Friday 27 January 2023

Jung At Heart.

The Clinical Magus: Of particular relevance to New Zealanders struggling to come to terms with the sudden departure of their prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is Jung’s concept of the anima. Much more than what others have called “the feminine principle”, the anima is what the human male has made out of women. All women. From mothers and grandmothers, to sisters and cousins. From female friends and colleagues, to wives and lovers. From Nobel Prize-winners to porn stars. Sirens to soulmates. Jung’s anima is the distillation of every human female in which the human male invests his emotions.

CARL JUNG (1875-1961) was a magician masquerading as a psychoanalyst. His psychological theories were conjured out of myths and symbols, and he transmuted the human individual’s fraught journey from birth to death into the hero’s sacred quest for wholeness.

It’s easy to laugh at this little Swiss doctor now, but he developed his theories in a world that did, indeed, seem to have fallen under an evil spell. In the same Viennese streets where he and Sigmund Freud walked, sharing excitedly their ideas about the unconscious elements of the human personality, there also wandered the young Adolf Hitler.

This terrifying embodiment of Europe’s worst psychoses and obsessions (what Jung would later call “the shadow”) seems, in retrospect, to confirm Jung’s key insight that all of us inhabit curiously familiar stories, peopled by characters we have never met, but whom we recognise instantly. Humanity itself, Jung argued, possesses its own unconscious, within which move the archetypes we have collectively fashioned to confer order upon chaos – the characters we once called gods.

Of particular relevance to New Zealanders struggling to come to terms with the sudden departure of their prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is Jung’s concept of the anima. Much more than what others have called “the feminine principle”, the anima is what the human male has made out of women. All women. From mothers and grandmothers, to sisters and cousins. From female friends and colleagues, to wives and lovers. From Nobel Prize-winners to porn stars. Sirens to soulmates. Jung’s anima is the distillation of every human female in which the human male invests his emotions.

Think about that for a moment. Scary, isn’t it? Because, obviously, not every female in which a male invests his emotions responds as anticipated or desired. The sum total of all these responses – good and bad – adds up to his anima, his unconscious formulation of what being female means.

What, then, does it say about New Zealand’s men and boys that so many of them were so eager to heap abuse upon New Zealand’s young female prime minister, Jacinda Ardern? Quite obviously, she presented a version of the feminine which in no way comported with the inner sheila of the average Kiwi bloke.

Viewed objectively, Jacinda Ardern was remarkably close to her own self-assessment: Kind, but strong. Empathetic, but decisive. Optimistic, but focused.

Since the archetypal leader is often represented as a kingly figure, Jacinda’s leadership says a great deal about the strength of her own animus – the human female’s unconscious formulation of what it means to be male. Her experience of maleness has clearly been sufficiently positive to produce a harmonious personal blending of both the masculine and the feminine. On the one hand, strong, decisive and focused. On the other, kind, empathetic and optimistic.

Such rare psychological harmony should evoke both confidence and admiration – and among most New Zealanders those were indeed the feelings Jacinda inspired. But, for a minority of New Zealanders the woman they listened to on the radio, watched on television, and read about in newspapers and magazines proved to be seriously psychologically jarring.

Called upon to respond to a woman in the top job, many New Zealand males betrayed a stunted and impoverished anima. Their unconscious formulation of the feminine left them utterly incapable of recognising anything at all positive in their country’s leader.

Jung might have surmised that their anima was the product of acutely damaging experiences of emotional and possibly physical abuse meted out by the females who dominated their early lives. Certainly, the psychological concept of projection would explain why so many New Zealand men were eager to describe their prime minister as something monstrous and evil. As a woman in charge she could not, in their unconscious minds, be anything else. Females with power were terrifying, and what human-beings fear, they hate.

Jacinda Ardern’s critics were not exclusively male, however, many New Zealand women joined in the abuse of the Prime Minister and her family. Observing a woman with power over them and their families, their reactions betrayed the impact of terrible experiences not dissimilar to those of abused males. They, too, projected outward the feelings they were too terrified to acknowledge in themselves.

And so the story ended as all Jung’s stories end, with the hero learning and leaving. We are saddened – but not surprised.


This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 January 2023.

33 comments:

CXH said...

It surprises me that there is such a blind adherence to the concept that all the dislike was because Jacinda was female. Do those making such claims really think that none of it would have happened if only the leader had been a male?

As for the misogynistic aspect, it seems to have been dropped to be called gender abuse. Maybe those initially making the claims realised how stupid it made them. In reality manty forms of abuse tend to be gender based, it is just okay when done to a male for some reason.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Ryan Bridge that the whole misogyny thing is melodramatic and a typical label being used to cover for her many shortcomings.

Covid was the perfect double edged sword for our ex PM, fronting the audience superbly in the scary days of 2020 but overreaching horrendously in 2021 in an up close and very personal way when she led the vaccine pass system to rule out a chunk of her population as invalid to participate in society and doubled down on the intervention to take their jobs too. That was never ever going to end well for her "kindness" brand, rather it made her look barbarically cruel . It wasn't hard to see the duplicity of her other political bottom lines after that, namely Labours failures in housing, health, child poverty and crime.

I can't help but wonder if the seamless transition to Chippy was in fact a silky coup de'etat instead. Jacinda had unfortunately become a liability, not because of her gender but because of what she did and didn't do!

Philip said...

Hi Chris, this just doesn't ring true to me.

If people did not like Jacinda Ardern as a leader because she did not meet their perceived ideal of a woman. Does that also mean that those who did not want Judith Colins as a leader, and said nasty things about her, only do so because she did not meet their expectations of a woman? These people were completely different people at each end of the political spectrum (the left is supposedly not sexist, racist, homophobic etc.).

I personally think the dislike of politicians comes not from their sex but rather their policies and ideals which clash with those who do not agree with their view of how the country (or even a single issue) should be dealt with. I did not like Jacinda Ardern from the very beginning, not because she was a woman but because she fooled so many into thinking she was a good option (because she was pleasant, attractive and compassionate) when compared to the image of Bill English portrayed by the biased media at the time. I was very cross that NZ missed out on who would have been (in my opinion) the best Prime Minister NZ had ever had given a full three year term. It was frustrating that she was popular mainly because she was a woman - how sexist is that?

Anyway, I just don't think NZer's are really all that sexist towards women. How could we have two women as the main contenders for Prime Minister (Jacinda and Judith) if the country was severely sexist? It just doesn't stack up.

David George said...

Good luck trying to figure out (never mind quantify) the many "reasons" for people's reaction to PM Ardern. Mostly our reactions and feelings are not reasons at all, as you say Chris and as Jung discovered in his exploration of the unconscious. Any claimed reasoning is often merely an attempt at justification for the feeling.

One aspect not touched on was/is the common protective response towards her, manifested by Mallard, Peters and Robertson etc. in the house and more broadly in the broader community. Perhaps it's more common among older men. My brother was like that, criticism from me was often met, not with a reasoned defense but with "leave her alone". He's changed his tune now, I think many have. Whether it's a manifestation of the "mama bear" phenomena or something more sinister but the almost gleeful vilification towards the other has turned many off and away. A hint of contrition would have been good.

Here's a short (4m 25) explanation of the Jungian anima and animus idea. https://youtu.be/exqL4C2u7HA

Gary Peters said...

There are probably another couple of psychological conditions you should investigate Chris, "Transference" and "Goal Projection".

Assuming people are reacting the way they are because of how you perceive those reactions to be based is transference. I was raised by a father with an absolute abhorrence of lies and I learned to carry that affliction as well. Only the most ardernt supporter of Jacinda Ardern would not concede that she had a problem with obfuscation and in fact outright lies.

You also assume that many people wanted the former prime ministerto behave in a certain way because that's what you wanted. Assuming that people want a similar or even the same thing as yourself is "Goal Projection". I, for example, wanted minimal government involvement in my life and them to concentrate on the basics that every country needs, high quality education, servicable police department and decent access to a modern health service.

I learned long ago that most people say they want that but will drop all those requests if they get a few extra dollars in their pay packet. That is something that our politicians have learned as well.

So my dislike of Jacinda Ardern and her Government had nothing to do with her gender but they way that she promised much, dishonestly in my opinion with no plan in place, and delivered virtually nothing plus the handling of the covid issue which was completely at odds with the pandemic plan put in place by Helen Clark and modified slightly by John Key.

Cheers

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Remember that Yung is a hero of Jordan Peterson. Whatever his ideas are they are not science. I'd say more mysticism than anything related to science. And when applied to psychological treatment can be outright harmful. You've only got to see the physical and mental wreck that Peterson has become. Anyway – as such pretty much nonsense.
I say almost all the abuse heaped on Ardern was down to misogyny, of which women are just as capable as men. It's not coincidence that across the globe, powerful women get more abuse from more people, and of a different type often to men. Conservatives are scrambling around to try to excuse it or explain it without admitting to misogyny, and having a difficult time doing it much to my delight. 😇

Shane McDowall said...

Vienna in early 1913 had some interesting characters.

Emperor Franz Joseph I and his son Franz Ferdinand of assassination fame.

As well as Hitler, Trotsky and Stalin were in Vienna.

I wonder if they walked past each other ...

Anonymous said...

In my circle Ardern was regarded as incompetent, along with her government. Her gender had nothing to do with it. How anyone can claim otherwise, based on social media which most people do not use, is mystifying. Helen Clark, a much better PM, said underpromise and over deliver. Ardern got it the wrong way round.

Kat said...


Yes GS, quite a bit of spin going on from the rotten tomato throwers as they try and reconcile their attitudes towards Jacinda Ardern against all the mounting evidence of abuse that she received. However I would not label them all as conservatives.

Although I find it difficult to take humour in any of the squirming from the obvious guilt that is eating away at them, I am thankful and agree with the author that they are a minority.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"It surprises me that there is such a blind adherence to the concept that all the dislike was because Jacinda was female. Do those making such claims really think that none of it would have happened if only the leader had been a male?"

It has been explained – and references given I believe – several times that research has shown women get more abuse than men, particularly online, and that it is of a somewhat different character. How many people were prosecuted for making death threats to John Key? Did he ever receive any threats of rape, even after he made that stupid joke about picking up the soap in prison?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-whole-truth/131023325/the-whole-truth-do-female-politicians-get-worse-abuse
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/128238695/relentless-abuse-against-women-mps-on-the-rise
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erinspencer1/2022/11/02/women-in-politics-have-to-deal-with-more-harassment-and-violence-a-new-database-is-tracking-those-threats/?sh=341d55e0e16c
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17457289.2021.1968413
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/06/1009406/twitter-facebook-online-harassment-politicians/

Here's some references – some of which you can't possibly dismiss as feminist/communist propaganda. So perhaps we could now cut the bullshit?

Patricia said...

Interesting how the comments are from men who are saying, mostly, that their dislike of Jacinda was because of her policies. Bullshit I say. It is pure misogyny. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Odysseus said...

It's becoming increasingly clear Ardern was brought down in a seamless coup engineered by Robertson and Hipkins with her own willing participation in order to save Labour's skins later this year, while preserving the myth of Ardern's record as a "winner". The garbage about misogyny and hate was fed to the complicit media like a cuttlefish ink cloud to cover their tracks. Carl Jung's bizarre meanderings have nothing to do with it. Think Occam's razor Chris.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Well Odysseus, you either have inside knowledge of Labour machinations or you're psychic? Or – and hear me out here – it's just wild speculation. 🥸

David George said...

Thanks Patricia, I guess the question is when does criticism or insult become misogyny? How do you know?
As pointed out by CHX above we do tend to gender our comments - prick (Jacinda used that one herself) or bitch for example. That in itself doesn't qualify as misogyny or misandry which have quite specific meanings - hatred based on gender essentially. If you really think people (of both sexes) are calling Jacinda a bitch because they hate women generally you need to get out more. Maybe ask them straight up.

Anonymous said...

I found that in the circles I go in, the most vociferous critics of Jacinda have been Women.

Unknown said...

"Interesting how the comments are from men who are saying, mostly, that their dislike of Jacinda was because of her policies. Bullshit I say. It is pure misogyny. Nothing more. Nothing less."

Patricia, women wanted "equality" with men, and they got it. Deal with it. Of course, what they really wanted was all the rewards but none of the responsibilities. Women shouldn't start crying about misogyny and "poor little me" whenever they find out that sometimes things get a bit hot in the kitchen. She has bailed out because the carefully constructed appearance has come face to face with the hard reality that she is not a capable leader and she is deeply unpopular. Nearly any politician could have read the Covid script and frowned after the Christchurch shootings. She was nothing special, but she was pumped up by a friendly media because of her (and in general, their) particular type of genitalia.

Personally, I don't think that men and women are equal in any way (except for our common dignity as human beings). We are complimentary, like the nut is to the bolt. Society doesn't work when everyone assumes on ideological grounds that everyone is just as equally a bolt as anyone else– things are guaranteed to fall apart eventually.

Gary Peters said...

Promising 100,000 low cost homes for needy people and delivering a few hundred, promising a rail link and then only spending $50 million talking about it, promising people freedom of choice in medical treatment without consequences but knowingly lying while saying that is bound to get a few people pretty angry. But hey patricia, if you think only a woman could do those things then who am I to argue.

ZTS said...

Hmm, difficult to accurately comment.

Men are at times nasty to women online and there is definitely misogyny out there.

I am not a fan of Ardern but one time I was debating something online and the OP was making coherent and suitably intellectual arguments which I respected. Then suddenly, they ended the post by saying Ardern is a 'nasty" four letter word.

I kind of did a double take and thought, whoah I see what people are talking about. So I started looking at things more closely, hung out in a few right wing hang outs just to see what came up.

So yes there was misogyny on those sites, often amongst older men (on those sites anyway - 65+ by the sounds of it). But by and large, the dislike was political or to an extent based on personality.

As Bryce Edwards (and/or yourself?) said if you win votes based on personality it is a double edged sword and may come around to bite you on the 'a*se'.

Personally for me, I was angry at what I perceived Ardern's refusal to right the wrongs desperately needed by the left for a good 15 years whilst choosing to launch us into a race divide, undiscussed and as we know, very much covered up.

Ardern was a hero in her first term but even Labour stalwarts had begun to think she might not be able to deliver. But what I think really put people off was the strident way she refused to engage with protestors or dissenters, not just at parliament, but never reading 64,000 submissions on three waters and changing the goal posts on all manner of public consultation. The kind empathetic Jacinda under pressure became shrill and unyielding. She would not engage and she would not let others engage.

Certainly for me, this didnt play well and maybe your comments on men's anima are accurate at some level. In my experience, men mostly dont take to shrill, strident women. But is that misogyny or is it simply a personality issue?

The misogyny has to stop but the term misogyny, like racist or transphobic is bandied about with impunity and is often used to describe people who genuinely have a different point of view. Terms like misogyny 'an ingrained prejudice against women' are too often used to silence others.

I do think that the media fixation on misogyny is overhyped and that this suits the left (given so many NZ journalists are far left as polled recently) but I also think we should all make playing the man and not the argument a no-go activity online.

Prominent figures like Neale Jones, and Joanna Kidman need to stop the ad hominem attacks (And I am sure there are others on the right in this category but as I dont read them I cant name them) and we should all resolve to do better.

David George said...

Perhaps exploiting personal popularity (populism?) for political gain has it's down side when things fall apart. How much of Labour's support was down to Ardern's unprecedented personal popularity - 72% net positive at it's peak?

Bryce Edwards: The media, too, could learn to focus less on personalities. The total concentration on Ardern’s star power was such easy journalism. But it came at the expense of a policy debate. A look back at the 2020 general election campaign shows how little policy and ideas were actually debated and examined. It was a policy void that few commentators were willing to challenge. The prime example has been the momentous Three Waters fiasco, which Labour didn’t even feel the need to foreshadow and persuade the electorate about – ultimately leading to a major backlash.

Hopefully, in 2023, the election campaign is less about Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon, and more about the significant problems in New Zealand that need fixing. Although ideology and visions are now deeply unpopular, we actually need more of a big-picture focus than on the personal ethics, competencies, and personalities of leaders. And it would help if the political parties are actually able to present properly differentiated policy options for voters – something that has been in short supply in recent years, which has merely fuelled the focus on individual politicians instead.
https://democracyproject.nz/2023/01/27/bryce-edwards-time-for-a-sober-discussion-about-toxicity-and-personality-in-politics/

David George said...

It's all starting to sound a bit like "blame the victim" - as if the sainted one can do no wrong and there's something wrong with you if you don't love her to bits.

Perhaps there are other reasons for the PM's resignation. Perhaps she has realised she's not up to the daunting (impossible?) task of cleaning up, or even trying to explain, the complete and utter mess she and her disgraceful regime have created. Is anyone?

Brian Easton: "It’s the summer break. Everyone settles down with family, books, the sun and some fishing. But the Prime Minister has a pile of briefing papers prepared just before Christmas, which have to be worked through."

He goes on to expand on the many problems: co-governance, child poverty, the emissions regime, TVNZ-RNZ merger, the labour market, the economy, housing, health "redisorganisation", polytech "redisorganisation and, finally, the three waters "redisorganisation".

"To add to the confusion, immediately after the Water Service Entities 2022 Act was passed (just before Christmas), the government introduced the Water Services Legislation Bill, which amended the act. It is not unusual for a law to be passed, to be found wanting when implemented and then have to be amended. But to do so before it is even implemented – indicating the even the government has reservations about what it has just passed – must be unique.

The bill says that ratepayers will be liable if the investments fail, even though they have no involvement in the failure. In essence it gives national bodies the power to tax locally without local representation. When people and their councils, which depend on rates for revenue and are already angry over having their assets being seized, become aware of this, their outrage will increase.

There will be other items in the Christmas briefing papers. There may also be a paper which explains how most of these issues are interconnected. I should love to read it.

This list suggests that the government faces numerous major technical policy challenges, compounded by severe political concerns and consequences which require major management.

One can well imagine the Prime Minister going through the Christmas briefing papers with care, then looking at the family, at the unread books, at the sun and the possibility of going fishing – and contemplating resigning.

https://pointofordernz.wordpress.com/2023/01/28/brian-easton-christmas-briefing-papers-what-was-the-pm-reading-in-the-runup-to-election-year/

Barry said...

The underlying fact about Ardern and her supporters is very well set out in a column by Damien Grant.
"What was done was done with pure intention by those who believe with certainty that sacrificing the individual for the collective good is not only just but ecessary . Its a a rational with a troubling legacy".ie: like this is a major step down the socialist road - which when pushed turn into results like the USSR and other socialist governments.

There is nothing about this concept that is worth worrying about except an idea like this - "we escaped another attempt to turn us into 1984 - thank God"

David George said...

If you want to "see the physical and mental wreck that Peterson has become" for yourself he sat down a couple of days ago for a wide ranging and fascinating discussion with Joe Rogan.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4GJZmmvdh4NFbFqdqp9ovm

Kat said...


The "circles I go in".......the men love Jacinda Ardern....

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/bay-of-plenty-times/news/whakatane-mans-roadside-stance-against-hate-directed-at-ex-pm-jacinda-ardern/AYXYWHYATFBAPNZS4BYVR3GX4I/

What a lovely man.....

John Hurley said...


What, then, does it say about New Zealand’s men and boys that so many of them were so eager to heap abuse upon New Zealand’s young female prime minister, Jacinda Ardern?
.........
Nothing

It's more cognitive dissonance. She was high priestess to an imaginary woke world. The frustration was breaking through that when reality was screened by like minded journalists.

also (same thing) hegemony. Jacinda was behind:

changing the name
God-awful histories
Kate Hannah
Waka kotahi
Whaka ruru (Hospital system)
Tokerua mahoe - te ika (other important institution)
Matariki - that made up institution

John Hurley said...

Cognitive dissonance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCKuaN6d-g&t=15s

Guerilla Surgeon said...

I love how all the people who are trying to excuse misogyny are ignoring the fact that women get more and different types of abuse from men. That's a statistical fact. I say again – how many people have been prosecuted for threatening to kill male prime ministers? How many male prime ministers received rape threats. That must be one of the most horrific types of abuse you can get online. I doubt if Key received one or he wouldn't have been joking about prison rape would he? Well – maybe he would. He was never that sensitive to atmosphere was he?

So how on earth can it be based on policy and just an accident that someone is called a bitch or whatever when the statistics say otherwise. Clutching at straws it seems to me. Desperately trying to excuse your fellow travellers.

And so many people telling us why she resigned. We'll never know until she writes her memoirs – and possibly not even then, because like all politicians shall put the best face on it. But I guarantee that whether it was the problems of not delivering for working people, or too many Christmas briefing papers, misogyny certainly had something to do with it.
There's none so blind as those who will not see.

David George said...

"It’s easy to laugh at this little Swiss doctor now". Really Chris?

Jung came in for a lot of unjustified criticism, essentially, on merely ideological grounds from the blank slatists. His idea that we are inhabited by personalities (the archetypes to Jung or gods or spirits as some prefer) that are give rise to our much of our basic motivations and emotions, our lusts and longings was a direct threat to the social constructionist's obsessions that have held sway for the past fifty years.

A short essay on Jung's archetypes for those interested: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-jungs-4-major-archetypes-2795439

Where do our myths come from? Conjured out of nothing by overexcited imaginations? Or grounded at the deepest level of the human collective unconscious?

There is a mythical creature, the Dragon (or Taniwha etc.) a winged, toothed and clawed reptilian monster; mysterious, dangerous, guardian of the underworld, that is universal to all cultures. How did that come about - even among cultures with no real knowledge of such a thing in nature? Is it possible that millions of years of evolution as vulnerable prey to snakes, crocodiles, leopards and eagles has planted (in the survivors and their descendants - us) an inherited and instinctive fear that manifests in the imagination and was then developed into stories.

We're not really threatened much by scaly monsters anymore but the aversion and fear is still there. I was told, true story, of two men walking together along a path. One of the men had his six year old daughter walking alongside him. Suddenly the little girl was sitting on her father's shoulders. Even before any of them had "seen" it at the conscious level the girl had instinctively reacted to the arrival of a snake on the path. Tabula Rasa?

greywarbler said...

Where do our myths come from? Conjured out of nothing by overexcited imaginations? Or grounded at the deepest level of the human collective unconscious?
I think that the two possible sources may ultimately be the same.

It is interesting that much of the comment here treats Jung's ideas as something to debate, to agree or disagree with, comparing perhaps to other thinkers. It is as if all ideas are put forward to argue on an intellectual basis; but their meaning and worth to humans is secondary.

I don't give a damn about what every other guru thinks. We can't treat ideas as intellectual play, a bit of food to be chewed over and either swallowed or spat out. What the point is, does that idea give a new or revised view of our thinking and feeling processes? How can we as high intellectual beings put such ideas to use to tame our passions, to acceptable levels and ends?

Insight is needed in what seems possible to be our end days and not endless discussion at an objective or indeed a subjective level, just rebutting others' opinions and thoughts. Leave that to the gods, we humans need to think and act in a measured and careful way, because we haven't got much time and opportunity.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"the Dragon (or Taniwha etc.) a winged, toothed and clawed reptilian monster; mysterious, dangerous, guardian of the underworld"
I'm not an expert on mythology but I'm pretty sure that taniwha were not guardians of the underworld. And in fact dragons vary widely among cultures, some of them even have the heads of elephants. And not all are winged. The functions differ as well. Chinese dragons are beneficent, Christian dragons tend to be evil. Except perhaps for Wales.🤓
Not that it matters where our myths come from to be honest, but this one probably came from the discovery of large dinosaur bones.
We inherit our fear of snakes however from our ape ancestors. Similarly large bugs. The reaction to seeing a large bug on your hand is very similar in chimpanzees and humans, shaking of the hand to get rid of the damn thing – although the chimpanzee might pick it up and eat it afterwards.🤓 Chimpanzees will often beat a snake to paste with sticks – and a friend of mine who taught in Uganda saw Africans do this reasonably often.
Nothing to do with Jung and his mystical nonsense. Just evolution.

John Hurley said...

What is "small minded nationalism". These things are always given a pass by MSM (at best) called "ideologies that are deeply, deeply toxic" at worst (Paul Spoonley).

Commenting on link below:
We are only getting half an argument here and one thing to note is (as Charles Murray wrote in The Coming Apart of White America) meritocratic society has distilled into a cognitive elite who have formed a society separate from the rest of us. We (essentially) are their subjects. So they will have us all in apartments (never mind the quality - feel the width). They won't be bringing up THEIR kids in apartments ("why should they, they got to the top of their fields?"). However the idea of a nation a distinct group of people who own this country and it's resources abhors them (this is where their slip shows). They are above all that. This is what Jacinda calls "small minded nationalism". Far more important are "the huddled masses" otherwise known as the deeply religious, highly fertile, peoples of the tropical belt where 97% of the Worlds birthrates occur.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2023/01/urban-design-experts-call-auckland-s-catastrophic-flooding-a-wake-up-call-to-plan-cities-better.html

David George said...

That Jung was a high genius is without doubt; it's rather dismissive to suggest his ideas were simply "conjured out of myths and symbols". He looked at commonalities (the reptilian monster just one example) as indications of what he called the collective unconscious. I'm not sure of the motivations behind the claim (see GS above) that this is "mystical nonsense".

It is a form of the unconscious common to mankind as a whole and originating in the inherited structure of the brain and nervous system and shaped by the common experiences of our ancestors through evolution - natural and sexual selection IOW. This has been further confirmed by research by the evolutionary biologists and neuro scientists. Why would anyone be surprised that our collective (i.e. common) impulses should manifest in the stories we tell each other.

"Jung used his theory of the collective unconscious to explain how fears and social phobias can manifest in children and adults for no apparent reason. Fear of the dark, loud sounds, bridges, or blood may all be rooted in this collective unconscious due to an inherited genetic trait.

In support of this, research indicates that some children are afraid of the dark not because of a negative experience they've had during the nighttime, but because darkness activates an exaggerated response by the amygdala—the part of the brain associated with the processing of emotions—resulting in the development of an innate or unprovoked fear.

Another example is a 2022 study published in Digital Geography and Society that investigates the role that the collective unconscious may play in our thoughts and behaviors while interacting on social media platforms.

Thus, Jung's ideas continue to be assessed to better understand the collective unconscious and how it works." https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-collective-unconscious-2671571


David George said...

What are taniwha?
Taniwha are supernatural creatures in Māori tradition, similar to serpents and dragons in other cultures. They were said to hide in the ocean, rivers, lakes or caves.

Some taniwha would eat and kill people, or kidnap women. Others were believed to be guardians for a tribe, and people would offer them gifts and say a karakia (a spell).

What did they look like?
Some were like giant lizards, sometimes with wings. Others were reptile-like sea creatures. Or they took the shape of sharks or whales, or even logs of wood in the river. Some could change their shape. The taniwha Tūtaeporoporo began life as a shark. A chief caught him and kept him as a pet in a river. Then Tūtaeporoporo changed, growing scaly skin, wings, webbed feet and a bird-like head. He began eating people travelling on the river. To catch him a taniwha slayer, Ao-kehu, hid inside a hollow log in the river. The taniwha smelt him, and swallowed the log. Slashing his way out of the taniwha’s stomach, Ao-kehu soon killed him. Inside the taniwha were the remains of people and canoes that he had eaten."
https://teara.govt.nz/en/taniwha


Absolutely no similarities to stories like St George and the dragon? Wikipedia: "The story goes that the dragon originally extorted tribute from villagers. When they ran out of livestock and trinkets for the dragon, they started giving up a human tribute once a year. This was acceptable to the villagers until a princess was chosen as the next offering. The saint thereupon rescues the princess chosen as the next offering."" . Really GS!

Guerilla Surgeon said...

I know what Taniwha are David but it's pretty obvious that you don't. Even so, if the similarities do mean something they don't mean much.

You are just pattern seeking. We'll just add it to your other methods of argument such as straw manning and nut picking.