Please forgive, but the
following skit is impossible for me to ignore:
==========================================
A little monkey watches TV,
and runs to his mother:
“Please, mamma, we have to
help that poor man. He is straining so hard, and his face keeps puffing up, and
he says he has a HYUGE movement coming
on... he is straining and puffing so hard it looks like he will explode. We
really need to help him with his big movement. Let’s give him some dulcolax
right now.”
Mother:”Well dear, did you
hear the name of that man.”
“Ah... yes... yes... I did..
it is Drumpfkopf.”
Mother: “Hmm. That DOES sound
serious. So serious you need to talk to your Father.”
“Dad...”
“Yes, I hear you. But you
know we are not supposed to butt into people’s problems like that. If I just
solved everyone’s problems the easy way, they would never learn anything, and
what’s the point of that? He really has to learn to include more fiber in his
diet, and get more omega 3.”
“But Dad, what will he learn
if he puffs up so much that he explodes, and ends up dead in the hospital? And
what about all the other people?”
“OK, son, that’s a valid
point. I will think about it, and let you know in a day or two. Will he get
what he asks for, and suffer, or will we be gentle for once?”
Later: “Mom, if Hilary gets elected
does SHE have enough dulcolax for all that stuff?”
Mother: “Well, if she has a
lot of dulcolax, there is a whole lot of stuff out there, and the whole earth
could end up like
that bathroom you saw in the
Gobi desert near where your old cudgel is on display...”
“THAT place? I don’t want the
whole earth to become like THAT place...”
===============================
======================
The skit is simple, but the
analysis is not. Which to start with, Jungian or Freudian or cybernetic?
This time, Jungian is fits
best. Jung claims that the “collective unconscious” includes powerful mental
entities or objects which he calls “archetypes.” My more modern, cybernetic
view agrees with that – more precisely, it agrees that there is a kind of real
collective intelligence here on earth (a major part of the “noosphere,” maybe
all of it, depending on how you define words), and that the entities which Jung
talks about correspond to certain types of cells or local circuits in that “global
brain.” Real thoughts, as real as thoughts can be.
Jung has a short list of
specific archetypes which, he says, have emerged as especially important in a
practical sense in real human life. Humans learn many behaviors, like being
careful when crossing a street full of cars, which were not hardwired into our
brains, but which tend to be very pervasive in practical life. I view Jung’s “most
important archetypes” as that kind of thing, practical emergent phenomena
important in everyday life, but not part of the laws of the universe, not
unique and not cast in stone.
On his short list of
important archetypes is “the trickster,” often manifested as Loki, the monkey
god or Hermes; each of these is a kind of archetypes (or set of archetypes) in
itself, but they merge into each other as well.
The skit above is ironic,
since from a Jungian point of view Trump has been working as a kind of avatar
of Loki lately, speaking unspeakable jokes (yes, like the skit above),
violating social conventions, questioning established order and so on. What
should sane and rational people do about that archetype?
One important group, the
scientologists, wants to get rid of all “loaded engrams” in the human mind, and
that would include the archetypes, or at least the wild Dyonisian archetypes
like the trickster(s). (Friedrich Nietzsche has a book talking about Apollonian
styles versus Dionysian styles, and I had no hesitation long ago when I read it
in identifying in a patriotic way with the Apollonian style.) From a Freudian
viewpoint, these folks are basically saying we should get rid of the “id” and
rely 100% on the ego only. But Freud, Jung and our modern viewpoint would all
agree that this is an irrational extreme, as bad as the fetishists in ancient
China who would tie up girls’ feet in string to prevent natural growth and
thereby weaken the organism. The id (the associative memory or syncretic part
of the mind/brain) and the ego (the global understanding) naturally support
each other, like theory and experiment in natural science. If humans follow an
ideology which gives total control to EITHER side of this duality, totally
repressing the other, they meet the definition of “nonsanity” discussed in my
paper at www.werbos.com/Mind_in_Time.pdf.
The same is true if they give total control EITHER to the part of the brain
which performs symbolic reasoning, or to the nonverbal intelligence; in a sane
person, the two are well integrated and mutually supportive.
And so... “Sane folks don’t
serve the monkey God or Loki, but they don’t try to exclude them from the inner
dialogue which we are all naturally part of.”
So we don’t go as crazy as Trump,
letting a kind of Loki type sense of humor crush the spirit of truth, but we DO
listen and listen seriously. We maintain
a strong sense of humor, which we really need, but we don’t let it get out of
hand.
======================
One more curious thought from
the void: Is it Trump’s karma that he should work hard to serve a boss, who
then turns around and doesn’t pay him? Does his karma demand that? A few days
ago he said the world: “Let’s cancel the election. Just make me president
without that pesky voting stuff.” Did he just make a deal? he certainly HAS
made deals with a certain type of person, that’s clear. So to really learn his
lesson, should he be elected and then discover that he isn’t president after
all, that he was only hired to do a reality TV show while corruption in
Washington gets elevated to a new high and the US is weakened much more than it
has been in the last few unpleasant years? Well, the skit echoes that more
serious kind of issue.
If he were a REAL trickster,
would he find a way to withdraw in favor of Kelly Conway? There are many reasons
why not, but it would be an interesting joke.
Let us hope we all find
better ways to learn the many lessons we all have yet to learn.
==========
One trivial note: I did not even know what dulcolax was until my prostate cancer surgery last April. What an intense literature review THAT required, with lots of empirical testing...
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