Depth Psychology and a New Ethic/Chapter 1 - Introduction/Problem of Evil

With the decline of the Judeo-Christian epoch (the 'old ethic') we are faced with 'moral insanity'. This is a symptom of a transitional period lacking a new ethic which replaces the old.

In most people the fight for the 'good' is actually a fight for self-preservation. It is not a fight against evil itself, but at best the fight against annihilation by evil which incites a person to take action.

It may be assumed that this self-preservation drive is the natural response to evil, but history tells a different story. People have spontaneously stood up to fight 'evil' and wage 'holy wars'. 'Goodness' was in the past (and again today with the rising ethic of the 'woke') abused by leaders, industry, and religious authorities, etc, as pretexts for exploitation.

So long as the old ethic remained valid, its values possessed efficacy, but due to modern people becoming skeptical ( for good reason, as noted of the previous abuses) and unsure of themselves in matters of value, we can no longer see ourselves as champions of the good, and bulwarks against evil.

Since this book was written, I think some of this has changed in that the "good" and "evil" have been redefined from the older, biblical values, to those of a new rising orthodoxy.

We call it 'woke ideology', 'woke reformation', 'Social Justice' or more technically its is the use of Marxist ideas of power in culture, as applied to minority groups within the West, who were historically 'oppressed'. How the oppressed traits intersect, limiting status and power in society, have been systemized into what is called intersectionality.

The main issue, as I see it, is that this creates perpetual victims in society, blind to the advances in rights of minority groups in society which may no longer be oppressed. Or if they are, it happens by individuals within society due to their psychology, and personal beliefs and prejudices. For the most part women, homosexuals, and people of color have the same rights as the previously 'privileged'. And though the West is far from a Utopia, we are better today than we were in the 20th century when it comes to the issue of rights.

This 'new ethic' is by definition a mass movement. Atomized individuals, and discrete groups of people all clumped into a pseudo-unity. We see daily how this unity is a farce as the movement 'eats its own', tries to control the infighting and as people that it claims to represent distance themselves for it.

All the while it speaks of tolerance and unity, it at the same time finds a scapegoat, demonizing men, masculinity, and more broadly those men that are white and straight. They are at the bottom of the intersectional hierarchy, and therefore the most 'privileged'. These are the 'historical oppressors' who in this day and age are not guilty of the crimes they are being accused of; They are forced to pay for the sins of their fathers. The guilt of being white (via white privilege) is akin to original sin in the 'old ethic'.

This creates resentment from the "punished group" which can never atone from its sins, and then a pushback, which creates a polarized society. If the polarization continues it will - in time -lead to the erosion of the very rights the intersectionalists are purportedly fighting for. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

When a person's religious orientation formed the background to their ethical orientation, they knew quite simply that God, Christ, Allah etc, had ordained the fight and with it came the hierarchy of values. Now however, the question comes up if "corporate profit", "class", "imperialism", "nationality" or "race" is the actual driving force of any of these conflicts. The questions as to the forces behind the conflicts, if all the information is known, or what is being kept secret, or if the conflict itself is only a symptom of a disease (including the loss of the efficacy of the old ethic, which increases the chance of exploitation and pretexts for war) exists in the psyche of the citizenry, and they are now given millions of answers, from media - social or mainstream. This explains the chaotic situation of our time, the outlets of information have multiplied, and a shared narrative no longer exists. A splintered citizenry has a harder time coming to a consensus.

The absoluteness of opposing ideologies that spring up offer some seeming help to those that are possessed by them, but the fanaticism in consciousness is compensated by an equally powerful doubt in the unconscious. This is why these ideologies have in fact contributed confusion to our time, not a reorientation. This is due to their partial nature. Keeping to either the left, or right, liberal or conservative, or if not political ideologies, to their purely rational nature, Scientific realism of the "New Atheists" for instance, leaves out the 'other side', it becomes wrong, and in time, 'evil'. The party has the 'Truth' and if one does not tow the party line, they are wrong, or evil, and must be punished, or removed from the party - excommunicated.

The 'old' ethic in its Judeo-Christian form moulded the character of Westerners. Its loss of efficacy is the cause, effect and the expression of the catastrophe in which the opposing forces that were contained by they old ethic have become visible.

The solution to this problem is not first evident in the collective, the solution lags, but the individuals within the collective are its avant-garde. The collective unconscious constelates a creative solution within the individual first. What happens in the individual is typical of the total situation, and the creative stirrings which enable them to find their own solutions and salvation are the initial stages of future values and symbols for the collective.

The sensitive, psychically disturbed (some neurotics) and creative people are always the forerunners. Their enhanced permeability by the contents of the collective unconscious, the deep layer which determines the history of happenings in the group, makes them receptive to emerging new contents of which the collective is not yet aware.

But these are also the people for whom problem become insistent in their person lives a hundred years or more before the collective has woken up to their experience.

Not infrequently a sensitive person falls ill because of his incapacity to deal with a problem which is not recognized as such by the world in which they live, but which is, in fact a future problem of humanity which has confronted the individual and forced them to wrestle with it. This explains the lack of contemporaneity, the remoteness and eccentric isolation of these people - but also their prophetic role as forerunners.

So long as certain specific values retain their living efficacy and power in the collective, the individual (unless they are an exceptional person) will have no problems in relation to matters of value. Institutional procedures exist for dealing with questions of values in a valid way. As an example, the sacrament of marriage exist, there will be no neuroses caused by the marriage problem, but only adultery and sin, punishment and pardon. The orientation remains valid even if the individual behaves invalidly. But when the collective no longer possesses (shared) values, that is to say, when a crisis in values has occurred, the individual lacks a collective orientation. He falls sick because of a problem for which there is no longer a collective answer and a collective procedure for reaching a settlement. In affect they become atomized from society, the collective, and civilization. They then become involved in a conflict from which no institution is any longer in a position to set him free, but for which he must suffer and experience an individual solution in the living process of his personal destiny. But few are able to create a solution due to the separation from the collective unconscious, and the creative inner voice which is symptom of the growing schism between conscious and unconscious in our postmodern times so the suffering (due to loneliness from the alienation from the collective) tends to lead to hopelessness, depression, and finally with the addition of the growing meaninglessness from the collapse of values and institutions, to nihilism - the Death Drive, or the Jungian Thanatos Archetype.