# Political Jingoism



## ginshun (Apr 5, 2005)

So conservativism = jingoism?

 Thats what your getting at right?  Why not just come right out and say it?


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## Makalakumu (Apr 5, 2005)

Jingoism 



> jin·go·ism    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (jngg-zm)
> n.
> 
> Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy; chauvinistic patriotism



Conservatism = Jingoism.  This hasn't always been the case historically and it may not be universal in application.  Yet, I would say that the vast majority can be classified as such.

upnorthkyosa

ps - so, if the shoe fits...


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## ginshun (Apr 5, 2005)

Hey, if that is your opinion, then so be it.  You are entitled to it.

  At least you come right out and say it, as opposed to tippy toeing around in circles spewing rhetoric.


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## Fortis (Apr 5, 2005)

Conservatism doesn't equal Jingoism.  The conservatives are just the ones being jingoistic (is that a word?) at this point in history.


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## Makalakumu (Apr 5, 2005)

There are a few democrats that are jingoists as well.  I wouldn't call these guys liberals.

The problem with jingoism is environmental.  It stiffles dissent.  It blindly promotes.  And when taken at face value, it is wholley emotional and without reason.

Jingoism is dangerous that way.  Anytime one hears it, one should be wary.


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## Makalakumu (Apr 5, 2005)

Fortis said:
			
		

> Conservatism doesn't equal Jingoism.  The conservatives are just the ones being jingoistic (is that a word?) at this point in history.



Well, at least for the last 40 years, anyway.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 5, 2005)

Would, "coming right out and saying it," kinda be like saying what you really mean when you write something like, "tippy toeing around in circles spewing rhetoric?"

How that sort of thing honors people who fought to defend our rights is beyond me. 


Oh, incidentally, I don't agree that conservative=jingoistic. NEO-conservative, well, maybe.


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## Makalakumu (Apr 5, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Oh, incidentally, I don't agree that conservative=jingoistic. NEO-conservative, well, maybe.



 :asian: 

Ohhhh, I've been one-upped.  Neo-conservative = jingoism is a far better way of saying it.

 :asian:


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## ginshun (Apr 5, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> How that sort of thing honors people who fought to defend our rights is beyond me.


 I don't think it was meant to...



> Oh, incidentally, I don't agree that conservative=jingoistic. NEO-conservative, well, maybe.


 Or Paleo-conservatism?

 Big words are fun.  Hehe.


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## Makalakumu (Apr 5, 2005)

ginshun said:
			
		

> Paleo-conservatism?



Pat Buchanen?

He has been jingoist in the past, but is not at this time.

One of the problems now is that there are so many people who have adopted the neoconservative line unknowingly.


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## ginshun (Apr 5, 2005)

So if he was in the past, but isn't now, does that mean that conservatism hasn't been the same as jingoism for the past 40 years?


 Or is it only the neo-cons that we have to worry about?  Or maybe only the neo-cons that don't realize they are neo-cons?  Yup, they are the real dangerous ones I bet.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 5, 2005)

Here's basically what a, "jingo," actually is:

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/kipling/rkimperialism.html

The article, which appears to've been written by somebody I went to grad school with, also gives some suggestions about how to separate jingos and conservatives.


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## Ray (Apr 5, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Here's basically what a, "jingo," actually is...
> The article, which appears to've been written by somebody I went to grad school with, also gives some suggestions about how to separate jingos and conservatives.


Come on now, you can't expect me to believe your definition of jingo if you contrive your own contractions (to've = to have) - that can't be right, can it?

And I mean that in the best possible way.


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## Flatlander (Apr 5, 2005)

*Mod Note*:

This thread has been split off of the "Honoring those who gave us rights" thread.
Please feel free to continue this discussion without the pre-split topical restraint.

-Dan Bowman-
-MT Moderator-


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## Makalakumu (Apr 5, 2005)

ginshun said:
			
		

> So if he was in the past, but isn't now, does that mean that conservatism hasn't been the same as jingoism for the past 40 years?


 
Pat Buchanen is a flag waving conservative.  There is no doubt about that.  He is just not too "flag waving" about Iraq these days.



			
				ginshun said:
			
		

> Or is it only the neo-cons that we have to worry about?  Or maybe only the neo-cons that don't realize they are neo-cons?  Yup, they are the real dangerous ones I bet.



Don't bet.  You'll lose.  This is dangerous.  It takes a lot of time to see through all of the lies that have been told regarding our foriegn policy.  Most people have been pulled on board one way or another.  In the end, they support a set of principles that they probably have never seen or have had a chance to vote on.

Incidentally, the neocon principles are very different from the ones that a soldier swears to defend.


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## ginshun (Apr 5, 2005)

How many threads could a threadsplitter split, if a threadsplitter could split threads?


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## Ray (Apr 5, 2005)

All this time I've been laboring under the misapprehenshion that jingos were aboriginal dogs of Jaustralia.


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## OUMoose (Apr 5, 2005)

Ray said:
			
		

> All this time I've been laboring under the misapprehenshion that jingos were aboriginal dogs of Jaustralia.


Those would be the jdingos, but I can see how the similarity could be confusing.


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## raedyn (Apr 5, 2005)

Fortis had it right.



			
				Fortis said:
			
		

> Conservatism doesn't equal Jingoism. The conservatives are just the ones being jingoistic (is that a word?) at this point in history.


There's a lot of use of the terms "conservative" and "liberal" (particularly in the US) in places that they don't really apply. The terms are constantly, repeatedly, doggedly, set-up as polar opposites. Anyone that's remotely paid attention to politics outside of the US realizes they aren't as far apart as American politicians would have us all believe - and, combined, they are still only a tiny slice of the entire political spectrum. That they're both slung around as epithets amuses me greatly.


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## ginshun (Apr 5, 2005)

I can agree with that.

 The amount of fighting there is between democrats and republicans in this country is crazy.  They are really not that different IMO.

 Part of the reason I am an independant.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 5, 2005)

Well, I can certainly see why someone who brought up Australian wild dogs (not spelled the same, doesn't sound the same) in a thread about political jingoism would wantr to object to someone threadsplitting or going off topic.

Uh...Ray? It's not my description of the term. It's somebody else's--and what would YOU say a "jingo," was? Kind of a weird thing to've brought up....

At present, our current President's current alibi for why we're in Iraq (uh...WMDs? No. Direct ties to Al Quaida? uh, well, no....nation building? absolutely not...) boils down to a jingoistic notion: we're there to bring democracy for their own good, and this will lead to democracy throughout the Islamic world, whether they like it or not. 

In other words, we went to war and occupied their country to help them. That's jingoism.


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## Ray (Apr 6, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Well, I can certainly see why someone who brought up Australian wild dogs (not spelled the same, doesn't sound the same) in a thread about political jingoism would wantr to object to someone threadsplitting or going off topic.


Thanks for correcting me.  I feel so much better now--a dingo is a dog, a jingo isn't...I gotta remember that.


			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Uh...Ray? It's not my description of the term. It's somebody else's--and what would YOU say a "jingo," was? Kind of a weird thing to've brought up....


A jingo is one of two things, a warmonger or someone who is shows excessive favoritism towards his/her own country.  


			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> ...our current President's current alibi for why we're in Iraq....we went to war and occupied their country...


Do you write your own stuff or do you get help from Jane Fonda's speech writer?


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## Makalakumu (Apr 6, 2005)

Ray said:
			
		

> Do you write your own stuff or do you get help from Jane Fonda's speech writer?



This merits repetition...



> jin·go·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jngg-zm)
> n.
> 
> Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy; chauvinistic patriotism



Now, who does this sound like?  Whoever it is, would be a jingo.


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## raedyn (Apr 6, 2005)

--


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 6, 2005)

Uh...Ray? Ms. Fonda pretty much gave up the Revolution about 1974---get used to it. And work on better comebacks; try seeing Godard's, "Letter to Jane."

And, dude, a jingo is actually somebody who believes in the moral superiority of their own country, the inferiority of all others, and in some cases really believes that "we," are ordained (and I do mean ordained) to rule over everybody else--for their own good.

You might look at somebody like Kipling--try, "The Man Who Would Be King," (great movie), and "Recessional," and "White Man's Burden," and "Plain Tales From the Hills," because Kipling does not only have the definition straight, he's pretty straight about what being a jingo really implies.  

No, you don't have to read just my books. (Like they're, "mine!") There're many others, though Kipling's a wonderful writer. But read something, because you don't know what you're talking about.

Or, try this: why do YOU think we should be in Iraq?


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## FearlessFreep (Apr 6, 2005)

One way I try to keep it all straight is basically to look at a couple of different simple understandings.

 First: Nobody wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says "I think I'll be a jerk today".
 Second: Nobody wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says "I think I will go out and do wrong today"

 In other words, most people in the world think they are doing right, think they are doing a good thing. They may be wrong, they may reach the wrong conclusions from the information available or have differing motivations or whatever, but I think most people at heart really think they are doing the right thing. I find that keeping that in mind goes an awful long way toward getting along with people and at least understanding that someone may be wrong, but not on purpose.

 When it comes to 'conservative' versus 'liberal', I really think they mean two different things, there are social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, if you will, and the same for liberals. Fiscal liberals and fiscal conservatives I think really want the same things. I mean everyone wants low unemployment and good education, etc..., a better life for themselves and those around them. The difference is really in who is responsible for it. Liberals tend to view that since the government represents the people, it represents the will of the people and is therefore charged with executing the desires of the people. Thus a liberal government is an activist government; it gets involved in trying to make the world a better place. Conservatives tend to distrust consolidated power and the abuse that comes from that, and thus favor a minimalistic government of basic neccessity only; where the people of themselves get invovled in the social issues they care about. The real debate is how much the 'government as the people' versus how much the 'people without the government' should get involved. You know what? I really don't have a problem with either side as far as which is 'correct' or not. In some parts of the world, they tax higher and then the government does more; you see that in the statistics of what governments gave more per capita to disaster relief. Other places in the world, they tax lower, and the people get invovled more directly. A good example is that my church; we are still sending money and workers down to El Salvador to rebuild homes and villages after an earthquake there years ago. Doesn't matter whether the people do it through the government or on their own, it gets done, and I think people want it to get done somehow and want to help...the details of how just depends on what you view the rold of the government to be. I tend to be fiscally conservative, but I don't have a problem with people who are fiscally liberal because I can see their point.

 Then there are the social sides. I don't think social ideas are really liberal or conservative. I just think that people who tend to champion certain causes will tend to end up on the liberal side simply because of convenience; an activist government is more likely to get involved; a government more inclined to view itself as the execution of the people's will has more of a tendancy to get involved in social issues if they are the will of the people, A social conservative is more likely to be wary of trying to enforce social changes through government intervention through law. Good liberals and good conservatives will both think 'rascism is bad', but a liberal will think 'racism is bad and it hurts people and to correct the situation, we need to use the law to level the field' and a conservative will think 'racism is bad, but to change the social situation requires changing people minds and hearts and you can't do that with the law' The truth is propbably somewhere in the middle, or a little of both. Anyway, an activist government becomes a vehicle for social change and thus those looking for social change will gravitate toward the 'liberal' view of government involvement.

 This is all, I think, how most average people really think, if they bother to think it through. Everyone wants what's good for their community, they really only differ in how it's to be done; or rather, where the split between government responsibility and individual responsibilty lies.

 The real problem is that there are people who derive their income, their status, etc..from having, using, and keeping political power. I don't really think Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken or Micheal Savage or Ed Schultz really agree with me that 'Nobody wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says "I think I will go out and do wrong today"' They make a living trying to convince you that 'those other people are out to do bad..are out to destroty "our" way of life' I think they are just the tip of the iceberg, political consultants are in the same mode, as are often politicians. They don't get elected saying "well, me and my opponent want the same thing for all you, we just don't agree on how to get it done, but hey...we can work it out", they get elected by painting themselves as saints and the other guys as demons and hoping it sticks. Fundamentally, 'conservative' and 'liberal' politicians I really don't think are conservative or liberal much at all. They just have carved out the electorate into different constituent groups that they pander to and rely on (unions or businessmen or blacks or christians) and then fight viciously for everyone else in the middle. I don't really think Democrats and Republicans, at least those invovled in the politics of it all, are really 'liberals' or conservatives'; they're just playing a game of 'king of the hill' where the only way to be king is to knock the other guy down. I tend to think that most people you run across on the street are not that nasty about it, though.

 That guy on the street, he may be 'conservative', he may be 'liberal'. At the end of the day, he probably wants the same things as you. I try to remember that.


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## Flatlander (Apr 6, 2005)

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## Ray (Apr 6, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> And, dude, a jingo is actually somebody who believes in the moral superiority of their own country, the inferiority of all others, and in some cases really believes that "we," are ordained (and I do mean ordained) to rule over everybody else--for their own good.


I agree with the dictionary definition of jingo as given earlier; it also agrees with merrim-webster.  Now gimme the word for the definition of your position, which seems to be that you believe in the moral superiority of rmcrobertson, the inferiority of all others and the belief that you're some sort of authority.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> You might look at somebody like Kipling--try, "The Man Who Would Be King," (great movie), and "Recessional," and "White Man's Burden," and "Plain Tales From the Hills," because Kipling does not only have the definition straight, he's pretty straight about what being a jingo really implies.


Okay, I could try reading fiction (I generally don't) but you have to promise to try to come up with some original ideas.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> But read something, because you don't know what you're talking about.


I'm sure you don't mean that.  Go back to my original post in this thread, you used the contraction " to've " which I don't believe is a valid contraction.  Okay, my subsequent post about "jingo / dingo" was an attempt at humor that didn't go over big; other than that: what did I say that was incorrect?  My definition of jingo was good enough.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 6, 2005)

One part of my definition of jingoism includes the idea that a "jingo," is somebody who, whenever his notions of his and his country's inherent superiority are questioned in the slightest way, immediately begins a set of personal attacks upon whomever they feel did the questioning. And oh yes, a "jingo," most definitely refuses to go and actually find out what the world and its history is really like--for example, they refuse to go an look at some excellent writing by the author (Kipling, in this case) who is associated, more than any other, with the concept being discussed. Indeed, a "jingo," protects their armored concepts of themeslves and their country's inherent superiority with all sorts of violences, from verbal all the way through to the real thing. 

Not quite original, I suspect--but it does make the point.

Here's the thing about knowledge: it's democratic, as much as anything is in this country. Anybody has access to it; anybody can do the work to gain it; anybody's entitled to struggle and try to figure the world out. Even if there are obstacles (for example, living in a society that tells working class people they can't really learn, and that intellectuals are The Enemy), you can still get around them. It's one of the best things about America.

The only catch is, it's like martial arts--if you don't get on the mat, if you don't put in the work, if you don't sweat to learn, well, then you've got nothing real to offer.

Let me suggest, for example, that you try the chapter on Kipling, the concept of the, "White Man," and its extension to the problem of the West's confrontation with the, "Arab," world in Edward Said, "Orientalism," 226 and following. 

It's a big world out there, and learning about it is a great joy. You shouldn't let people take that away from you. Otherwise, I pretty much agree with the Freepster--nice post.


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## Ray (Apr 6, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> One part of my definition of jingoism includes the idea that a "jingo," is somebody who...


That was a pretty darned good post.


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## raedyn (Apr 6, 2005)

FearlessFreep said:
			
		

> Most people in the world think they are doing right, think they are doing a good thing.


I agree with this. Most people don't have evil intentions. Selfish maybe, but not evil. However just because someone believes their actions are justified, doesn't mean they really are.



			
				FearlessFreep said:
			
		

> there are social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, if you will, and the same for liberals.


 You are correct on this. But conservative and liberal are not the only two options. Ever heard of socialism? communism? (those are not the same although American discourse has long equated the two) totalitarianism? neoconservatism? etc etc

I would suggest going to the Wikkipedia entires for Liberalism and Conservatism as a starting point to anyone who is interested in learning more.



			
				FearlessFreep said:
			
		

> Fiscal liberals and fiscal conservatives I think really want the same things. I mean everyone wants low unemployment and good education, etc..., a better life for themselves and those around them.


I'm not so sure about that. Many people feel this way, yes. But there are people who honest-to-goodness want a good life for themselves and to hell with anyone else. Unfortunate, but true.



			
				FearlessFreep said:
			
		

> That guy on the street, he may be 'conservative', he may be 'liberal'. At the end of the day, he probably wants the same things as you. I try to remember that.


Well, yes and no. I agree that it can be useful to realize we have more in common then we disagree on. But I think you're painting an unrealistically rosy picture of people. 

We don't always want the same thing. Like:

*1)*
*- *Johnny wants everyone to be able to go to the hospital without having to look in their wallet first. He doesn't want any money to change hands when someone sees the doctor.
- Sally doesn't want to pay the higher income tax that is associated with socialized health care. She doesn't want her hard earned dollars paying for the birth of Johnny's kids, or paying for the treatments that Johnny needs because he smoked all his life

*2)*
- Cindy thinks all kids should be able to get the same education, free, no matter where they live, or who their parents are. She wants everyone to pay into the system because 'a rising tide raises all boats' and she thinks it's important to educate as many people as possible, so they're employable and add labour capital and tax dollars to the economy instead of resorting to criminal acts or begging to support themselves.
- Jimmy doesn't have kids and doesn't think that it's fair for him to pay to educate someone else's kids. After all, he didn't have kids on purpose. If other people want to do that, then good for them, but the planet overcrowed already, so those people made that choice, and they should pay the price.

*3)*
- Fanny is suspicious of people with religions other than her own, and believes that anyone who disagrees with her particular sect's beliefs on God/Allah/Yaweh/Gaia/whatever is Doomed and Evil and a bad influence on her children. She would be happier if people who didn't look like her left the country because she's uncomfortable around them, and can't the government just close the damn borders?
- Linda wants a diverse multicultural society where we can learn from other cultures and experiences to broaden our horizons and enrich our lives.

I could go on, but I've been wayyy too long-winded already! And I think it's horribly obvious what my biases are. But I'm comfortable with that. My point is only that there are certain ideas that just can't be reconciled. Sometimes we want different things, not just "have different ideas of how to get the same thing". The people in these examples have fundamentally different views of the world. Each of them feels their position is the obvious one, given their basic assumptions that the bring to the table. Not everyone has those same assumptions.


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## heretic888 (Apr 6, 2005)

I've said this before, but....

"Liberalism", very simply, is nothing more than a philosophical orientation whereby you believe that the major cause and solution of human suffering is _external_. For example, a person is poor not primarily because of any personal deficiencies, but because of lack of opportunity, social oppression, and so forth. This dates back to the 1500's or so, and is most readily seen in figures like Rousseau and Voltaire, and arose more or less simulatenously with both an emerging middle class, industrial technology, and democratic social systems.

"Conservatism", very simply, is nothing more than a philosophical orientation whereby you believe that the major cause and solution of human suffering is _internal_. For example, a person is poor (or, at least, unsuccessful) not primarily because of lack of opportunity, but because of a bad work ethic, laziness, immorality, and so forth. This dates back to roughly 5,000 years ago, with the rise of the complex city-state and highly rule-and-order religion.

Of course, then there are "law" and "freedom" orientations across both spectrums --- which convolutes things even more.

Laterz.


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## heretic888 (Apr 6, 2005)

raedyn said:
			
		

> I agree with this. Most people don't have evil intentions. Selfish maybe, but not evil. However just because someone believes their actions are justified, doesn't mean they really are.



Correction. _Nobody_ has "evil" intentions.

Everyone, right down to the nuttiest sociopath and serial killer, has some sort of justification or rationalization for doing what they do. They may not necessarily see what they do as "right" or "moral", but they will always feel it was necessary --- or, at the very least, "not as  bad as it could be".

The truth is that "evil" is an early belief structure developed to form cohesion and harmony with the sociocentric in-group. "Evil" is always other, it is always chaotic, it is always different, it is always alien.

This is why a belief in "evil" of some kind is almost culturally universal, but what actually constitutes "evil" is most assuredly not.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 6, 2005)

Actually, no. While superficially correct, to argue that "liberalism," and "conservatism," are simply archetypes that have been around since the formation of the city-state (which, incidentally, also happened in the East), long before the words or the concepts existed, is to commit the error of erasing historical difference in favor of a pseudo-Hegelian notion of history as the mere unfolding of some divine world-spirit within mere temporality.

In point of fact, these concepts appeared in 19th-century England, in part as  a response to the development of class society and Victorian colonialism within the general development of industrial capitalism.

Jingoism, in its way, is to be understood as an attempt at providing an  intellectual, religious and nationalistic alibi for an expansion of markets abroad and the exploitation of workers at home within those larger historical developments.


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## FearlessFreep (Apr 6, 2005)

_Originally Posted by *FearlessFreep*
Most people in the world think they are doing right, think they are doing a good thing.


 I agree with this. Most people don't have evil intentions. Selfish maybe, but not evil. However just because someone believes their actions are justified, doesn't mean they really are._

 What I left out for brevity is that most people are motivated by self-interests. Different people have different kinds of self-interest and some are more selfish or altruistic than others, but fundamentally, everyone thinks there self-interests are justified. They *may not be* but that's usually from from ignorance, not malice. I've found that if I start from that presumption, it's quite a lot easier to work with and relate to people around me than if I start with the assumption that "he's just a jerk" or "she's just being selfish"


_ there are social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, if you will, and the same for liberals.

 You are correct on this. But conservative and liberal are not the only two options. Ever heard of socialism? communism? (those are not the same although American discourse has long equated the two) totalitarianism? neoconservatism? etc etc_

 I kept it short because I was mostly replying to you and ginshun had mentioned about conservative and liberal and Republican and Democrat when I was replying. Mostly, though, the way I broke down the distinction between the two can be applied as a scale within any particular mechanism of "how it's carried out" we have a Republic and the distinction between liberal and conservative is along a fairly small band. You could apply it to Communism as well and still I think say that there could be 'liberal communists' and 'conservative communists' being that Communism is the "how" and liberal vs conservative is "how much". Or a Monarchy...Maybe not wholely accurate, politically, but useful to me in trying to understand the motivations of people

 Neoconservative is actually a weird one because it seems to be, as applied in the US today, to be a fiscally liberal, if you will, a 'activist government' approach to issues that are socially conservative. Which tends to seem to drive both real liberals and real conservatives daft. Liberals don't like the social conservatives using the government for social change simply because it's change in directions they don't like, and conservatives don't like using the government for social change because they don't believe that's the role of government

_We don't always want the same thing. Like:

*- *Johnny wants everyone to be able to go to the hospital without having to look in their wallet first. He doesn't want any money to change hands when someone sees the doctor.
 - Sally doesn't want to pay the higher income tax that is associated with socialized health care. She doesn't want her hard earned dollars paying for the birth of Johnny's kids, or paying for the treatments that Johnny needs because he smoked all his life
_

 Those are just differences in 'how it gets done'. Johnny wants the government to handle it and Sally does not. Does Sally want Johnny or his kids to die? Probably not, I would hope. Sally would probably be perfectly happy with Johnny being able to get to medical care, whether through insurance or out of pocket or what not, she just doesn't want to pay for it. If Sally doesn't want to pay for the higher income tax, that means she wants a lower income tax, leaving more money in Johnny's hands to handle his own medical situation. In the end I suspect both want the same thing, ability to have access to good medical care. The only difference is do you tax high so the government can cover it all (Johnny's implied position) or do you tax low so individuals can do it either privately out-of-pocket or collectively through insurance(Sally's implied position). You haven't really shown that either of them wants medical coverage to not be available to others or themselves, which would be a true difference

_
 - Cindy thinks all kids should be able to get the same education, free, no matter where they live, or who their parents are. She wants everyone to pay into the system because 'a rising tide raises all boats' and she thinks it's important to educate as many people as possible, so they're employable and add labour capital and tax dollars to the economy instead of resorting to criminal acts or begging to support themselves.
 - Jimmy doesn't have kids and doesn't think that it's fair for him to pay to educate someone else's kids. After all, he didn't have kids on purpose. If other people want to do that, then good for them, but the planet overcrowed already, so those people made that choice, and they should pay the price._

 That, again, is just a difference in who pays, or more properly, how the money moves in it getting paid for. Jimmy doesn't seem to not want quality education available, he just doesn't want the payment for it to come from his taxes. Cindy wants good education, but wants it to be paid for universally through the state, Jimmy does not as he has no vested interest, he feels, in directly contributing. Now, if Jimmy was of the opinion that Cindy should not be able to pay to get a good education for her kids, then they have a real difference of opinion that one wants good eduction available and the other does not. As it is, though, while the implementations of how to spend for education seem irreconcialable, the desire to have good educational opportunities available is probably not

 The differences are really not a matter of 'what we want for ourselves and ur neighbors' but 'how do we rerranage the piles of money to make it happen'. Do we pay in one big lump of taxes and let the government do it, or do we do it individually; there are pros and cons to each. A 'what we all want' is 'access to medicine and medical care', 'access to education', etc... whether it's state subsidized or privately paid or somewhere in the middle is really just a disagreement of the fairest and most efficient way to do it (and 'fair' and 'efficient' may be contridictory)

 I could simply say "No child in our country should have to go to bed hungry" and there's not a soul alive who would disagree. But there are a thousand ways to try to make that come true from private charities to direct government intervention. Sometimes I think we would be better of if we spent more time talking about what we want to accomplish and keep those goals in sight and less time fighting over the politics of how to do it. It it really matters to you, you'll find ways to compromise over how to get it done to be sure it actually gets done. Unfortunately, if you derive political power from the money from who get's money based on 'how it gets done', that tends to take on inflated importance

_
 - Fanny is suspicious of people with religions other than her own, and believes that anyone who disagrees with her particular sect's beliefs on God/Allah/Yaweh/Gaia/whatever is Doomed and Evil and a bad influence on her children. She would be happier if people who didn't look like her left the country because she's uncomfortable around them, and can't the government just close the damn borders?
 - Linda wants a diverse multicultural society where we can learn from other cultures and experiences to broaden our horizons and enrich our lives.
_

 Well, you've switched from fiscal to social issues which is a different ballgame but...interestingly, both of them want the ability to associate with the people they want to associate with, however boad or narrow a group that may be, and either way requires a concious decision of the government involved. A truly 'different' point of view would be someone how simply wakes up and says "I'm just going try to get along with my neighbors, whomever they are"


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## heretic888 (Apr 6, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Actually, no. While superficially correct, to argue that "liberalism," and "conservatism," are simply archetypes that have been around since the formation of the city-state (which, incidentally, also happened in the East), long before the words or the concepts existed, is to commit the error of erasing historical difference in favor of a pseudo-Hegelian notion of history as the mere unfolding of some divine world-spirit within mere temporality.



I didn't say they were "archetypes". I said they were specific philosophical orientations. Archetypes, as understood in both the Jungian and Platonic sense, are devoid or emptied of specific content. Philosophies, on the other hand, are indeed full of content and particular standpoints.

Also, in lieu of Hegel, I'd suggest Sri Aurobindo.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> In point of fact, these concepts appeared in 19th-century England, in part as  a response to the development of class society and Victorian colonialism within the general development of industrial capitalism.



The terms may have appeared at this point in Western history, but the concepts did not. This would also be like arguing that, say, "panentheism" (the belief that all things are in the Divine and, paradoxically, the Divine is in all things) did not exist until the term was coined in the 1800's. Trying telling that to a Valentinian Christian or an Advaita Vedantist or a Shingon Buddhist.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 7, 2005)

First off, you mean, "pantheism."

Second off, it is grossly inaccurate to claim that archetypes are mere forms--"eidolons," someone like Emerson might say--emptied of specific content. In Plato, archetypes are containers of elements of the Real; in Jung, they stand for the specific contents of the deep human unconscious, an unconscious shared by the entire human race--or, I should say, in Jung's case, shared by the entire white race.

Third off--my point was that you are collapsing historical differences and historical developments into nothing, and arguing for some underlying pattern or structure in human existence that does not change. You might as well claim that there are only two kinds of people, or sing a verse from, "As Time Goes By," ("it's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory/A case of do or die/The fundamental things apply/As time goes by"). I'm afraid that instead, I actually take history seriously--and terms like, "liberal," and, "conservative," meant absolutely nothing in, say, Imperial Rome, where they had neither those words nor the concepts they represent.

The terms only mean something in the cultural mileau in which they actually existed--unless, of course, you wish to ignore historical and material differences, and simply argue what is in the end theology, since the very existence of these binary opposites that supposedly actualize thmeselves via human politics can only be "proven," as a mater of speculation and faith. 

Of course, one is perfectly entitled to make such a claim: Jung did, and in a different way Hegel did. But it is not a claim that rests on material proof of any sort.


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## raedyn (Apr 7, 2005)

FearlessFreep said:
			
		

> Does Sally want Johnny or his kids to die? Probably not, I would hope. You haven't really shown that either of them wants medical coverage to not be available to others or themselves, which would be a true difference


There is a true difference. There are people who say "to hell with everyone else". There are people who believe that if say if Johnny can't afford to pay for the medical care his kids need, then he must have been lazy to not get a good job and because he was lazy, now he's gonna pay the price. There are people who believe that if you are poor, that's your problem and I don't want to hear about it and I don't care if you end up dead just don't do it on my front lawn. Do you really truly believe that everyone cares about their neighbours? Most people do care about other people. But to varying degrees. There are also some very cold-hearted people out there.



			
				FearlessFreep said:
			
		

> A 'what we all want' is 'access to medicine and medical care', 'access to education', etc...


For ourselves. We don't all care about the dude down the street. When people complain about beggars and panhandlers, notice that most of them aren't saying "Why are there people so depserate that they feel they have to resport to that? How can we fix it?". Many people just want to not have to see the damn beggars looking ugly, stinking up the sidewalk and getting in their way.

I'm not trying to argue that all people - or even most people - are that selfish and hard-hearted. But if you honestly believe that there is no one that feels this way I think you are very naieve.


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## raedyn (Apr 7, 2005)

Freep - 
I hope you don't take the naieve comment as an insult. It isn't meant as an attack. But it's been my experience that not everyone wants the same things for the world. Sometimes it is as simple as a disagreement on what the right way to get to our goal is. But sometimes people really do have different goals.

(Another example: Some people want to find a cure for AIDS. Other people think - incorrectly, mind you - that AIDS is a gay disease and therefore "the gays get what they deserve for their sins" You can't tell me those people want the same things.)


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## FearlessFreep (Apr 7, 2005)

_I'm not trying to argue that all people - or even most people - are that selfish and hard-hearted. But if you honestly believe that there is no one that feels this way I think you are very naieve._

It's not really that I don't think there are not people like that.  I just find it easier if I start out assuming that a given person is not unless they prove me otherwise.

Think of this scenario:  I'm arguing for the benefits of socialized/government pay/tax funded medicine.  A person I'm talking to says "I don't want to pay taxes for the medical care of others".  I can initially take that one of two ways; either that person is being selfish and only wants to take care of themself and to hell with anyone else, or that person does care about the medical needs of others but doesn't think socializing medicine is the right way to take care of it.  Maybe he thinks socialized medicine is going to be wasteful because of government beuracracy?  Maybe he thinks we're better off working to keep costs lower so people can afford better medecine, etc..  If I take the first view, that he is just being a selfish jerk, then no dialog and no comprimise can take place.  If I assume the second view that we really fundamentally want the same thing, available healthcare, then at least dialog is possible and we can work toward a common goal and maybe he has to bend a bit and maybe I have to bend a bit but at least we can respect each other.  Even if I assume the second view and I'm wrong and he really is a selfish jerk well then..I tried.  If I assume the first and I'm wrong and he's not being selfish just has different ideas on how to get the job done, well...I've stopped the possibility of dialog before it started and it's my fault.  Maybe there was something  that could be worked out...but my own assumptions made it impossible.

So, I'd rather start off assuming that if I disagree with someone on what to do that at least both of us share a common goal of "trying to do what's right" and we can dialog on how to get that done. I may end up being wrong with any given person, but...at least I'll try.

I think a lot of times we view 'how' as 'what' and we seem to see impasse with others who disagree with 'how'.  For example, to me "healthy citizen's" is a goal.  "Socialized medicine" is a way to accomplish that goal, but not the only one.  I personally don't think it's the best way to do it, but I'm willing to talk about it and think about it.  If someone else sees "Socialized Medicine" is the goal itself, we may have a problem dialoging, but if that person really looks beyond that to see "Healthy Citizens" as the real, foundational goal, then we can work together to try to accomplish that.

I think the problem stems because "socialized medicine" or "privatized social security" or "private charities" or "welfare programs" puts money and power into different sets of people's hands so they have a vested interest in trying to paint the 'how' as 'what'


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## Phoenix44 (Apr 7, 2005)

I'd suggest you read Professor George Lakoff's book "Don't Think Of An Elephant," if you haven't already done so.  It's meant for progressives, but it gives a very good explanation how conservatives and liberals can both think they're right.  It's simply a different "frame" of thinking.

I agree with Raedyn that there are many people in this country right now who simply believe that if you were a decent person who worked hard, then you'd have enough money to get a good education, a nice house, and good health care.  And no, many of them do not care about the learning disabled kid.  It's a strange kind of "independent" thinking--every man for himself.  Maybe it worked in the wild West, but I don't think it's helping us in the global picture.


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## heretic888 (Apr 7, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> First off, you mean, "pantheism."



Actually, no I don't. 

"Pantheism" and "panentheism" are two completely different --- albeit superficially similar --- philosophies. "Pantheism" essentially equates the Divine with the physical cosmos in a reductionistic sense. Basically, God = The Sum of All Things. "Panentheism", on the other hand, maintains the Divine is prior to, but not other than, the physical corsmos. Basically, the paradoxical belief that all things are in God, yet God is also in all things.

It should be mentioned that _most_ of the great wisdom traditions (Valentinian Gnosticism, Hindu Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Ismaeli Sufism, traditional Taoism, Neo-Platonism, mystical Christianity, Jewish Kabbalah, etc) all maintain the position of "panentheism".



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Second off, it is grossly inaccurate to claim that archetypes are mere forms--"eidolons," someone like Emerson might say--emptied of specific content. In Plato, archetypes are containers of elements of the Real; in Jung, they stand for the specific contents of the deep human unconscious, an unconscious shared by the entire human race [....]



Sorry, Rob. 'Fraid not.

In both the Platonic and Neo-Platonic systems, the involutionary Forms are the archetypal patterns or models upon which the specific and particular manifestations of matter are dependent upon. They themselves are utterly transcendent of worldy particulars. For example, the Form of, say, Light is not a great big green light or red light or yellow light or transluscent light or any other light or color with which we could try and associate it with. It is "emptied", so to speak, of manifested particulars.

Regarding Jung, pretty much the same thing --- albeit his archetypes are evolutionary forms and not involutionary Forms. He (as well as his later followers like Neumann) distinguish between archetypal energies and archetypal manifestations. The Virgin Mary is a _manifestation_ of the Mother archetype that arose in Western Christian society. However, Mary is not the Mother in and of itself --- just one of its many potential particularizations. In ancient Egypt, for example, the Mother is Isis. However, yet again, Isis cannot be reduced to the Mother archetype itself as the particular form it takes varies from culture to culture. In and of itself, it is little more than a 'pattern' or a 'groove' or a 'conduit'. Nothing more.

To claim otherwise demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of both Plato and Jung (who, by the way, are really talking about completely different things anyway).



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Third off--my point was that you are collapsing historical differences and historical developments into nothing, and arguing for some underlying pattern or structure in human existence that does not change.



Wrong again, Rob. Never said a thing about an underlying pattern that, as you put it, "does not change".

Now following in the research of Jurgen Habermas, Jean Gebser, and Clare Graves --- among others --- I _do_ think there is some pattern or direction which human beings have, thus far, historically developed along. I _do not_ think this pattern is necessarily "fixed", however, nor do I believe that it is the only possible direction we can take. Its just how we have developed so far.

In much the same way, there is an overarching pattern of psychological structures as well --- investigated by people ranging from James Mark Baldwin to Jean Piaget to James Fowler to Lawrence Kohlberg to Howard Gardner. Which, again, does not mean these structures are "predetermined" or "fixed", but that that's what we have developed through so far in our evolution.

Ontogeny, after all, recapitulates phylogeny. Or, is that the other way around??



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> I'm afraid that instead, I actually take history seriously--and terms like, "liberal," and, "conservative," meant absolutely nothing in, say, Imperial Rome, where they had neither those words nor the concepts they represent.



Quite right, in that "liberalism" did not truly emerge on a collective scale until the late 1600's or so --- centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. 

Of course, yet again, "liberalism" is a philosophy. It is not an archetype (whether Platonic or Jungian). It may be underlined by various psychological and sociocultural structures that you could chose to term 'archetypal' (such as, say, Piaget's formal-operational cognition). But, in and of itself, it is nothing more than a political philosophy that developed in accompaniment with a series of cultural and socioeconomic changes.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> The terms only mean something in the cultural mileau in which they actually existed [...]



Quite right, again. Since you are arguing for the _terms_ themselves, then this is a matter of language and linguistics --- which exist within particular sociocultural and historical contexts. 



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Of course, one is perfectly entitled to make such a claim: Jung did, and in a different way Hegel did. But it is not a claim that rests on material proof of any sort.



Sure --- if you've never read Habermas, Gebser, or Graves anyway.

Laterz.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 7, 2005)

Hurl names as you like--it won't change the collapse of historical difference inherent in taking a theological concept such as, "archetypes," seriously.

Nor do they evolve in Jung.


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## heretic888 (Apr 7, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Hurl names as you like--it won't change the collapse of historical difference inherent in taking a theological concept such as, "archetypes," seriously.



In other words...

Logical Fallacy: Composition
Logical Fallacy: False Dilemma
Logical Fallacy: Genetic Fallacy
Logical Fallacy: Guilt By Association

Just so we're clear.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Nor do they evolve in Jung.



Jungian "archetypes" are unconscious patterns resulting from millenia upon millenia of shared human experiences. They evolve and change as humans and their environments evolve and change.

At least that's how Jung and his followers explain it.

Laterz.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 7, 2005)

No, they don't. Clearly, you do not know the material. Please see the following website from a Jungian analyst, noting carefully the citations from Jung's works.

http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/archetypes.html

Most likely, what is getting in your way is this:

http://www.newworldview.com/library/Helfrich_P_The_Five_Phases_of_Wilber.html

And here, taken from the "Books and Writers," website, is where this sort of historical reductionism leads:

In 1933 Jung was nominated president of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy, an organization which had Nazi connections. He also assumed the editorship of its publication, Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie. Jung's activities with the organization and his writings about racial differences in the magazine have later been severely criticized. However, Jung had already in 1918 explained his differences with other schools of psychotherapeutic practice with racial terms: "...I can understand very well that Freud's and Adler's reduction of everything psychic to primitive sexual wishes and power-drives has something about it that is beneficial and satisfying to the Jew, because it is a form of simplification." He also saw in National Socialism "tensions and potentialities which medical psychology must consider in its evaluation of the unconscious." From mythology Jung took the figure of Wotan, an old Nordic god, "the truest expression and unsurpassed personification of a fundamental quality that is particularly characteristic of the Germans." In 1937 Jung said of Hitler less than critically: "He is a medium, German policy is not made; it is revealed through Hitler. He is the mouthpiece of the Gods of old... He is the Sybil, the Delphic oracle" (see Jung in Contexts, ed. by Paul Bishop, 1999) One of Jung's pupils, Sabina Spielrein, who was his patient first, and later mistress according to some sources, practised psychoanalysis in the USSR after completing her studies. She was killed with her two daughters by German soldiers in 1942.


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## heretic888 (Apr 7, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> No, they don't. Clearly, you do not know the material. Please see the following website from a Jungian analyst, noting carefully the citations from Jung's works.
> 
> http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/archetypes.html



I failed to see a single reference on said webpage as to the "archetypes" being fixed or unchangeable. References to them being pre-existent (meaning, not created by the individual psyche) and universal (meaning, they exist cross-culturally), sure. But, none of that precludes (or excludes even) the idea of evolution.

Just so you know --- and while Jung's description tends to vary somewhat from work to work --- Jung believed the archetypes (most of them, anyway) originated from millenia of shared experiences among the human species. They developed, in his view, over a long period of time due to repeated species-typical behaviors and experiences. Its also no secret he believed them to be biologically based (as did Campbell).

Oh, and may I add...

Kettle. Pot. Black.  :ultracool


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 7, 2005)

Please read the revised post, and please note that the already cited material emphasized that archeytpes do not evolve: their outward manifestations change, but this is epiphenomenal. For example, the first website insists that in Jung's thought, archetypes exist before people do, and that they do not change over time or across culture.

The archetypal case of archetypes is, of course, Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces---" an excellent title, inasmuch as it beautifully conveys the central Jungian concept that while archetypes may be dressed in a thousand masks, it is always the same essence being expressed in different guises.

You're welcome to buy the theological approach if you like--but it is ahistorical, inasmuch as any particular expression of a category such as, "the hero," is always linked back to underlying realities that do not change nor evolve in any fashion. The approach is also acultural, because it insists that the "differences," of cultures are in fact trivial if not wholly illusionary, with the underlying essences again being the Real.

You see it differently than I do. That's fine, of course; the only thing that isn't fine is the attempt to make the words and the concepts not mean what they mean.


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## Flatlander (Apr 7, 2005)

Would either one of you care to relate this back to the topic for the viewers at home?


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 7, 2005)

Well, here's how we got onto it. He thinks that "liberal," and "conservative," represent two ongoing, opposite tendencies in human politics--that they're inherent in the human condition, and they always have been. I think that this completely erases historical change, the evolution of politics over time, and the way that these two ideas appeared in the English 19th century and have developed since. 

In effect, he's arguing that there are two kinds of politics, and they started long ago--and in fact, even these two types are simply expressions of deeper, "archetypal," realities about human beings.

I ain't buyin' it. I think that history matters, and that human beings make their history--they don't simply express their "instinct," or their, "nature," or, "God's Plan," or whatever.


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## heretic888 (Apr 7, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Please read the revised post, and please note that the already cited material emphasized that archeytpes do not evolve: their outward manifestations change, but this is epiphenomenal. For example, the first website insists that in Jung's thought, archetypes exist before people do, and that they do not change over time or across culture.



Actually, no. From a source more reliable than a short article by some random Jungian :

_Jung often seemed to view the archetypes as sort of psychological organs, directly analogous to our physical, bodily organs: both being morphological givens for the species; both arising at least partially through evolutionary processes._ 

It should be noted that Joseph Campbell gives an almost identical understanding of the archetypes, describing them as "elementary forces" arising from the interaction of "the body's various organ systems".

Also, since you brought it up, the following gives a somewhat more balanced and accurate view of Jung as a "Nazi sympathizer".



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> The archetypal case of archetypes is, of course, Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces---" an excellent title, inasmuch as it beautifully conveys the central Jungian concept that while archetypes may be dressed in a thousand masks, it is always the same essence being expressed in different guises.



Pretty much, yeah. Campbell, like Jung, also distinguishes between the archetypes themselves and their actual manifestations.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> You're welcome to buy the theological approach if you like--but it is ahistorical, inasmuch as any particular expression of a category such as, "the hero," is always linked back to underlying realities that do not change nor evolve in any fashion.



Two points here.

First off, this approach is not "theological". Jung's approach to these phenomena are from a distinctively psycho-analytic methodology. His idea of the "archetypes" are no less grounded than Freud's ideas of the "unconscious", "ego", "id", and "superego" --- being based, namely, on an analysis of the collective first-person reports of hundreds of respective patients. In fact, unlike Freud, Jung's ideas have not been out-and-out rejected within modern psycholoy, either.

Secondly, as I pointed out above, the idea that the Jungian "archetypes" do not change or evolve whatsoever is simply not true.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> The approach is also acultural, because it insists that the "differences," of cultures are in fact trivial if not wholly illusionary, with the underlying essences again being the Real.



Actually, if you're going from the Jungian perspective, _most_ of the "underlying essences" (i.e., the archetypes) are biological and inherited. To a point, anyway.

In any event, pointing out the universals and commonalities across cultures does not in any way deny their differences, either. Of course, this is a common argument from many pluralistic approaches of various kinds, but its still baseless. This would be like arguing that pointing out all humans have the same organs, bones, and brain structures somehow negates the physiological differences across cultures.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> You see it differently than I do. That's fine, of course; the only thing that isn't fine is the attempt to make the words and the concepts not mean what they mean.



Likewise.


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## heretic888 (Apr 7, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> He thinks that "liberal," and "conservative," represent two ongoing, opposite tendencies in human politics--that they're inherent in the human condition, and they always have been.



Heh, funny. 

I _could'a sworn_ that what _I actually said_ --- repeatedly, I might add --- is that "consevatism" is a philosophical orientation that developed during the rise of the complex city-state (roughly 5,000 years ago) and that "liberalism" is a philosophical orientation that developed during the rise of democracy and the corporate state (roughly 300 years ago). 

Last time I checked, 300 years ago and 5,000 years ago aren't "always have been".



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> In effect, he's arguing that there are two kinds of politics, and they started long ago--and in fact, even these two types are simply expressions of deeper, "archetypal," realities about human beings.



Nope, sorry. Not once did I connect "conservatism" _or_ "liberalism" with any "archetypal realities" (whether Platonic or Jungian).

What I _did_ connect them with was, perhaps, with inherited psychological structures best explored by the likes of Jean Piaget (such as, say, formal-operational cognition resembling capacities that would ultimately see a collective "liberalist" philosophy). But, I wouldn't consider the Piagetian cognitive levels to be "archetypes". Not in the strict sense, anyway.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> I ain't buyin' it. I think that history matters, and that human beings make their history--they don't simply express their "instinct," or their, "nature," or, "God's Plan," or whatever.



Hey, whaddayah know?? Me, too!!  :ultracool


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 7, 2005)

Oh, fer cryin' out loud. The people I've cited--Joseph Campbell, Erich Neumann, JUNG HIMSELF, and a Jungian psychotherapist--are hardly random. 

Please also look at the piece you just cited first. It tells you, among other things--right off the bat, first thing--that Jung took much of his idea of archetypes from Kant's notion of an ," a priori--" of, that is, a category that exists prior to all perception, experience, and conceptualization. 

As for my being unfair on the Nazi thang, well, here's an excerpt from what you yourself just cited. I've capitalized and commented upon a few of the juicy bits.

Nazi Sympathizer
Like many others, JUNG initially WELCOMED the FOCUS OF UNITY {well, that's certainly one way to describe Hitler's asuming the dictatorship after the '33 election and the Reichstag fire} that swept across the German land as the National-Socialist "revolution" took hold (Stern, 1976). {Freud got the hell out of there in '33, since he understood exactly what was up.} Though as time went on and Jung grew increasingly cautious in his views, accusations of being a, "NAZI SYMPATHIZER," emerged; accusations WHICH, in some respects, SEEMS JUSTIFIED {this is from a guy who's ON Jung's side, too} as we will see. 

In 1928, Carl Gustav Jung became a member of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (Gallard, 1994). This society, which began two years earlier, was founded on the desire to develop a psychotherapeutic science with a spiritual, rather than widely popular material, emphasis. In the same year that Jung joined the society, so too did Matthias Heinrich Goring, the cousin of the now infamous Marshall, Herman Goring. {Uh...when I join a society and I find out that a very well-known Nazi has joined...basically, I quit or he quits.} Jung was elected vice president in 1930 and was asked to assume the presidency in 1933 due to the deteriorating political climate. {Well, "deteriorating," would surely be one way to put it.} It was believed that Jung, being a Swiss National and thus neutral, would be in a better political position to handle the role (Gallard, 1994). 

Later that year, there was a reorganization of Zentralblatt fur Psychotherapie, the society's publication journal. The decision was made that two separate but aligned editions of the journal would be published: an international edition edited by Jung, and a German edition under the control of Goring for the purpose of ensuring that all material conformed to Nazi ideology (Sherry, 1986). {Hey, no problem there! Nothing to raise a warning flag at all...}It was soon after recommended by Goring that every practicing psychotherapist adopt Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf as a basic reference. (Of course, Jung immediately protested this...oh wait, no he didn't.} This written appeal was slated for publication in the German edition of the journal but somehow ended up in the international journal above Carl Jung's signature (Gallard, 1994; Sherry, 1986). {Somehow, eh. Of course Jung immediately protested...wait, no he didn't.} Though the society's headquarters were located in Switzerland and he was certainly far removed from this "Nazi deception," it was a commonly held belief that Jung accepted the presidency of a Nazified German organization; thus he must be a sympathizer. (But Jung immediately protested...wait, no he didn't.}

His decision to accept such a position was heavily criticized by many. Perhaps the fact that Jung fantasized of national glory, {Hm. Who was it in Germany, fantasizing at the time of "national," glory? Was it....HITLER?} was purportedly not immune to the lure of power, and felt neglected and misunderstood, played a role in his acceptance of the presidency for a society in which some members were almost certainly familiar with Mein Kampf and Nazi ideology (Stern, 1976). Jung, however, offered the excuse that he simply followed the wishes of his German (and Jewish) colleagues; his true aim was to save psychotherapy which could easily disappear, as he had put it, with a single stroke of the pen by higher authorities (Gallard, 1994). {"his true aim," brilliant} He did initially doubt his decision from a moral standpoint but the desire to preserve the interests of science made the risky effort worthwhile (Gallard, 1994). In the end, Jung's professional reputation was certainly affected by these events, though he seemed to have a blind spot to these ramifications. {a blind spot} However, this blind spot, some have suggested, also allowed Jung to see and clarify elements which went previously undetected, out of which his fascination with events in Germany grew. {hm...'nother blind spot}

Jung's Fascination 
Part of Jung's fascination with the Nazi movement was due to his belief that his archetype theory was best able to explain the "rumblings" of pre-World War Two Germany. He saw the Nazi movement as an enormous eruption of the collective unconscious he had previously postulated as far back as 1918 (Stern, 1976). {In other words, a historical event is merely the expression of an underlying, essential reality present long before the event.} Jung believed the archetype "Wotan," which represented the German state of mind in the 1930's, was the return of the collective repressed, and constituted a great event in light of the belief that the Germans were experiencing a reintegration of archaic elements into their psyche (elements that had been, over past centuries, suppressed by various cultural movements). { Ah....Nazism...just the return of long-repressed national archetypes. Repressed, no doubt, by ze jews.}

By 1936, Jung's excitement waned as he recognized (and clearly stated) the demonic aspect of Hitler and the Nazi movement (Gallard, 1994). However, according to his theories, there is an inherent duality of the archetype, leading Jung to the expectation that the evil side would turn into its opposite, allowing these forces to humanize. {Vell, you zee, I don't deny zat Hitler has had his excesses...but in ze end, zis vill be ze triumph of ze Cherman Human.} Thus, Jung believed a new and positive cultural form would emerge and remained hopeful (Gallard, 1994). Such hopefulness was frowned upon by those opposed to the Nazis but, as we will later see, his medical profession may have accounted for his unpopular views. Despite these events there were other damaging accusations. His relationship with Freud, it has been suggested, represented a darker side to Jung's Jewish attitudes. {the phrase, "darker side to Jung's Jewish attitudes," is fall-down funny, or would be if we weren't talking about Jung's public positions and private beliefs in the Europe of the late 1930s}

Jung and Freud
The anti-Semitism charges in the 1930's were dismissed as having been started by a vengeful Sigmund Freud in order to discredit Jung's work (Sherry, 1986). These accusations, however, were continually repeated by Freudians and stuck with Jung wherever he went. {Ah yes...thoise wacky Freudians, upset just because Jung supported a Naxi-run psychiatric society, with which he never broke, which he never criticized in any way I am aware of} It is true that a superficial glance of Jung's attitude concerning Freudian psychology seems frighteningly similar to Nazi phraseology. {this is from a SUPPORTER of Jung?} Jung referred to the Freudian school of thought as subversive, depreciatory, undermining, obscene, and smutty-minded, while the Nazis described Jews as alien, subversive, lascivious, and parasitic (Stern, 1976). {Anybody who doesn't find the spectacle of a world-renowned psychologist and writer referring to Freud's work this way in the context of the Nazis and 1936...looks bad at second glance, too} His statements may have sounded anti-Semitic but Stern (1976) proposes they were more correctly attributable to the resentment that periodically overcame him; he may have overshot his initial target, which was undoubtedly Sigmund Freud (Stern, 1976). (Oh. Not Nazi at all...just pathological resentment, which resulted in public attacks centered on being Jewish against possibly the most famous Jewish intellectual in the world at the time Hitler rose to power and WWII began} These anti-Semitic accusations by Freudians, Jung warned, were a confirmation that psychoanalysis was a Jewish psychology (Sherry, 1986). {Ach!! Ze Jewish mind-science!!}

I'm not sure about tying this to liberal and conservatives and their ideologies--except that I will note that when either side relies on similar religious notions (people are naturally evil....no, people are naturally good), or socio-economic theories (competition is natural, part of God's Plan--no, cooperation is natural, part of God's Plan), they are repeating Jung's essentialist fantasies. 

it's why I ain't one of them.


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## heretic888 (Apr 7, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Oh, fer cryin' out loud. The people I've cited--Joseph Campbell, Erich Neumann, JUNG HIMSELF, and a Jungian psychotherapist--are hardly random.



Nope, but that comment was directed at the author of the article in question --- not the sources he selectively chose. 



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Please also look at the piece you just cited first. It tells you, among other things--right off the bat, first thing--that Jung took much of his idea of archetypes from Kant's notion of an ," a priori" [...]



But, y'see, here's the great thing about my position --- I can have it both ways. I am essentially positing a "both/and" position: namely, that Jung's "archetypes" were _both_ biologically-inherited structures _and_ aspects of the psyche that predate personal experience. It doesn't detract from my statements in the slightest that Jung was influenced by Kant, since I know he also saw the "archetypes" to be, at least in part, a result of biological inheritance.

You, on the other hand, are positing an "either/or" position: you have to somehow make it out that Jung only saw the archetypes as _a priori_ structures independent of biology or evolution. This, very plainly, is a false claim.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> [...] of, that is, a category that exists prior to all perception, experience, and conceptualization.



I know what _a priori_ are, Robert. In case you haven't noticed, I tend to use the term a lot in the discussions around here.   



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> As for my being unfair on the Nazi thang, well, here's an excerpt from what you yourself just cited.



Okay. So, you can selectively cut-and-paste the parts of the article that benefit you best. This disproves you being unfair _*how???*_



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> I'm not sure about tying this to liberal and conservatives and their ideologies--except that I will note that when either side relies on similar religious notions (people are naturally evil....no, people are naturally good), or socio-economic theories (competition is natural, part of God's Plan--no, cooperation is natural, part of God's Plan), they are repeating Jung's essentialist fantasies.
> 
> it's why I ain't one of them.



Sure yah are. You just give them different names.

Laterz.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 7, 2005)

If you claim that archetypes are biologically inherited, or present as a priori categories that existed before civilization and beyond culture--if you say they're there and human beings cannot change them in any way, if you claim that they're fundamental to our identity whatever we do, if you argue that psychic health is simply a matter of coming to terms with these essentials, then this is a denial that history matters.  Material reality is itself a mere peripheral manifestation of what is essentially real beneath such appearances.

Nor is this in any fashion scientifically provable, nor is it observable, since anything and everything material is simply a "mask," over essential, unobservable reality. That's why it's a theological concept rather than a historical or scientific one: no experiment and no observation can produce the archetype.

Among the disasters of such thinking is the strong tendency to segregate racial and national groups along the lines of the different archetypes they articulate--and to cheerfully overlook little things like Nazi death-camps on the grounds that they are mere transient manifestations of deeper truths. 

But don't take my word for it!

See:

http://www.stormfront.org/archive/t-99972

And see the discussion forum on:

www.cgjungpage.org


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## heretic888 (Apr 11, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> If you claim that archetypes are biologically inherited, or present as a priori categories that existed before civilization and beyond culture--if you say they're there and human beings cannot change them in any way, if you claim that they're fundamental to our identity whatever we do, if you argue that psychic health is simply a matter of coming to terms with these essentials, then this is a denial that history matters.  Material reality is itself a mere peripheral manifestation of what is essentially real beneath such appearances.



Maybe its just me, but I absolutely fail to see the logic behind this line of reasoning.

This would be like arguing that because all humans have the same number of organs and bones, that "this is a denial that history (or culture) matters". This would be like arguing that because all humans pass through Piaget's stages (sensorimotor, preop, conop, formop) in logico-mathematical development, that "this is a denial that history (or culture) matters". This would be like arguing that because all humans pass through Kohlberg's stages (precon, con, postcon) in moral reasoning, that "this is a denial that history (or culture) matters". This would be like arguing that because all humans pass through the same general sequential order in Gardner's multiple intelligences, that "this is a denial that history (or culture) matters". This would be like arguing that any number of the cross-cultural universals that we have come to acknowledge concerning the human condition --- such as, say, inborn instincts and species-typical behavior as a whole ---somehow "deny that history (or culture) matters".

This, of course, is sheer nonsense. 

There are a number of universal commonalities that human beings of any culture (or race) seem to share. This does not in any way deny the significance of historical context, cultural upbringing or physiological differences of various individuals. Rather, it puts all of the above in their proper perspective. _Not_ everything about the human condition is a culturally-relative "social construction". Some things are, and some things are not. To claim otherwise is to embrace cognitive incompetence.

For what its worth, the Jungian archetypes are really little more than concrete-operational _role personae_ --- the common roles that humans for millenia have found themselves assuming and/or projecting (whether it be Loving Father, Strong Leader, Nurturing Mother, or Accursed Enemy). They are clearly based upon our evolutionary history as a species, and are the result of thousands (perhaps millions) of years of shaired experiences and --- in all likelihood --- genetic imprinting of some kind. The actual personae that manifest, of course, are clearly dependent on both the individual's experiences and his/her cultural upbringing.

All of this is readily obvious in the writings of Jung. The only point I personally disagree with him on, is that these archetypes of his are in any way "spiritual" or "transcendent" in nature. They are not. Some of the archetypes can serve as _mental symbols_ for the transpersonal --- such as, say, the mandala. But, they are not, in and of themselves, "spiritual forms".

Also, if you're going from the point of view of Mahayana Buddhism, then "material reality" _is_ illusory.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Nor is this in any fashion scientifically provable, nor is it observable, since anything and everything material is simply a "mask," over essential, unobservable reality. That's why it's a theological concept rather than a historical or scientific one: no experiment and no observation can produce the archetype.



This may be a shock, but repeatedly asserting that a claim is "theological" or "unprovable" doesn't somehow make it true. Repetition does not confer factuality, I'm afraid.

As for the observability of the Jungian archetypes, you'd have to be a blind man --- or defending a worldview that feels the need to deny cross-cultural universals --- not to notice them. That there are scores of shared themes, motifs, images, and symbols across cultures is beyond question. That these cannot in all cases be attributed to direct cultural influence is beyond question (such as, say, the mandala symbolism happening with both the Tibetans and the Navajo Indians). That these symbols, motifs, and images commonly surface in the dreams of people all across the globe is beyond question. 

All of the above is readily observable. Jung was not the only theorist to put forward the idea of something like the "archetypes", nor was he the first. Anthropologists had suggested the concept for decades prior to Jung (such as the aforementioned "elementary ideas"). The only thing that really set Jung apart was he applied these universal themes and motifs to the realm of psychoanalysis --- a logical step, considering they appear universally in human dreams --- and that he incorrectly elevated them to some "spiritual" or "transcendent" status.

That, the Nurturing Mother appears across cultures in mythology, literature, and dreams is not some kooky pie-in-the-sky idea. Nor is it "unobservable". Nor is it "ahistorical" or "acultural". Its simple, basic, human reality.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Among the disasters of such thinking is the strong tendency to segregate racial and national groups along the lines of the different archetypes they articulate--and to cheerfully overlook little things like Nazi death-camps on the grounds that they are mere transient manifestations of deeper truths.



Sure. Absolutey. 

But, in no way does this make the ideas invalid in and of themselves. To claim otherwise would be like arguing that because cars can run people over, we should never drive one. Ever. It would be like claiming that because genetic engineering can be used to achieve a Nazi "super-race", that we shouldn't work to figure out the genetic code of the human race (and subsequently work to prevent many genetically-inherited maladies). Ever. It would be like arguing that because evolutionary theory can be used by the unscrupulous to formulate barbarities such as "Social Darwinism", that Darwin was clearly full of it.

A "what if" hypothetical that spells doom is surely something to look out for. But, alas, in no way is it grounds for dismissal.

Nice try, though. Laterz.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 12, 2005)

Jung's is an essentialist philosophy, resting on the notion that there are certain timeless, unchanging figures engraved into the very structure of the universe and manifesting themselves throughout the ages and across cultures in the deep structures of the human unconscious.

These archetypes of Jung's did not come from culture. They are not subject to human intervention. They do not change over time. They differ from race to race. They determine how people should be, because for Jung, mental health depended upon reconciling one's conscious life with their underlying, timeless, unchanging reality.

You can throw as many words at it as you like, cite Piaget (who incidentally, was actually interested in the way...oh, never mind), offer redundancies like, "role personae," (a "persona," is quite literally a, "mask," a false face one assumes; "role," simply repeats that concept), etc. I'm not gonna buy the notion that there are, "cross-cultural universals." 

It's a theological notion, because you cannot produce or test these universals. You must merely claim they exist, as Plato did. The concept has some ugly consequences for the ways Jung saw the world--all women are this, the German Race is that.

As for jingoism--essentially, and I do mean essentially, jingos such as Kipling really did see the British Race as having a particular, ordained Duty engraved into their national character. And for him--ambivalent as his writing was about it--it was also the destiny of colonial subjects to be ruled. It's very different from a liberal colonialism that you can find in a writer like Tennyson, whose "Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World," ("Locksley Hall," if memory serves, and it may not)--and still, the same idea that it is the unique destiny of white, Christian civilization to educate the dusky masses reappears.


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## heretic888 (Apr 12, 2005)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Jung's is an essentialist philosophy, resting on the notion that there are certain timeless, unchanging figures engraved into the very structure of the universe and manifesting themselves throughout the ages and across cultures in the deep structures of the human unconscious.



While there is a certain degree of truth to this assessment, it isn't entirely accurate.

The problem with Jung's basic theory --- as well as the theories of subsequent neo-Jungians --- is a tendency to collapse _pre_-rational consciousness structures (namely, the concrete-operational role personae of the concrete-literal, mythic-membership, role/rule mind) with actual _trans_-rational consciousness structures (namely, the Platonic Forms and subtle illuminations as expounded by various traditions of meditation, yoga, and contemplative prayer). This, in my opinion, is a grave confusion within the Jungian paradigm.

So, while on one hand, we'll hear Jungians speaking of the "archetypes" as timeless involutionary Platonic Forms as encountered in certain forms of deity mysticism --- at the next turn we'll hear them describe the "archetypes" as evolutionary structures that are explicitly rooted in humanity's shared biological history and have emerged fairly recently (say, within the past 20,000 years). Its a rather deep confusion, I feel, in that we are simultaneously hearing the "archetypes" described as _both_ timeless _and_ evolutionary. Not in any Zen or non-dualistic sense, mind you, but as logical contradictions within Jungian theory itself.

So, yes. The Jungian "archetypes" are unchanging and timeless. And, at the same time, they're not. Go figure.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> These archetypes of Jung's did not come from culture.



They are not particular or unique to any one culture, if that's what you mean.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> They are not subject to human intervention.



In a collective sense, no they're not. In an individual sense, yes they are. 

Within Jungian therapy, the archetypes can be manipulated to some degree by the individual. They can even be ignored altogether --- although, this isn't always the healthiest route to take.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> They do not change over time.



I already covered the quasi-evolutionary nature of the Jungian archetypes above. If we pragmatically tease apart the Jungian archetypes from the Platonic archetypes, then we can easily see the evolutionary nature of the Jungian model.

Jung's "collective unconscious", by the way, was explicitly taken from the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism --- which expounds what they describe as a "storehouse consciousness". It, too, changes and evolves with time as it is constantly "bombarded" with the shared experiences of every human being (as is the Jungian collective unconscious). 



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> They differ from race to race.



No. They do not. I'm sorry, Robert, but this is one point were you are, very simply, emphatically _wrong_. 

Previously on this thread, you suggested the archetypes within Jungian theory were only inherited by "the white race". This, unfortunately, is a bold denial of the number non-Western symbols and images that are used by Jung as archetypal manifestations --- the _mandala_ by far being the best example. Jung also used the Chinese _tai-chi_ (the infamous "yin-yang" symbol) as a manifestation of his circle archetype. 

You even cited an article in which Jung is quoted as linking the archetypal "Wotan" with the rise of the Nazi movement within Germany. Unfortunately for your assertion that the archetypes are racially-specific, Wotan is a _South American_ deity (Brazilian, if memory serves).



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> They determine how people should be, because for Jung, mental health depended upon reconciling one's conscious life with their underlying, timeless, unchanging reality.



Dunno about any of that, but general Jungian therapy differs very little from, say, scripting and similar methodologies. It centers primarily upon strengthening role/rule structures within the individual psyche, usually in response to a sense of chaos and lack of stability.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> You can throw as many words at it as you like, cite Piaget [...], offer redundancies like, "role personae," [...], etc.



The point I was trying to use in that particular context --- the point you have clearly failed to grasp in even the most basic sense --- is that your argument that the Jungian archetypes "denies" the importance of either history or culture is just ill-founded. You would, by logical extension, have to enlarge that argument to any of dozens upon dozens of cross-cultural scientific truths we have come across concerning human nature. Starting off with the Darwinian theory of evolution via natural selection.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> I'm not gonna buy the notion that there are, "cross-cultural universals."



"Buy" whatever you wish.

But, just know that your refusal flies in the face of the evidence and facts and common observations. Both Piaget and Kohlberg's developmental hierarchies have been demonstrated to be cross-cultural. Gilligan's femal developmental hierarchy has been demonstrated to be so, as well. Even James Fowler's "stages of faith" have been demonstrated across religious traditions (and individuals ranging from age 3 to age 81)

It is an exceedingly anti-scientific position to deny these "cross-cultural universals". But, you are free to do so at your own expense. 



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> It's a theological notion, because you cannot produce or test these universals.



Actually, yes I can, as I already demonstrated in my previous. Commonly reasserting something that flies in the face of cross-cultural observation doesn't somehow magically make the observations disappear. For the second time, repetition does not confer factuality.

So, to go over it again, we see "the Mother" across cultures --- in dreams, myths, artwork, and literature --- whether we're talking about the "Motherland", Mary the "Mother of God", the "Black Isis", Amaterasu Omikami, Hera, or any of the dozens of other manifestations. Deny it all you wish. Fundamentalists deny the paleontological record, but its still there. Same deal here. The presence of these images, motifs, and themes across cultures within a given time in human history is unmistakeable. 

But, oddly enough, people still deny it. Of course, as I previously stated, this is almost assuredly due to defending a worldview that literally cannot "process" the existence of these structures --- not from objectively reviewing the evidence.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> You must merely claim they exist, as Plato did.



Well, first off, the Jungian archetypes and the Platonic Forms are very different things --- the Shadow, Father, Mother, Old Man, Animus, and so on are _not_ Platonic Forms or subtle illuminations experienced in contemplative meditational practice.

Secondly, Plato _directly experienced_ the Forms he writes about. Jung acquired his archetypes through inferential assessment of the reports of others (as well as existing anthropological, mythological, and literary information).

Very, very different.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> The concept has some ugly consequences for the ways Jung saw the world--all women are this, the German Race is that.



Actually, Jung never proposed anything of the sort.

I'm afraid you are exhibiting another misunderstanding of Jungian theory --- y'know, you seem to have a lot of those --- that of collapsing the archetypal forms with actual living individuals. The Mother archetype may be largely projected as female figures, but there is nothing stopping the Mother manifesting as a man, or even as an institution. Jung commonly used "the Mother Church" as an example of this. Its the same with his anima and animus.

In any event, actual Jungian psychotherapeutic practice makes it pretty damn clear that how the archetypes play out is an exceedingly _individual_ thing. They are fashioned explicitly by the personal experiences of the individual _in combination with_ his or her cultural upbringing.

Besides, aren't you the guy always citing Sigmund Freud?? Y'know, Mr. "Penis Envy" & "Men Have Stronger Superegos Than Women"?? Neh??

Laterz.


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## rmcrobertson (Apr 12, 2005)

1. Most of what you wrote is a smokescreen. Unfortunately, a) in Jung's account, archetypes are directly linked to racist (and not incidentally) sexist notions about what men and women must be; b) you cannot provide proof that these archetypes exist; you can, at best, provide examples of material symbols which you can then claim--without proof--are manifestations of underlying archetypes; c) since the archetypes are by definition not material, they are not subject to scientific proof--and therefore, claiming that they are scientifically verified is absurd; d) Plato could not have had direct experience of archetypes, since his whole point was that--oh, what's the use. 

2. The issue isn't what I think. It's what Jung believed. You may find joining a Nazified psychiatric society (as a partner with what was it? Goering's brother?) and describing psychoanalysis as, "Jewish science," in the 1930s perfectly acceptable. A beautiful example of rationalization of madness. But I find it revolting.

3. The difference is that Freud--and in a lesser way, me--looked for explanations in language, in history, in culture, in the arts, in fantasy, in primitive thinking, in childhood, in the family--not in some claim of trans-material reality that cannot be made available to empirical test. In other words, some of us look for explanations in the material world. We certainly don't overlook symbology of different cultures--we just don't try to "explain," them with mysticisms.

4. I see that you did not take up the issue of jingoism. I wouldn't either, if I were wedded to a philosophy that justifies it.


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## heretic888 (Apr 20, 2005)

Hrmmm..... perhaps I should clarify a few points here:

1) First off, I'm not a Jungian. Or, even a neo-Jungian. Haven't been for, oh say, almost five years or thereabouts (my later high school days) --- and, even then, most of that was from the writings of Joseph Campbell, not Carl Jung. 

2) If anything, I'd consider myself something of an ecletic that integrates numerous aspects of neo-Freudian (mostly Erikson and _some_ Jung), neo-Piagetian (while acknowledging the general utility of Piaget, I also acknowledge the existence of postformal cognition, view development as domain-specific, and don't hold to the view that cognitive levels are rigidly wedded to particular ages), and Kohlbergian theories with Gardner's MI approach. Among other things (I also rely, for example, greatly on Mahayana Buddhism for my views, especially Madhyamika, Zen, and Vajrayana).

3) As such, in no way am I "wedded" to either Jungian philosophy nor to any philosophy that supports "jingoism". I personally don't think the United Nations should be disbanded.

4) In addition to the Nazi "connections" you have mentioned previously, Carl Jung also admitted numerous Jewish psychiatrists into said German organization, vilified Hitler as a "monster" and Nazi Germany as "the blonde beast", rescued a number of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, personally financed and supported them, and even had a number of Jews as his assisstants and students. Among other things. 

See: http://www.cgjungpage.org/talk/archive/index.php/t-54.html

5) Jung is best known in mainstream psychology textbooks for his writings on psychological androgyny (the view that the masculine and feminine qualities in both men and women should be integrated), leading ultimately to what he called 'individuation'. His 'anima' and 'animus' archetypes were gender qualities that he believed were present in _both_ men _and_ women --- which was how you could actually go about achieving androgyny in the first place.

6) Regardless of any accusations of 'racist' or 'sexist' bias, it should be pointed out that _ad hominems_ do not make for good public discourse.

7) Sorry to point out, but science and positivism ain't the same thing. You are perfectly free to cling to a reductionistic materalist philosophy is you so choose, but its not how things are done in most scientific disciplines.

8) Going along with this point, the vast majority of scientific laws, truths, and theories we acknowledge have very little, if any, "material" evidence for them. Almost all of physics rests on mathematical abstractions that only exist in "our heads" (which, of course, doesn't make them any less real). Psychology and anthropology rest almost exclusively on non-material phenomena (there is no material evidence, for example, of Piagetian cognitive structures, the Freudian unconscious, Kohlbergian stages of moral reasoning, or just plain ol' cultural values systems). Even evolutionary theory has no direct material evidence (as opposed to being a logical inference based on indirect material evidence).

9) The claim you made concerning the archetypes --- "you cannot provide proof that these archetypes exist; you can, at best, provide examples of material symbols which you can then claim--without proof--are manifestations of underlying archetypes" --- could equally be said of Darwin's theory of evolution. In fact, it highly resembles more than a few creationist critiques of evolution that I have heard. Like Jung's archetypes, evolutionary theory is a logical inference drawn from existing material evidence. There is no "direct evidence" for either (nor can there be).

10) That these symbols and images that Jung termed "archetypes" occur cross-culturally in regions that had no contact with one another is beyond dispute. Well, I guess you could dispute it, but this would be the intellectual equivalent of sticking one's head into the ground. Personally, though, I thought Campbell gave a much better defense of the archetypes than Jung --- oweing to Campbell's exhaustive knowledge of world mythology.

11) Actually, the difference between Freud and, say, Jung is that Freud based his theories on an almost exclusive sampling of young, white, Viannese women that just so happened to be daughters of his personal friends. That he rationalized the obvious truth that his friends were abusive fathers into "penis envy" on the part of their daughters is well-established at this point. That, and the man was a cocaine addict.

12) Continuing on the point of Freud, virtually all of the particulars of his system have been rejected by mainstream psychology (although the general "mood" and "themes" have been retained, such as the importance of biology and family on development). Other psychoanalysts, especially Erikson, have had much better luck during the process of peer review. Even Jung has fared better.

Again, nice try. Laterz.


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## Tgace (Apr 20, 2005)

Boy..talk about thread hi-jack...


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## shesulsa (Apr 20, 2005)

_*Mod. Note. 
  Please, return to the original topic.
  -Georgia Ketchmark
  -SR Moderator-*_


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