Carl Jung on War

[The_Golden_Turd]

excerpt from Jung’s ‘Psychological-Analysis of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra’. Seminar given by Jung in Zurich 1938.
gla.ac.uk/~dc4w/laibach/jungwar.html

  You see nobody wants war, but everybody goes to war, because they all assume they don't want it. That is the truth. But at the same time, we play with the idea of war, because it is a wonderful sensation. Yet we do not recognise this; therefore we are convinced that we don't want a war, and we project it. That was true, in the world war, nobody wanted it, but nobody could stop it, nobody could get in control of the situation. And the terrible part is that human beings did it. Now if a terrible god were influencing mankind, or a dangerous devil, we would ask ourselves what we could do to propitiate him and prevent such a catastrophe. But we think there is no such thing, no devil, no god, no ruling power. If anybody wants war it is the Germans or the French, the English or the Italians. If you can find the slightest trace of a tendency to war in them, you are sure it is they who want it. We don't assume responsibility, we simply say they want it. While all the time nobody really wants it consciously. Probably nobody in this room wants a war consciously, and just as little do the people outside in the world want it. Who then makes a war?
  Just as we don't want a war, we are also capable of wanting it only we don't know it. That we could wish for a war is a terrible thought, but let us assume there are too many people in the world too great an increase in the population, so that we are too close to one another, too crowded upon each other, and finally we hate each other. Then the thoughts begin to develop: What can we do about it? Could we not cause a conflagration? Could we not kill that whole crowd in order to get a little space? Or suppose that life is too hard, that you don't get a job, or the job doesn't pay, or other people take it away from you. If there were fewer people life would be much easier to live that it is now. Don't you think that slowly the idea would dawn upon you that you want to kill that other fellow? Now we must admit that in no other time have there been so many people crowded together in Europe. It is a brand new experience. Not only are we crowded in our cities, we are crowded in other ways; we know practically everything that happens in the world, it is shouted on the radio, we get it in the newspapers. If someone falls off his bicycle in Siam we get it in the post next day; we are impressed with an unheard misery when we hear of so many people having been drowned in China, so many starved in Siberia, so many killed in Spain, and perhaps a railway accident in Norway, and always a revolution in South America. You see we are impressed with all the misery of the world, because the whole world is now shouting in our ears every day. We enjoy it and we don't know what it is doing to us until finally we get the feeling that it is too much. How can one stop it? We must kill them all.
  When I was in India I talked with certain people of Swaraj party who want Home Rule. I said: "But do you assume that you can run India with your party? - Do you not realize that in no time you would have a terrible quarrel between the Mohammedans and the Hindus? - they would cut each other's throats, they would kill each other by the hundreds of thousands." "Yes, naturally," he said, "they would." "But don't you think that is awful? - they are your own people." "Oh well, for those worthless chaps to cut each other's throats is just right, we have an increase in population of 34 millions these last ten years." Now India has always been threatened by famine, even by increasing the irrigated area the greater parts of the Indian population would be underfed, the cattle are underfed already. You see if you wipe out all epidemics, too few people will die; therefore that awful political idea. No politician would dare admit such ideas here. But that is the East, there they are not hampered with such sentimentalism, such honest lies as we cultivate; they just admit it and that is right... All well meaning people are terribly concerned with the fast increasing population; ask what they are going to do about it, and there is no answer.
  But nature will answer. We think we are good and we are, yes, we have the best of intentions sure enough, but so you think that somewhere we are not nature, that we are different from nature? No, we are in nature and we think exactly like nature... So we should say - and I would like to say - that there is a terrible demon in man that blindfolds him that prepare awful destruction, and it would be much better if we had a temple for the god of war, where now, for instance with all this trouble in Europe, we could say: the god of war is restless, we must propitiate him, let us sacrifice to the god of war. And then every country would be going to the temples of the war god to sacrifice, perhaps it would be a human sacrifice, I don't know, something precious, they might burn up a lot of ammunition or destroy cannons for the god of war. That would help. To say that it is not we who want it would help because man could then believe in his goodness. For if you have to admit that you are doing just what you say you are not doing, you are not only a liar, you are a devil, and then where is the self esteem of man? How can he hope for a better future? We can never become anything else because we are caught in that contradiction, on the one side we want to do good and on the other we are doing the worst. How can man develop? He is forever caught in that dilemma. So you had better acknowledge the evil, what you call it doesn't matter. If there were priests who said that the god of war must be propitiated that would be a way of protecting yourself. But of course there are no such things, so we must admit that we prepare the war, that we are just thirsty for blood, everybody. 

I’m noticing themes found in this forum to the above. So, what do you all think?

[Stoic_Guardian]

People want peace, but they want “their” peace. And for those who are not pacifists that means that if the status quo is perceived as unbearable by someone then they will want to change it, and if they can not do it through peaceful means they will do it through violents means. Also though there are many detriments to war, there is also much of it that appeals to people. If there wasn’t, then the top selling video games wouldn’t all be about War.

Also I do believe in a way Wars are like a societal release of stress (perhaps the calling of a War God) , many can become digruntled and cranky do to the negatives they see in peacetime and you see people will cheer for war and if the war goes on too long or A great amount of victories are not being won, then while it drags on an takes the lives of people like some plauge people will get tired of it.
If there have been great losses and neither side has gained the upper hand then people will still continue the war because they feel they’ve invested too many lives then to allow it to end in stalemate (this was the case with the first world war).

But if Victories are gained then there is National Prestige, the proof of your countrymens will and of your nations power, also under the right circumstances a War can be quite beneficial to a nation either by securing borders and prosperity for the long term, giving them greater legitmacy in matters of diplomacy, and gaining territory or wealth etc.

Then again some people just want to kill and/or find War exciting.

Also this Jung guy sounds a bit pretentious to me.

[The_Golden_Turd]

Pretentious? He used to say he knew God. So yeah, it’s a none issue.

[jonquil]

If you had Jung’s experiences, you’d know God too.

[The_Golden_Turd]

No, If I had Jungs experiences, I would know Jung.

However, I used to be a Jungian, and am not really hostile to him. I’ll post more of his Wotan series today.

[lizbethrose]

Do people really look to war as a means to control birth rate? That’s pretty cynical–instead of sacrificing to Ares, Odin, or Ishtar–why not sacrifice to the Nature gods/goddesses–Zeus, Poseidon, Thor–or the gods/goddesses for fertility–Hera, Isis, Damara? Ask the nature gods/goddesses to bring on natural disasters–ask the fertility gods/goddesses to stop being so damned successful.

But I’m being facetious.

Jung, to me, is a better psychoanalyst than Freud because he seems more general in his labeling–or broader. Rather than Freud’s id, which is pretty self oriented, Jung has archetypes and the collective unconscious, which opens the door to a much more creative view of the unconscious, imm.

But I admit. I’m a lit. major and Jungian analysis is much more adaptable to literary criticism.

[The_Golden_Turd]

Wotan theory actually marks my break with the Jungians 9violent, pissed off break)… and it was seismic… caused a huge international issue when I got pissed off, and forced alot of people underground (it’s a rather well knit international community where people literally know one another across the planet, from online radio to publications and forum after forum), as well as stopped a international Jungian institute to suspend it’s forum when it started dawning on people what I was saying, causing a big old ugly rift. It’s also the only time I ever dreamed directly about a philosopher, of all people it was Nietzsche ironically, even though at this point I wasn’t a big fan of his.

The wars in North Africa and Ivory Coast began within a year. It was something I told them would happen because they weren’t taking their responsibilities seriously, hiding behind Wotan as a explanation. I got the link to one of the sub-site forums on my yahoo account. I am betting they are pretty weirded out how everything I said came out as true but put the blame on them personally as individuals. Dream interpretation runs on the female line in my family, but I have a knack for it.

[jonquil]

I understand that Jung said he didn’t believe in God, he knew there was a God… only because he had such a life that he had to know the experience of God. What I was saying to you is that if you had had the same experiences as Jung had, you would know there was a God too. Some things just can’t be explained any other way.

[The_Golden_Turd]

And what I am telling to you is if I had the same experiences as Jung, I would rest as a contradiction as I know God in my own way- not necessarily his way… therefore, I would perhaps know god less but would know Jung, as Jung would be the contradicting apparatus. I would know him intimately.

It’s because of the location of the ‘Collective Consciousness’ Phenomena in the brain as per his placement, not mine- it’s usually drawn as a center of the brain, with my area to the top, I’m a after effect, and he’s prior in terms of information processing. Many of my archetypes many Jungians simply haven’t seen, but on forums when I describe my own, be it in dreams of flashes, I can usually find others who share them, and the same line pops up from a analyst ‘I haven’t encountered that one before’. It’s cause their all largely a bird of the same feather, and flock together, and keep seeing the same old tiresome shit.

From what I can gather, our two regions are only viewable to him from his perspective via the dorsal laterals- he made his first mandala sideways:

Predominately the introspective aspects of my personality will be deposed to the bottom of the mandala, where I am most solidly based, in the tree of life and the little bugger guy down there. It’s very ancient mythology, I saw the snake in a room very similar to this one: except bigger, everything else largely the same, when I was a child. I’ve always been attracted to the tree of life, long before I knew a thing about Jung or psychology in general. The two go hand in hand… and it also explains my attraction to studying warfare and joining the army- not for the sake of fighting, but preserving the vast magnitude. However, I have alot of other characteristics NOT listen in that mandala- you only see me reemerge in the opposite- the top- my seeming counter personality. When I speak of strategy and warfare… many see the outrmost veneer- absolute destruction and gnostic contempt- even though I am looking the other direction, to community, brotherhood, endless possibilities.

Jung misses the underlining mechanics for this. He can see in these two points the tamygdala, the orbit in is the dorsal laterals in either hemisphere… I’m simply not processing that information the same way as he is. My sexuality isn’t juxtapositioned against anything, nor is my energy or imagination. I also don’t think in Mandalas. However, my unconscious does- I know this because when I try to set out to come up with a completely new kind of mathematics- what I draw tends to be a diagram, and it’s already following a logical constitution I don’t know logically yet other than it’s turning circular and holistic in it’s arrangement… I can be knocking out two spokes, and know something belongs down there in that corner- not know what it is, but will work without cessation rapidly lining everything up till I can see what it is I am working on- then it all makes sense. I naturally think extraordinary fast, and am wildly inventive. This is unusual, but not unheard of… and many jungians- your INTP types, can’t pull this off- but they love the circular mandalas. It aids in their active imagination. Never really has for me, and I’ve been taught how to use them by monks… their great bi-hemispheric tools if your disconnected from your imaginative, lucid capacity to thinking visually. I do that naturally- and note as a result alot of my information in processed in mandala like pakcages in it’s native formatting. This is the result of the right hemisphere more than likely in processing it. There are alot of variations Jung never noticed though, like in the history of the patterning of stain glass windows- I find myself resorting information for others along those geometric lines for the linguistic/universal people I deal with- they absorb information better that way. I dunno why, I’m working on the reason psychologically, just is.

So if I had Jung’s experiences… I wouldn’t ‘know god’ I would be confused about god, as I already know him well enough. He knows him in a anthropomorphic comprehension of the schizophrenic, prophetic voice of a loving and destructive god in a segregated, yet conglomerated persona within. My universe doesn’t spin that way. I would just get confused, see aspects we share together and say ‘yes’ but also note where we diverge, and laugh at where he got confused where I am better set up to comprehend. It’s in the other areas… where Jung is native- those experiences… they wouldn’t teach me about God, they would teach me about Jung.

[SIATD_v2]

All I’m saying is Don’t Mess with the Wotan…

I’ll get my coat.

[The_Golden_Turd]

There is no Wotan. Anyone who ever studied strategy, statecraft, and diplomacy would realize this. Jung scapegoated a conceptualization derived historically from german mythology and scapegoated it. We have a sense of ‘victory’ but we use it all the time, every day when we do calculations… it’s the motivating drive to a point of seeming completion of our work.

The discrepancies many people note in the absurdity and cycle of violence inherent in warfare exists in mathematics as well. The why a problem ‘begins’ at this point, is continued on through magnificent and exacting logic and is ‘completed’ here, and then is refersed and cross referenced against proofs if very, very, very similar to the approach of warfare. Hell, mathematics is still rather tribal if you ask me- it’s still motivated by trophies and glorification. Nobody dies in math though… but people die all the time in head smashing. The engineer must know mathematics as well as a assortment of other trades. The victory of the mathematician is a victory called too soon for a Engineer. Same goes for the strategist engaged in statecraft. Victory declares the end of a series of functions, a justification to the means… but a strategist will just laugh at this phenomena, and will push on, continuing the calculations, turning the end point into yet another ‘operator’.

There is no more a wotan than there is a final product to a math problem. They are the conscious-unconscious element of a series of cognitive assumptions that we condition ourselves to for a reward, it limit’s our capacity to think, and limits our responsibility far too short. It’s a sickness that infects every aspect of our civilization, our algorithmic civilization, and I’ll have none of it. We’re larger than that. We’re larger creatures than the nest we’ve built for ourselves. Remember this the next time you cry something to be ludicrous or poorly thought out, then think about your own life.

[0belafekete0]

Jung had probably focused On territorial expansion as a way to give causae bellli. However the fact is , political failure has to use projections of societal-ecenomic failure unto foreign entities, to really set the wheels of war going. In order to do this, politicians often deny their own failure by introjections unto the image of a compensated societal self image by the use of ideal, mythologically based propaganda.(Where societal self image. Implies. Indexes such as average standard of living, comparative societal safety nets, recreation, job benefits, etc)