“I’ve seen angels fall from blinding heights
but you yourself are nothing so divine.
……..Just next in line.”
Folks! Crew! Happy Friday! Oh man, I’ve been re-obsessed with Chris Cornell’s James Bond theme song “You Know My Name.” Written for Casino Royale, it’s not about man’s search for meaning, the conflict of the State vs. Individuality, or even the conceptualization of the Devil.
But it could be.
“Arm yourself because no one else here will save you
The odds will betray you
And I will replace you.”
Which brings us to Carl Jung’s The Undiscovered Self. If you’d like to see me looking puzzled, peep in the window while I’m re-reading a paragraph yet again. “Wait…what?” I picked up the tiny volume on a rainy Saturday, thinking it would be easy. Ha.
It has, however, been transformative. Here’s what I’m gathering so far.
1. The Individual psyche is so unique that it can’t be grouped together in a broad scientific theory of knowledge.
2. As such, the governance of the State flattens the life & divinity out of the Individual by placing it in the blender of the Group. A butterfly is crucified with the collector’s pin.
3. The Individual is far more powerful than we understand, in spite of our fixation with large numbers. I was having trouble getting this point, but his example of the dark side of this made it click. “A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but the fatally shortsighted habit of our age is to think only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world has seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman.”
4. Humans have a religious instinct that can provide the needed connection to a god, which gives a perspective to the world, and the two offer contrasting views necessary for man to make proper decisions. If we deny that instinct in the spiritual, it gets twisted into State deification. Jung points out the ritualistic nature of Stalin’s parades. We don’t have to look far to see that happening today with various ideological causes and new saints on the six o clock news.
5. The World/State would like the Individual to feel powerless in the face of overwhelming numbers. "The suffocating power of the masses is paraded before our eyes in one form or another everyday in the newspapers, and the insignificance of the individual is rubbed into him so thoroughly that he loses all hope of making himself heard.” But..
“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.”
6. I guess ol’ Peterson is right. Clean your room, bucko!
I vote for “You know my name” to be the official DC karaoke song. Can’t you hear them singing this to you every day?
I’ve seen those diamonds cut through harder men/
than you yourself but if you must pretend
you may meet your end
arm yourself because no one else here will save you
the odds will betray you
and I will replace you
You can’t deny the prize
it may never fulfill you
it longs to kill you
are you willing to die?
The coldest blood runs through my veins
You know my name