoddard's Forums on the Future, part of the Champlain Quadricentennial celebrations being held in Burlington. Regarding this last, Sue Mehrtens, is a panelist for the July 10th forum on How the Past Informs the Future. The forums take place at Burlington City Hall, Contois Auditorium, 12:00 - 1:30, July 6th - 11th, and are free.

Enjoy!

Stephanie Buck

This Month

Champlain Quadricentennial
Forums on the Future
July 6-11
Contois Auditorium, Burlington City Hall
Noon-1:30 p.m. Daily. Free.

As we pause to consider the meaning of Samuel de Champlain's 1609 voyage and look at where we are four centuries afterward, it's an occasion to also imagine what our world will be a hundred years from now. In keeping with the Quadricentennial's spirit of visionary introspection, Fran Stoddard of Vermont Public Television hosts and moderates daily panel discussions on our future from various perspectives on Monday, July 6 through Saturday, July 11. Bring your lunch, or just yourself, and sit in on a lively, fast-paced presentation of ideas, followed by discussion and questions from the audience. The sessions will be recorded by educational cable-access TV channel RETN for future broadcast, and forum pages on the festival's website offer a place to continue the conversation.

Monday, July 6
Creating and Utilizing Visions of the Future
Following a brief overview of how Burlington marked the Samuel de Champlain anniversary in 1909 and 1959, we’ll look at the State of Vermont’s work at “visioning” over the last century, and track how forward-looking studies become governmental policy. Panelists include State Archivist Greg Sanford; former Governor Madeleine Kunin, creator in 1987 of the Governor's Commission on Vermont's Future; Karen Meyer, UVM Vice President of State and Federal Relations, Vermont Council on Rural Development Executive Director Paul Costello, who recently released findings from the Vermont Commission on the Future; and communications entrepreneur and media commentator Bill Schubart.

Tuesday, July 7
Writers' Visions of 2050
Budding scribes from the Young Writer’s Project and professional regional authors will present personal journal entries from a day in the year 2050. Readings of the best entries will be followed by discussion with writers and our audience. Entries continue to come in, but confirmed authors include Burlington novelist Mark Estrin (Golem Song), post-peak oil prophet James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency), youth author, Tanya Stone (Elizabeth Leads the Way) nonfiction writer Jim Tabor (Forever on the Mountain), and poet-playwright David Budbill (Judevine), , playwright Kathryn Blume (The Boycott).

Wednesday, July 8
The Evolution of Sustainable Agriculture in Vermont
In a session on the opening day of the Taste of Champlain Food Festival, we'll sound out the challenges and possibilities for the future of Vermont’s food industry. Panelists include Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Roger Allbee, UVM food science professor and author Amy Trubek (The Taste of Place), Vermont Fresh Network Executive Director Meghan Sheradin, Tom Stearns of High Mowing Seeds and Hardwick's Center for an Agricultural Economy, General Manager Clem Nilan of City Market/Onion River Co-op and Natural Resources Manager for Ben and Jerry’s, Andrea Asch.

Thursday. July 9
Artists Envisioning Our Future
What does it mean to be a Vermonter, and how does our collective cultural output reflect our sense of place and community? Artists Val Hird, Annemie Curlin and John Miller with Lyman Orton's “Art of Action” initiative, architect John Anderson, and The Vermont Movie filmmaker Nora Jacobsen discuss their creative processes as part of a multi-disciplinary panel.

Friday, July 10
How the Past Informs the Future
An air of nostalgia envelops ideas of “the real Vermont.” Are we who we think we were? If there were a genetic code for “real Vermonters,” would we clone more? Key visionaries from a variety of sectors offer sweeping observations and debate visions of the future. Panelists include CEO/President of Earth
Turbines, David Blittersdorf, Montpelier lawyer and historian Paul Gillies, Jungian and spiritual teacher Sue Mehrtens of Waterbury, communication technology consultant Steve Shepard, preservation activist, Paul Bruhn, Green Mountain Power CEO, Mary Powell and author and UVM political-science professor Frank Bryan.

Saturday, July 11
The Future of Diverse Communities in Vermont
Explore the future of Native Americans from our region as well as new, culturally unique communities who have settled or are now settling in Vermont. How do members of these populations imagine their future in the state, both in the short term and generations hence? How does past experience influence their vision, and what is the impact on the state? Panelists include Brent Bjorkman of the Vermont Folklife Center; Bosnian community leader Mehida Jusufagic; Jacob Bogre of the Association of Africans Living in Vermont; Wanda Heading-Grant, Associate Provost for Multicultural Affairs and Academic Initiatives at the University of Vermont; Abenaki historian and storyteller Marge Bruchac; and Tracey Tsugawa of the Vermont Human Rights Commission.

Essays

Jung's Timeliness and Thoughts on Our Current Reality

Sometimes, in reading Jung, I encounter a passage that makes me think Jung wrote it just yesterday. Recently, while preparing a presentation for the Jung Society for Scholarly Studies symposium at Cornell University, I came across the following quote from “Civilization in Transition:”

Thanks to industrialization, large portions of the population were uprooted and were herded together in large centers. This new form of existence—with its mass psychology and social dependence on the fluctuation of markets and wages—produced an individual who was unstable, insecure, and suggestible. He was aware that his life depended on boards of directors and captains of industry, and he supposed, rightly or wrongly, that they were chiefly motivated by financial interests. He knew that, no matter how conscientiously he worked, he could still fall a victim at any moment to economic changes which were utterly beyond his control. And there was nothing else for him to rely on....[1] Jung wrote these words for a BBC broadcast he gave in 1946,[2] but, given our recent history, they seem as relevant in 2009 as they were 63 years ago. How prescient Jung was! He could see the fragility of the industrial system and how vulnerable it has left the vast majority of people in the modern world.

Ever the clinician concerned to relieve suffering in the world, Jung was not content simply to diagnose problems; he offered suggestions as to what we might do to improve our situation. Some of these suggestions include wising up to the dangerous features of our current reality, addressing the problem of “mass-mindedness,” and achieving a metanoia, or fundamental mind change.

Wising Up to the Dangerous Features of Our Current Reality
Jung summarized many of what he felt were dangerous features of Western civilization in the above passage. In the manner of the French explication de texte,[3] let’s draw out Jung’s wisdom phrase by phrase.

“Large portions of the population were uprooted...”: Jung regarded the rootlessness of modern people as “one of the greatest psychic dangers... a disaster not only for primitive tribes but for civilized man as well.”[4] Why a disaster? Jung felt rootlessness would lead to “... a hybris of the conscious mind which manifests itself in the form of exaggerated self-esteem or an inferiority complex. At all events a loss of balance ensues, and this is the most fruitful soil for psychic injury.”[5]

“herded together in large centers.”: Jung refers here to big cities, the megalopolises of the modern world, and he felt such “herding” of people caused all sorts of social and mental pathologies, a tendency to “thinking in large numbers” and the rise of “mass psychology”[6]—all regrettable and dangerous features of modern life.

“...dependence on the fluctuation of markets and wages”: Jung recognized that we have become so dependent because of the “externalization of culture”[7]—the result of the Extraverted bias of Western culture (most especially in America).[8] Our “materialistic technology and commercial acquisitiveness”[9] has led to “a loss of spiritual culture.”[10] Jung was quite explicit about the dangers in such dependence on externals: The man whose interests are all outside is never satisfied with what is necessary, but is perpetually hankering after something more and better which, true to his bias, he always seeks outside himself. He forgets completely that, for all his outward successes, he himself remains the same inwardly, and he therefore laments his poverty if he possesses only one automobile when the majority have two. Obviously the outward lives of men could do with a lot more bettering and beautifying, but these things lose their meaning when the inner man does not keep pace with them. To be satisfied with “necessities” is no doubt an inestimable source of happiness, yet the inner man continues to raise his claim, and this can be satisfied by no outward possession. And the less this voice is heard in the chase after the brilliant things of this world, the more the inner man becomes the source of inexplicable misfortune and uncomprehended unhappiness in the midst of living conditions whose outcome was expected to be entirely different. The externalization of life turns to incurable suffering, because no one can understand why he should suffer from himself. No one wonders at his insatiability, but regards it as his lawful right, never thinking that the one-sidedness of this psychic diet leads in the end to the gravest disturbances of equilibrium. That is the sickness of Western man, and he will not rest until he has infected the whole world with his own greedy restlessness.[11]

The economic meltdown of 2008 brought home the truth of Jung’s insight: the “captains of industry” (most of them in the United States), “chiefly motivated by financial interests” did indeed “infect” the entire planet with their greedy materialism.[12] One concomitant of such materialism is “... the spiritual confusion of our modern world.”[13] Another has been “the hollowing out of money, which in the near future will make all savings illusory...”[14]. A third is the emptiness of Western materialistic values,[15] which has led to the degeneration of the individual personality.[16] Jung speaks to this in his reference to “... an individual who was unstable, insecure and suggestible.”: Our Western over-valuation of logic, reason and science is both a result of and a further cause for our lack of self-knowledge and valuation of the inner man. We put great store on being “with it,” following fads and fashions with increasing susceptibility to the omnipresent influence of the media. Lacking inner anchors, we become more and more suggestible, especially as our cities get larger and larger: “The majority of normal people (quite apart from the 10 per cent or so who are inferior) are ridiculously unconscious and naive and are open to any passing suggestion.... The more people live together in heaps, the stupider and more suggestible the individual becomes.”[17]
“...he could still fall victim at any moment to economic changes which were utterly beyond his control.”: Jung noted elsewhere “the longing for security in an age of insecurity.”[18] Being “cogs in the wheel” of the industrialized world model, we feel disempowered, which is the essence of the “victim” archetype.

“And there was nothing else for him to rely on.”: In our world “full of trouble and disorientation,”[19] “confusion and disintegration,”[20] “uneasiness and fear,”[21] we are without firm defenses. Jung felt this was in part due to “current trends in education that foster mass thinking and a collective orientation.”[22] This was one of Jung’s major bugaboos, another key feature of our time and a theme Jung stressed over and over as a major danger we had to recognize and address.

Addressing the Problem of “Mass-Mindedness”

Jung regarded “mass-mindedness” as a danger,[23] and mass psychology as a “dangerous germ.”[24] Why? What’s so dangerous about large groups and crowds?

Jung felt crowds let loose “the dynamisms of the collective man... beasts or demons that lie dormant in every person until he is part of a mob.”[25] Large groups blot out individual morality[26] and cause individuals’ consciousness to sink to a lower level.[27] Crowds stir up fears,[28] which can lead to a whole population having “...a feeling of catastrophe in the air.”[29] Crowds and groups induce “infantile behavior” in people who would otherwise behave in mature and responsible ways.[30] Crowds cause “even the best man to lose his value and meaning,”[31] and lead individuals to become “stultified”[32] and their personalities to “degenerate.”[33] Lacking any self-reflection,[34] large groups of people make individuals “psychically abnormal.”[35] Moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces,[36] mobs produce “herd psychology”[37] and the “mass man.”[38]

Jung repeatedly decried the rise of “mass man.” Such a person is infantile in his behavior,[39] “unreasonable, irresponsible, emotional, erratic and unreliable.”[40] In the mass, the individual looses his value[41] and becomes the victims of “-isms.”[42] Claiming no sense of responsibility for his actions,[43] mass man finds it easy to commit appalling crimes without thinking,[44] and grows increasingly dependent on the state.[45]

Jung felt that the larger the size of the group, the greater the dangers, because the lower the overall level of consciousness.[46] The individual thrust into a large crowd would be hard put indeed to resist the pull into unconsciousness and would soon manifest “psychic abnormality.”[47] Jung saw all this play out in the atrocities of World Wars I and II. He would not be surprised by similar events in the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and in the current “war” on terrorism.[48]

Resisting mass-mindedness is not easy, but Jung provided us with some suggestions on how to do it. First, we must give up belief in “the sovereign remedy of mass action.”[49] How tempting it is to focus on outer change, to reform what’s “out there”, to seek mass change! Jung would have none of that. He urges us not to depend on groups or large organizations, and most especially, not to look to the state or nation for our deliverance, since this only fosters more mass-mindedness.[50] Rather we must resist trying any collective measures.[51]

Second, he suggests we work to break up large organizations that “eat away at the individual’s nature.”[52] How to do this? Jung is not specific but a simple personal response would be to refuse to join forces with such organizations: take work in small companies, join local groups (which may be affiliated with national or international groups), be self-employed. Support local businesses (most of which are smaller in size that the “big box” retailers and chains). Participate in organizations that understand the value of smallness, like the Jungian Center. We recognize the truth of Jung’s words here and put a premium on smallness. “Small is beautiful”[53] is one of the Center’s stated values.

Most important in resisting mass-mindedness is the re-valuation of the individual. Jung urges us to emphasize and increase the value of the individual person. The individual life is the essential thing, Jung tells us.[54] The salvation of the world lies in the salvation of the individual.[55] We must recognize the whole man and begin with healing ourselves if we wish to heal the world.[56]

To do this, of course, prompts a fourth suggestion Jung makes: work for a fundamental metanoia, or change of consciousness.[57] What does Jung mean by this, and how might we go about achieving it?

Achieving a Metanoia

In this context, metanoia means for Jung changing our focus, our attitude and our values. In terms of our focus, we must shift from a focus on externals—on what’s out there—to a focus on internals—what’s going on inside me. Given the extraverted bias of American culture (with 75% of Americans being Extraverts, in the Jungian typology),[58] this is not something that will come naturally. Most people will have to make a conscious effort to achieve this shift.

The external world does not hold the solution, since anything external is vulnerable to loss. Jesus reminds us of this in his admonition:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6:19-21)

Jung knew what Jesus meant by “treasures in heaven.” These are the eternal spiritual truths that lie rooted in the world within us. These include our awareness of the reality of the psyche and its wisdom; our recognizing that the psyche is real, wise, powerful and the source of our being.[59] Jung went so far as to proclaim that “the psyche is the indispensable instrument in the reorganization of a civilized community.”[60]

In terms of our attitude, we have to transform our stress on materialism and matter to one stressing intangibles and things of the spirit. Again, given the bias toward Sensation in American culture (with three-quarters of all Americans being Sensates, in the Jungian typology),[61] this will not be an easy shift to make. But it is an essential shift because it fosters the discovery of our inner life, the reality of the psyche and the valuation of intuition.

In terms of our values, we have to give up the belief that “bigger is better.” Mass action is not the solution. State action is not the solution. Collective action is not the solution to what really ails our world, as we noted above, in the discussion of Jung’s warnings against mass-mindedness.

How to achieve the metanoia Jung calls for? One of the best ways, Jung felt, is working with dreams.[62] A regular, disciplined dream work practice provides us with the necessary personal experience of our soul’s guidance, care, direction and love for us. This is the source of true stability and security, a “treasure” that can’t rust, be eaten or stolen from us. By internalizing a locus of security for ourselves we become psychologically free of dependence on externals, like those boards of directors and captains of industry and whatever antics, crimes or sins they may commit.

The regular practice of working with our dreams allows us to discover our inner life, and this discovery is a major counterweight to the materialism of our culture. When we watch the psyche’s creativity and insight unfold for us every night in our dreams no longer can we believe that matter is all there is in life. Nor can we remain as we were: we grow, we “individuate.”

An active dream practice also helps us to lead the “responsible life” that Jung saw as a consequence of individuation.[63] As we become more and more who we truly are, in the process of individuation, we become more and more conscious of our duties to our community. The process, in other words, does not take us into isolation or estrangement from society, but rather makes us aware of how we all are one, in complex webs of interdependence.

Conclusion

There may be changes underway now in our global reality that seem far beyond our power as individuals to control or even to influence.[64] But this does not mean that we should see ourselves as victims. Nor should we feel there is nothing for us to rely on.

Jung urges us to remember that we can rely on the psyche, our soul, our inner life, our inner guidance. We have within us what we need to feel safe, to prepare for whatever the future may bring, to thrive in the years ahead. The answers we need to the questions we have are not to be found without, in other people or the busy-ness and diversions of our society. Rather, our answers lie within. As Jung said, “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”[65]

The critical challenges of our time require us to be awake, to become conscious of the unconscious, to plumb the depths of our own hearts and to take the full measure of our being (which is always far, far more than what the ego mind thinks it is). We must turn to our inner wisdom, not to outside “experts.” In these times of widespread confusion and anxiety, it is not for us to be left feeling like Jung’s description of modern man, with “nothing left for him to rely on....”. The psyche is real. Your soul is real. You can rely on it. This is Jung’s great message for us in this challenging time.

Bibliography
Jung, Carl, (1960), ”The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” CW 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), ”The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,” CW 9i. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), “Aion,” Collected Works, 9ii. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1970), “Civilization in Transition,” CW 10. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: West and East,” CW 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1954), “The Practice of Psychotherapy,” CW 16. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1976), ”The Symbolic Life,” CW 18. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Keirsey, David & Marilyn Bates (1984), Please Understand Me. Del Mar CA: Prometheus Nemesis Books.
Schumacher, E.F. (1973), Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row.
Tart, Charles (1987), Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential. Boston: Shambhala.


Endnotes
[1] “The Fight with the Shadow,” CW 10, ¶453.
[2] Ibid., footnote 1, p. 218.
[3] This is a method of textual analysis often used in French lyceés, in which the literary scholar goes word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase, considering the possible meanings, allusions or insights in each word or phrase. I learned this method at Yale.
[4] “Psychotherapy Today,” CW 16, ¶216.
[5] Ibid.
[6] “The Fight with the Shadow,” CW 10, ¶457.
[7] “The Holy Men of India,” CW 11, ¶962.
[8] Keirsey & Bates (1984), 16. Keirsey and Bates claim that 75% of Americans type as Extraverts.
[9] “The Holy Men of India,” CW 11, ¶962.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Mortgage-backed securities, sold by Triple-A investment quality bonds to risk-averse investors from Norway to Australia, are one of the most flagrant examples of Wall Street’s greed.
[13] “The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man,” CW 10, ¶313.
[14] “Psychology and National Problems,” CW 18, ¶1320. By the phrase “hollowing out of money” Jung could have been referring to the phenomenon of inflation, but more problematic for us, since the abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 (10 years after Jung died), is the completely fiduciary nature of the world’s currencies. Nothing but faith in the economic viability of the issuing nation now supports the value of the dollar, the Euro, the yen, the renminbi etc. Jung predicted problems in this regard. I think we haven’t seen the half of it!
[15] “The Holy Men of India,” CW 11, ¶962.
[16] “The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16, ¶502.
[17] “Answers to “Mishmar” on Adolf Hitler,” CW 18, ¶1386.
[18] “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man,” CW 10, ¶190.
[19] “The Tavistock Lectures. Lecture V,” CW 18, ¶369.
[20] “The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16, ¶539.
[21] “Psychology and Religion,” CW 11, ¶84.
[22] “Principles of Practical Psychotherapy,” CW 16, ¶5.
[23] “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth,” CW 10, ¶723.
[24] “The Fight with the Shadow,” CW 10, ¶453.
[25] “Epilogue to ‘Essays on Contemporary Events’,” CW 10, ¶463.
[26] Ibid., ¶460.
[27] Ibid., ¶463.
[28] Ibid.
[29] “The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man,” CW 10, ¶326.
[30] “Psychology and National Problems,” CW 18, ¶1313
[31] “Return to the Simple Life,” CW 18, ¶1351.
[32] “The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16, ¶443.
[33] Ibid., ¶502.
[34] “The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man,” CW 10, ¶326.
[35] “Epilogue to ‘Essays on Contemporary Events’,” CW 10, ¶477.
[36] Ibid., ¶463.
[37] “Principles of Practical Psychotherapy,” CW 16, ¶4.
[38] “On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW 8, ¶410.
[39] “Psychology and National Problems,” CW 18, ¶1313.
[40] Ibid., ¶1315.
[41] “Return to the Simple Life,” CW 18, ¶1351.
[42] “On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW 8, ¶425.
[43] Ibid., ¶410.
[44] “Aion,” CW 9ii, ¶255.
[45] “After the Catastrophe,” CW 10, ¶413.
[46] “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,” CW 9i, ¶225.
[47] “Epilogue to ‘Essays on Contemporary Events’,” CW 10, ¶477.
[48] In all of these events groups committed atrocities, from the use of chemical warfare by Saddam Hussein in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, to Abu Ghraib and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
[49] “The Undiscovered Self,” CW 10, ¶535.
[50] “After the Catastrophe,” CW 10, ¶413.
[51] “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth,” CW 10, ¶719.
[52] Ibid.
[53] This is also the title of a classic work of social criticism by E.F. Schumacher; see Schumacher (1973).
[54]“The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man,” CW 10, ¶315.
[55] “The Undiscovered Self,” CW 10, ¶536.
[56] “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth,” CW 10, ¶719.
[57] Ibid.
[58] Keirsey & Bates (1984), 16.
[59] “The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man,” CW 10, ¶316 & 326.
[60] “The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16, ¶539.
[61] Keirsey & Bates (1984), 17.
[62] “The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man,” CW 10, ¶306 & 313.
[63] “Return to the Simple Life,” CW 18, ¶1351.
[64] There will be further discussion of these changes in coming essays on this blog space.
[65] By describing the process of becoming conscious in terms of waking up, Jung parallels the thought of the Russian mystic and teacher G.I. Gurdjieff; see Tart (1987).

-Submitted by Sue Mehrtens

Notes From The President and Editor

Dear Friends of The C.G. Jung Society of Vermont,

In this edition of Jung in Vermont, we feature two offerings, one an essay by Dr. Sue Mehrtens entitled The Law of Cause and Effect and America's Future, and the other a review by the editor of Dr. Teresa Arendell's April presentation for the society entitled Psyche and Wilderness: Journeying into the Depths. Both deal with a similar theme, America's shadow, and both do it with unblinking eyes. In other words, each presents a powerful indictment of past and present beliefs and practices that have gotten us to our current situation. But there is hope. When asked by a distressed man seeking counsel regarding what he could do personally to try to stop the escalating conflict between the East and West following WWII, Dr. Jung replied "Help yourself and you help the World." This often misunderstood paraphrase of a holy man's teaching (misunderstood by non-Jungians as being narcissistic), can perhaps be better understood when coupled with this much- quoted saying by Jung, "The world hangs by a thin thread and it is the psyche of man." Shadow work begins at home. We hope to hear your reactions to these pieces.

The editor of Jung in Vermont is taking a vacation from the e-journal so, unless there is some update to the This Month section, the listing of Jungian and Jungian-related events in Vermont and in our neighboring states, the next e-journal publication will be in September. And, as always, members are invited to submit their Jungian-themed work for publication consideration. Guidelines are to be found in the January edition of the e-journal (in Notes From The President and Editor) and at the society website: http://JunginVermont.org/ If you have questions or comments for me, I can be contacted by phone at 802-860-4921 or by email at Junginvermont@Burlingtontelecom.net


With best regards,

Stephanie Buck

The Law of Cause and Effect and America's Future

This is the final of three essays[1] that focus on America and its current situation from a Jungian perspective. In this last in the series the subject is, as noted in the final sentence of the previous essay, “the size, cause, nature and deep background of the coming American catastrophe.” Since the “deep background” requires more explanation and elaboration we’ll consider that first.


The Law of Cause and Effect: The Deep Background to America’s Current Situation

If we want to understand the deep background of what is going on now in America, we have to consider several key concepts. The first of these is the principle of karma. Theosophy[2] and Eastern religions like Buddhism consider karma to be part of the Law of Cause and Effect. The Dalai Lama has provided a good definition of this Law and the principle of karma:
The fundamental precept of Buddhism is Interdependence or the Law of Cause and Effect. This simply states that... cause gives rise to effect which in turn becomes the cause of further effect,... consciousness... flows on and on, gathering experiences and impressions from one moment to the next... a being’s consciousness contains an imprint of all these past experiences and impressions, and the actions which precede them. This is known as karma, which means ‘action.’[3]

Karma comes from all of one’s acts, words and thoughts, which “determine a person’s fate in his next stage of existence;...” The dictionary offers “fate,” “destiny” and “kismet” as synonyms for karma, and relates the term to Buddhism and Theosophy.[4]

But the concept of karma and the Law of Cause and Effect is not unique to Buddhism. The Bible is full of references to this law and the concept of karma:
Job noted that “... those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.”[5]
Many years later the prophet Hosea expressed the same idea: “But you have planted wickedness, you have reaped evil,...”[6] Jesus advised his followers: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”[7] And the apostle Paul reminded the church in Galatia that “A man reaps what he sows.”[8]

Jung wrote about karma in several places. In “Aion” he defined karma as “the fate earned through works in previous existences,”[9] and he associated the term with Theosophy. He also recognized the importance of the concept in understanding the nature of archetypes:
When... psychic energy regresses, going beyond even the period of early infancy, and breaks into the legacy of ancestral life, the mythological images are awakened: these are the archetypes. [Here he appends an informative footnote:] This... is... a deliberate extension of the archetype by means of the karmic factor, which is so very important in Indian philosophy. The karma aspect is essential to a deeper understanding of the nature of an archetype...[10]

Ever the man of science, Jung was quick to admit that concepts like karma cannot be proven:[11]
...karmic illusion—that is to say, illusions which result from the psychic residue of previous existences...karma implies a sort of psychic theory of heredity...we cannot even conceive how anyone could prove anything at all in this respect... Hence we may cautiously accept the idea of karma only if we understand it as psychic heredity in the very widest sense of the word. Psychic heredity does exist--...[12]

Jung offered a “Western version of a prenatal karma” in the “very ancient idea of what we might call an inborn bill of debt to fate...”[13]. Our contemporary American culture has this idea, but we put it in a modern vernacular: “What goes around, comes around.” What you put out eventually comes back to you.

All the above remarks relate karma to the individual, but it has collective application as well. The Dalai Lama noted this in his autobiography,[14] when he discussed the Tibetan invasion of China in the 8th century. Back then Tibet was a war-like place and the aggressive Tibetans actually seized the Chinese capital in 763 A.D. The killing, looting and destruction created a karmic debt, even though Tibet soon fell under the influence of Buddhism and became a very pacific and non-aggressive society. No matter. The karmic debt still had to be paid, and the process of doing so began in 1950, when China invaded Tibet. In 1951, just as the Tibetans did 1,188 years earlier to China, the Chinese took over the capital of Lhasa.

At this point you might be wondering what all this has to do with America, its current situation and the “catastrophe” mentioned above. We’ll get to that shortly. First, we must define another key concept: “cosmic vanity” or “ontological arrogance.”

The Concept of Cosmic Vanity

The terms “cosmic vanity” and “ontological arrogance” are not mine. I got the first from theologian Charles Davis,[15] the second from business consultant Fred Kofman.[16] They mean essentially the same thing: “... the claim to a privileged knowledge of the origin, structure and workings of the cosmos... a temptation that dogs all religion ... [is] cosmic vanity.”[17] “Ontological arrogance is the belief that your perspective is privileged, that yours is the only true way to interpret a situation....”[18] “Ontological arrogance [is] when I assume that my truth is the truth."

We can define cosmic vanity situationally: The vain man assumes that the world is as he sees it and also takes for granted that others should see things the way he does... Cosmic vanity occurs when men impose their social structure upon the cosmos as a whole, falling into the conceit of interpreting the entire cosmos in terms of the limited preoccupations and organization of a particular society and culture.[20]

and we are reminded, by Kofman, that cosmic vanity has consequences: Our history informs our understanding of the present and the decisions and actions through which we shape our future. We reap what we sow, not just materially but also mentally.[21] which links the concept with the notion of karma mentioned above.

Cosmic vanity, or ontological arrogance, has several important features. The person who is cosmically vain is unable to distinguish his identity from his opinions, and so feels personally challenged or offended by those whose opinions differ from his. A second feature is the host of faulty assumptions that accompany cosmic vanity, e.g. that my point of view is objective; that no mental models filter my perception; that those who differ from me are wrong and simply don’t want to see the Truth. Other features include: repression and power games; mistrust, miscommunication and antagonism among people; low motivation; fear, stress and anger; a general mood of anxiety, cynicism and resentment among those who have to deal with such arrogance; people feeling disempowered; demoralization, as people feel unable to control their destiny; authoritarianism, solemnity and smugness. The ultimate result, in organizations, is “organizational collapse.”[22] In societies where cosmic vanity is prevalent, the eventual result is a “fall,” as the old adage warns us.

Is America such a society? Has America been such a society? Hark back to the early days of the Puritan settlers. Did they think they had the Truth? Were they confident that theirs was the only right way to live and think? Did they demand that native people conform to their ways? If you have read the previous essays in this series (on American exceptionalism and America’s shadow) you know that the answer to all these questions is “Yes.” America, as a collective, has been steeped in cosmic vanity for centuries. It is a core part of our Puritanical heritage. It is part of our psychic makeup and, despite many generations of growing ethnic diversity, a majority of Americans operate in the unconscious assumption that our ways—Christian, democratic, technological, capitalist—are better than any other peoples’. The “American way” is the only right way; American values, the only right values; our American system of democracy, the only right form of government; free-market capitalism, the only right way to organize the process of providing for the material needs of society—this is how people think who are sunk in cosmic vanity. You may not see yourself in this portrait, but there are many Americans for whom it is very accurate.

America’s Karma or What did America do in its collective past that has karmic consequences?

Historically it has been cosmic vanity that led European settlers in the New World:
to butcher thousands of native people (because we knew we were better than they were)
to remove whole tribes from their lands (because we knew our system of private property was superior to the communalism of native people) to “warehouse” Indians on reservations (because we knew we had better uses for the land—especially the lands with the gold mines—than native peoples had) to “assault” Indian tribalism in the allotment act (because we knew our white governmental system was better than tribalism)
to seize Indian children and forbid them to speak their language, wear their native clothing, and eat their customary foods (because we knew it was our Christian duty to save the souls of the “heathen” and offer them the benefits of “polite” society)
to prohibit the practice of Indian religions and rituals (because we knew that our religion was the only right religion and by prohibiting their religion we would be saving their souls).[23]

In the prior essay on America’s shadow I discussed other actions of our government and individuals that created karma. For many generations there have been many official policies of the United States government—written into our Constitution and Supreme Court cases[24]—that have created karma.

Some people will try to weasel the United States out of the karmic implications of these acts by assuring themselves that what was done arose from the purest and most altruistic of motives. Such rationalizations are just more cosmic vanity. Racists insist that we had to do such things because the “primitive” people could not cope with reality. Racism denies the truth Jung called us to remember: “in the end there is one psyche which embraces us all.”[25]

We’re all in this thing we call life together. We are all one. And what we do to another person we do to ourselves. What goes around, comes around.
And what we put out hundreds of years ago is coming back to us now. On this a wide array of sources—Western Indian, Eastern Indian, African,[26] as well as Jung himself[27]—agrees: America’s karmic debt is up for repayment. How is this showing up? And what does it bode for our longer-term future?


Repaying Our Karmic Debt: Forms and Features

Cause begets effect. This is the Law of Cause and Effect. More than just an effect, there is a close similarity between what was done and what gets returned. In the example above, the Tibetans seized the Chinese capital; later on, their own capital got seized. In the case of America, so much of what we did was done out of cosmic vanity. So we should expect to get back our “stuff” from people equally imbued with cosmic vanity.

This is exactly what we see. The Islamic jihadists have just as much conviction about the rightness and superiority of Islam as the Puritans did in 1630 about Christianity.[28] Just as Christian missionaries forced native peoples to convert to Christianity, so Osama bin Laden’s first demand to us after the 9/11 attacks was that we convert to Islam.[29] Just as the U.S. government and Christian missionaries took measures to destroy native cultures, so the Islamic jihadists are taking measures (turning our technologies against us) to destroy what they regard as the “Great Satan,”[30] the United States.

This confrontation between Christianity and Islam would not surprise Jung. European that he was, he recognized how deeply the experience of the Crusades had imprinted the European psyche. He understood how Muslims carried shadow for Europeans and how the mutually exclusive claims of universality of the two faiths had to be confronted at some point.[31]

The Puritans were from Europe; they carried this component of the European shadow to the New World and it lives on in modern Americans. It may provide one answer to the many questions that arose after 9/11, e.g. Why didn’t we take Islamic jihadists’ threats to the World Trade Center seriously, especially after the 1993 bombing? Why did we put New York City’s Emergency Command Center in the World Trade Center after the 1993 bombings? Why didn’t we develop a strong Arabist desk in the State Department when the oil-rich Middle East became so crucial to the economic well-being of the United States? Why for decades did officials at Aramco look scornfully at their Arab partners? Why do we even now treat many Arab governments in a patronizing manner?[32]

As I noted in the essay on America’s shadow, our ESTJ temperament does not incline us toward introspection or self-reflection. As a result, we experienced 9/11 and failed to realize it was a “wake up” call. Rather than suggest we look within and ask ourselves what message this tragedy was offering us, our leaders told us to get out and shop, get on airplanes and take a holiday![33] Clearly our system is so broken and our collective consciousness is so asleep that it will require something much more major, much more consequential than 9/11 to get us to examine the current unsustainable order of things.

Just what this “something more consequential” might be has been spelled out in numerous native prophecies. The Hopis’ are some of the most detailed and graphic:
· Today we, Hopi and white man, come face to face at the crossroads of our respective life... It was foretold it would be at the most critical time in the history of mankind. Everywhere people are confused. What we decide now and do hereafter will be the fate of our respective people... Now we are all talking about the judgment day...[34]

· [the U.S. government is] ... a government which had assumed the power of the Creator but had lost all sense of moral values.... According to... prophecy... the higher forces would mete out justice. World War III would break out. The United States would be destroyed by a foreign nation, just as it, a foreign nation, had destroyed the Hopi nation. Land and people would be contaminated and destroyed by atomic bombs.[35]

· ... as the time nears the predicted behavior of the people accurately describes the people of today. Perhaps it is time to repent and pray that our earth will not be totally lost....[36]
... the world is facing a new crisis. This is a war of retaliation against terrorism.[37]

· Eventually a “gourd full of ashes” would be invented, which if dropped from the sky would boil the ocean and burn the land, causing nothing to grow for many years.... it could bring an end to all life unless people correct themselves and their leaders in time.[38]

· ... Revolution could erupt on our land.[39]

· ... men will destroy each other savagely. The period of this age will close by the gourd of ashes... Only those who are obedient to the guidance of the Great Creator’s laws will survive.[40]

· ... the bad side of humanity will become so corrupted that the closing of the Fourth Cycle will be necessary.[41]

· World War III will be started by those peoples who first received the light [the divine wisdom or intelligence] in the other old countries [India, China, Egypt, Palestine, Africa].[42]
· The war will be a spiritual conflict with material matters. Material matters will be destroyed by spiritual beings who will remain to create one world and one nation under one power, that of the Creator.[43]

After a presentation I gave in October 2008, at a training session for Pachamama facilitators, I was asked if it might be possible for America to avoid the full brunt of our karma. I replied that it was possible, but only if we, as a collective, did the same thing that individuals can do to “burn” their karma consciously. That is, we would have to take the same steps as individuals: First, get out of denial. As long as we remain in denial—stuck in all the platitudes and self-congratulatory rhetoric of American exceptionalism—we will never see what’s really going on.[44] Getting out of denial implies waking up to the truth that there is something profoundly dysfunctional about our American way of life. Jung would call “waking up” becoming more conscious. If enough people become conscious we might mitigate our karmic repayment. That is, the “catastrophe” facing us might not have to be so bad.

The “size” and “nature” of our karmic payback are yet to be determined. All the prophecies are in agreement on this. The Hopi remind us that “The present crisis of world events is an unfoldment of life cycles which we set in motion through our own behavior.”[45] If enough of us change our behavior, if we correct ourselves, if we heed the warnings, if we give up “life as usual” and “return to the original divine laws of the Great Creator,”[46] if we begin to live simply, practice self-denial and self-sufficiency, if we change our priorities and believe that we can rescue the world, we can lessen the pain that our karmic debt will require.[47] Most of all, Jung and all the native sources agree, we must “shift our attitude.” The future is not cast in stone: “... we can, by following the Instructions and Warnings, alter the pace, intensity, and force of the closing of the Fourth Cycle... we can, by our actions, purchase the time we need...”[48]

When my students ask me how I think the shift from our current “Fourth World” to the coming “Fifth World” will look, I remind them of 1989. Many of them were not even alive then so I have to describe how the people of Eastern Europe “woke up” and realized they no longer had to accept the domination of the Soviet Union, and the various components of the Soviet Union realized they could be free. And the result was a massive transformation without a single shot being fired, a completely non-violent “Velvet Revolution.”

The Hopi believe such a transformation is underway even now, begun “by the humble people of little nations, tribes and racial minorities” which is fostering a new attitude.
As we join together with a new attitude in following the instructions, the mood of the world will change with us. Without a single overt thing taking place, the transformation will be underway. At first, no one will even know it is happening... People will become more caring and sharing... Without a single formal meeting, divided peoples will lay down their guns and begin to cooperate....[49]

The Hopi also offer us a vision of the emerging Fifth World, a world “blooming in peacefulness,”[50] one world, one nation, under one power, the Creator, a world in which people can communicate without words, with both humans and animals, a world of peace, joy and love.

Jung was explicit that, if we want to help this transformative process along, we must not look outside ourselves, to some collective (and certainly not to the United States government!). His sole concern was always “... with the fulfillment of that will which is in every individual.... That is the whole problem; that is the problem of the true Pueblo: that I do today everything that is necessary so that my Father can rise over the horizon. That is my standpoint....”[51]

It is up to us—you, my reader, and me, and other individuals who are waking up—to work on ourselves in the knowledge that our personal transformation is also transforming the world. Get wise to the perils of American exceptionalism. Recognize the forms of our collective American shadow. These are important subjects to know about for understanding what’s really going, and how we cannot, must not, look to government, to political leaders and the powers-that-be to bail us out.[52] The karma of our past is coming down on us. It might prove immensely destructive, or it might be limited to taking out the government, while leaving the bounty of our land relatively unscathed. The size and severity of the coming American catastrophe is up to us, our degree of consciousness, our “waking up” to who we are, what we are meant to be and do, to how we are meant to align with the purposes of the Universe.

Bibliography of Sources

Ali, Tariq (2002), The Clash of Fundamentalisms. New York: Verso Publications.

Bacevich, Andrew (2008), The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Henry Holt.

Davis, Charles (1974), Temptations of Religion. New York: Harper & Row.

Deloria, Vine (1988), Custer Died For Your Sins. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Fisk, Robert (2007), The Great War for Civilization. New York: Vintage Books.

Gyatso, Tenzin, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (1990), Freedom in Exile: The

Autobiography of the Dalai Lama. New York: Harper Collins.

Jackson, Helen Hunt (1881/1965), A Century of Dishonor: The Early Crusade for Indian Reform. New York: Harper.

Jung, C.G. (1959), “Aion,” Collected Works, 9ii. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

________ (1963), “Mysterium Coniunctionis,” Collected Works, 14. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

________ (1965), Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.

________ (1966), “Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,” CW 7. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: West and East,” Collected Works, 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

________ (1970), “Civilization in Transition,” CW 10. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

________ (1976), ”The Symbolic Life,” CW 18. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kirk, George (1949), A Short History of the Middle East. Washington DC: Public Affairs Press.

Kofman, Fred (2006), Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values. Boulder CO: Sounds True Press.

Lewis, Bernard (2003), The Crisis of Islam. New York: Random House.

Lewis, Jon ed. (2004), The Mammoth Book of Native Americans. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers.

Mails, Thomas E. (1997), The Hopi Survival Kit. New York: Penguin Compass.

Mann, Charles (2006), 1491. New York: Vintage Books.

Nichols, Roger (2003), American Indians in U.S. History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Stray, Geoff (2005), Beyond 2012: Catastrophe or Ecstasy: A Complete Guide to End-of-Time Predictions. Lewes UK: Vital Signs Publishing.

Vogel, Virgil (1972), This Country Was Ours: A Documentary History of the American Indian. New York: Harper & Row.

Waldman, Carl (2000), Atlas of the North American Indian. New York: Checkmark Books.

Waters, Frank, Book of the Hopi. New York: Penguin, 1963.


[1] See “American Exceptionalism from a Jungian Perspective,” the blog entry for April 2009, and “America’s Shadow,” the blog essay for May 2009, on this Web site.
[2] A philosophical system developed by the Theosophical Society, inspired by Eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Hinduism, expounded in a series of books by H.P. Blavatsky, Annie Besant and others. The Theosophical Publishing House still prints books on themes connected with Theosophy. Its American branch is based in Wheaton, Illinois.
[3] Gyatso (1990), 10.
[4] World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary, I, 1070.
[5] Job 4:8.
[6] Hosea 10:13.
[7] Matt. 7:1.
[8] Gal. 6:7.
[9] CW 9ii, ¶339, note 131.
[10]CW 7, ¶118 and note 15.
[11] Jung died many years before the decades-long research of Ian Stevenson was published. Stevenson spent much of his academic life investigating thousands of reports from people all over the world who remembered their past lives. Stevenson published 10 books in this field, which, while not “proving” the factuality of reincarnation in scientific terms, certainly does present evidence that makes it difficult to dismiss out of hand. Google “Ian Stevenson” and various sites will provide information about Stevenson’s studies.
[12] CW 11, ¶845.
[13] CW 14, ¶299.
[14] Gyatso (1990), 9-10.
[15] Davis (1974), 28-48.
[16] Kofman (2006), 97-131.
[17] Davis (1974), 28-29.
[18] Kofman (2006), 101.
[19] Ibid., 104.
[20] Davis (1974), 29.
[21] Kofman (2006), 108.
[22] Ibid., 112-115.
[23]For a full picture of the centuries-long assault on native peoples, see Waldman (2000), Nichols (2003), Deloria (1988), Jackson (1881/1965), Vogel (1972), Mann (2006), Lewis (2004).
[24] E.g. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), precedent-setting opinions written by Chief Justice John Marshall, wherein native peoples were enshrined in American legal history as “dependent nations;” see Vogel (1972), 114-132, for the texts of these opinions.
[25] CW 10, ¶180.
[26] For a succinct review of all these sources and others, see Stray (2005).
[27] CW 10, ¶179.
[28] Robert Fisk noted Osama bin Laden’s total conviction when he interviewed him in 1996; Fisk (2007), 22; see also note on page 1033.
[29] Lewis (2003), 157.
[30] Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran was the first to apply this term to the U.S.; Lewis (2003), 81,86,163.
[31] CW 911, ¶151 and note 2.
[32] Cf. Fisk (2007), 858-859; Kirk (1949), 234; and Ali (2002), 279-315.
[33] Bacevich (2008), 60-61.
[34] Waters (1963), 323.
[35] Ibid., 326-327.
[36] Mails (1997), 202.
[37] Ibid., 205.
[38] Ibid., 209.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Ibid., 216.
[41] Ibid., 350.
[42] Waters (1963), 334.
[43] Ibid.
[44] See my essay on “Denial” in the Wake Up/Leap Frog set of essays on this Web site.
[45] Mails (1997), 299.
[46] Ibid., 215.
[47] Ibid., 238-239.
[48] Mails (1997), 376.
[49] Ibid., 241-242.
[50] Ibid., 218.
[51] CW 18, ¶639. Jung visited the Pueblo Indians in the 1920’s and had conversations with Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake), a chief of the Taos Pueblo, who described to Jung how the tribe recognized its daily task to help Father Sun move across the sky. Jung recounted this meeting in MDR (1965), 247-252. The point Jung is making in this quote is that what is necessary is for each of us to take up our individual spiritual mission.
[52] Leaders, by the very fact of their being leaders, are “retarded,” according to the Law of the Retarding Lead. The Hopi recognize that change comes, not from the top, but from “... the humble people of little nations, tribes and racial minorities...” [Waters (1963), 334], i.e. the marginalized groups who are most aware of changing conditions and most likely to adapt readily to them.

- Submitted by Sue Mehrtens

Psyche and Wilderness: Journeying into the Depths. A Presentation by Dr. Teresa Arendell.

“I invite you to spend a few minutes getting oriented and settled into our topic today, which is, specifically, wilderness and psyche. So I invite you to relax, settle into your seat and see where wilderness takes you…”

So began Dr. Teresa Arendell’s presentation for The C.G. Jung Society of Vermont’s spring lecture entitled, Psyche and Wilderness: Journeying into the Depths. For the next couple of hours, Dr. Arendell, Professor and Chair of Sociology at Colby College, and Diploma Candidate at the C.G. Jung Institute–Boston, guided us through an exploration of wilderness in its various forms and manifestations: wilderness as universal theme and intellectual construct; as collective experience and individual experience; as natural world and phenomenon; and as numinous archetypal symbol.

“Wilderness, and our consideration of wilderness,” she said in her introduction, “moves us into the mystery of psyche and nature, to the mystery of consciousness. It directs us to the very core of the splits which dominate our psychological and cultural lives in this modern era. Wilderness – whether as metaphor, image, experience, or place – is at the heart of the journey of self-exploration, the movement toward greater consciousness.” A widening of consciousness is a challenging task because it requires a healing of the splits within ourselves (and the collective): the split between psyche and matter, ego-consciousness and its connection to the unconscious, thinking and feeling, etc. These various separations or “estrangements” that we carry within are mirrored in the external world via the kind of relationship we have with the natural world. The hermetic axiom “As above, so below” speaks to this interrelationship between outer and inner, between the wilderness of the manifest world and the wilderness of the unconscious psyche. Thus, Dr. Arendell’s main point is that how we live in one has a direct correlation with how we live in the other.

Slide images of the New England landscape, particularly of Maine and Mt. Katahdin, served as the visual backdrop and projective screen for what Dr. Arendell was ultimately inviting each one of us to do during her presentation: to examine our beliefs about nature and to embark on a psychological journey into the interior landscape of our own psyche. To help us enter into this invitation, she presented her case by first talking about our estrangement from nature, what this means psychologically, and then spoke about Jung’s powerful connection to nature. Rather than keep it at the level of other, she opened the possibility for directed inner dialogue by posing a number of questions for inner, private engagement: “We must keep asking ourselves: What is wilderness to me? Where am I right now and, if in the wilderness, what kind of wilderness? How do I know that? What are the images? What are the feelings?.” During this questioning she also reminded us always to be mindfull that “what wilderness means will shift and evolve,” as meanings inevitably and always do. Dr. Arendell stressed at a latter point that by actively engaging in our inner dialogue with our Self we “re-member” ourselves, that is, collect back what we have disowned, by “return[ing] to the wisdom of our psyches” and in this way begin to heal the splits within us. But, she reminded us, quoting Hillman, “an individual’s harmony with his or her own deep self requires not merely a journey to the interior but a harmonizing with the environmental world [since] the deepest self cannot be confined to in here because we can’t be sure it is not also or even entirely out there!”

Our estrangement from nature, Dr. Arendell pointed out, “is unique in human history.” One hasn’t far to go to confirm this. We all have had experiences or heard of situations where it is easier to attempt to control nature than to cooperate with it. In Vermont, troublesome animals – animals that intrude on human space and/or compete for resources - such as beavers, bears and moose, are more often than not killed rather than accommodated by a slight change in human behavior. As to forest and wetlands, even in our environmentally enlightened state of Vermont, these are natural resources to be protected or harvested dependent on human need. In both cases, wild animals and the natural environment, human gain in whatever guise, trumps nature. For Dr. Arendell, a potent reminder of this reality is the wolf, an animal that serves to highlight man’s assault on wilderness during the 19th century when it was hunted to near extinction; even today in the few northwestern states where wolf populations still exist, Alaska and Montana, wolves carry a bounty and are hunted with assault rifles from the air.

For much of her presentation, Dr. Arendell focused on the wolf and its fate in North America “because it represents our history with wilderness and our deep psychological ambivalence about wilderness and all things wild.” Through an amplification of the symbol of wolf as portrayed in fairy tales, myths, and the Bible, she highlighted the different relationships humans have had with the animal at different times and in different cultures. For example, whereas western civilization has consistently vilified the wolf as dark, destructive and downright evil, wolf in classical Greek and Early Roman mythology is more ambivalent, and she mentioned its association with the goddess Athena as well as Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome. In North American indigenous cultures, wolf was “both beloved and celebrated” as clan name and identity, and, “as a totem animal, was called brother.” Dr. Arendell fleshed out her argument, that the wolf carries the personal shadow and that of the collective, and as such is the symbol of our (and the collective) estrangement from nature and the natural world, with sources from current and latter day naturalists such as Barry Lopez, Gary Synder, David Abram, and Henry David Thoreau. Quoting Barry Lopez, she said, “The hatred [of wolves] had religious roots… and secular roots: wolves killed stock and made man poor. At a more general level it had to do, historically, with feelings about wilderness. What men said about the one, they generally meant about the other. To celebrate wilderness was to celebrate the wolf; to want an end to wilderness and all it stood for was to want the wolf’s head.”

Those who believe that humankind’s preeminent place in the food chain gives us the right to control and dominate nature would find Dr. Arendell’s use of the wolf as the potent symbol for our estrangement from the natural world and from our inner world of psyche both provocative and naïve, and would likely question whether we are, in fact, estranged from nature and why an estrangement from nature would be a problem. They would maintain that wolves as large carnivores need to be controlled and even eradicated. They might even point to one of her sources, Gary Synder, for confirmation of their viewpoint: “Life in the wild is not just eating berries in the sunlight… [There is the] dark side of nature – the ball of crunched bones in scat, the feathers in the snow, the tales of insatiable appetite. Wild systems are in one elevated sense above criticism, but they can also be seen as irrational, moldy, cruel, parasitic.” And this, I believe, is Dr. Arendell’s central point: to be as conscious as possible requires a healing of the splits within the individual and within the collective (as mentioned earlier) and to do this requires a change in attitude, from that of duality as in “this or that” and “but and or” to one of plurality as in “both this and that.” A movement from duality to inclusiveness speaks to our ability to accept the paradoxes of life as “just so” and to shift accordingly

Giving power to an already powerful presentation were the slides of wilderness and wolves that were projected onto the theater-sized screen behind Dr. Arendell, and by the selection of her ending. The last 20 minutes or so were given to a reading of an Abenaki tale retold and illustrated by Joseph Bruchac. While his dream-like illustrations filled the screen in front of us, she told the tale of a disparate group of men, each on a wilderness journey to visit a wise man in a distant land who has the power to confer on each that which is lacking in his life. Once the gift is given, what each man does with it determines his fate and the fate of his tribe. Even before it is asked for, what is requested signifies much about the petitioner and reminded me of the adage, “be careful what you ask for – you might get it.” Dr. Arendell suggested that this tale presents “an opening into the ‘new old-new ways… as a window on one people’s relationship to the natural world… and as a window on these people’s understanding of what it means to be human.” It is also a tale that stands as a template for the journey of Individuation, that inner journey to Self that each of us is prompted to take, consciously or not; the challenges we meet along the way; the integration of our shadow so to become wholly ourselves; and the way in which we bring this self knowledge into the world.

To close this brief review of a presentation that was scholarly, passionate, and playful, I will end with a number of quotes that seem to me to most powerfully convey the essence of Dr. Arendell’s presentation:

“Modernity the period which encompasses the last four hundred years and which has accelerated at a dramatic rate in the past seventy-five, is but a blip on the temporal clock of our presence on the planet; yet, in this brief moment of human history, we’ve come to threaten not only the continuance of our own species but that of all life. Both science, with its primacy on rationalism and objectivity, and urban industrial life have widened our alienation from the natural world – contributed to its desacralization and disenchantment, and to our widespread destruction of wilderness, specifically. With the ever-increasing one-sided emphasis on thinking and agency in the outer world, we’ve pushed aside the inner world, the psyche.” – Teresa Arendell

“We’ve gone mad, stark raving mad, destroying the planet. But more specifically, we’re terminating the last 65 million years of life development. We don’t understand the earth as a sacred reality, the rivers, the mountains. The universe and in particular the planet Earth is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. If we don’t learn that, nothing’s going to work.” - Thomas Berry

“Western man has no need of more superiority over nature whether outside or inside. He has both in an almost devilish perfection. What he lacks is conscious recognition of his inferiority to the nature around him and within him. He must learn that he may not do exactly as he wills. If he does not learn this, his own nature will destroy him. He does not know that his own soul is rebelling against him in a suicidal way.” -C.G. Jung

I want to thank Dr. Arendell for not only coming to Burlington to present her work in support of the C.G. Jung Society of Vermont, but also for most graciously giving me a copy of her presentation so that I could write this review.

Dr. Arendell’s presentation was delivered on April 19th at Burlington College, Burlington, VT.

- Submitted by Stephanie Buck