Jung's Warning: Are We Still Not Sheep?

Sometimes numbers can make the individual feel powerless.

For a long time, I have been wary of ways of looking at and perceiving things that place excessive emphasis on numbers.

While this may be necessary in some cases, when it permeates everywhere, the existence of the individual becomes trivialized, and it can become a factor that makes people feel powerless.

For example, in discussing the power of religion, the focus has often been placed on the number of believers.

Christianity is no exception.

However, even within Christianity, if one carefully unravels history, it becomes clear that what the scriptures truly focus on is not numbers, but the actions of the individual.

History has proven time and again that while groups, when directed, can become a swell that changes society for the better, they can also become a destructive force when led in the wrong direction, and once that happens, they are not easily stopped.

Placing too much emphasis on numbers and the power of groups carries the danger of gradually eroding a person's vitality.

Jung's Warning

Jung, a 20th-century psychotherapist, excellent physician, and son of a pastor, points out in 'The Undiscovered Self' that when a person feels unable to endure their own insignificance and futility, losing the meaning of life, it is the first step toward becoming a slave to the state.

“As the group grows larger, the individual becomes more 'insignificant.' However, when a person feels unable to endure their own insignificance and futility, losing the meaning of life (omitted), it is already the first step toward becoming a slave to the state, and people unknowingly become pioneers on that path. Those who only look outward and see nothing but the magnitude of numbers have no way to protect themselves against the evidence brought by their own senses or their own reason. This is exactly what the whole world is doing right now. People are fascinated and overwhelmed by statistical truths and the magnitude of numbers, and are being convinced day by day of how powerless and trivial the individual personality is, which a giant organization can neither play nor replace.” (Jung, 'The Undiscovered Self', Heibonsha Library, 1996, p. 198)

This is the reason why I am extremely wary of talking about human beings in terms of numbers.

In addition, Jung repeatedly points out that even if people are morally and intellectually respectable as individuals, when they become a group, they deteriorate morally and intellectually compared to when they are individuals.

“The modern era is foolish enough to only know how to think in terms of the magnitude of numbers and the size of organizations. And yet, has the world not seen more than enough of what happens when a well-disciplined crowd falls into the hands of a single madman? One would like to think so. However, it is regrettable that this insight has so far not penetrated at all, and it must be said that this is dangerous. People still joyfully gather under the belief that collective action brings salvation, and they do not realize in the slightest that to make an organization endlessly powerful, one must sacrifice that much more morality.” (p. 234)

In fact, I have witnessed Jung's observation that 'even if people are morally and intellectually respectable as individuals, when they become a group, they deteriorate morally and intellectually compared to when they are individuals' in my own church.

Therefore, no matter how respectable a person may be as an individual, I adopt their distance from a group as one of the criteria for judging them.

That is to say, if their degree of immersion in a group is too strong, I become wary.

From my experience in the church I belonged to, I learned that 'faith' that is not firmly rooted within is completely useless in the face of unbridled bestiality.

Steiner, a contemporary of Jung, states something to this effect at the beginning of 'How to Know Higher Worlds'.

That performing outwardly respectable acts is of no use, and that it is important to try to perform good acts as one's own inner will.

While this overlaps somewhat with yesterday's article, those who normally do what is right as human beings do not overstep their bounds, even in times of crisis.

However, those who outwardly adopt a 'humble' attitude of obedience to pastors or leaders, but remain internally devastated, will easily overstep their human duties in realms beyond the everyday.

Alternatively, people living with a dependent psychology will easily gravitate toward psychopaths who claim to 'save you' in times of crisis, casting aside their own responsibilities and problems.

Even now, there are people flocking to various influencers, especially those who engage in 'empty promise scams,' which shows that humanity has not progressed at all since Jung's time.

Only an organized individual can resist an organized group

Now, Jung points out that only those who are well-organized in their individuality can resist an organized group.

“The size of the number, that is, the collective, and its overwhelming power are thrust before our eyes every day through newspapers in one form or another. Along with this, the worthlessness of the individual human being is driven home so thoroughly that the hope of being recognized somewhere, somehow, cannot help but vanish. The worn-out, clichéd slogans of ideals—liberty, equality, fraternity—are of no help to the individual. For the very person to whom this appeal should be addressed is the executioner of the individual who represents the collective. Only those who are as well-organized in their own individuality as the collective can resist an organized group.” (pp. 238-239)

In other words, it means not someone who depends on others and escapes from their own problems and anxieties, but someone who is independent, lives by their own will, and can form cooperative relationships with others.

Jung repeats that the individual is the only entity capable of bearing responsibility, that there is no way to change anything but for the individual to change first, and that there is no way to correct the distortions of society without looking at the repressed shadow within the individual.

Jung's contemporary and fellow countryman, the painter Paul Klee, was labeled a degenerate artist by the Nazis and had his works confiscated.

Yet, in silence, he continued to paint.

While burning within with a fierce 'no' to the power that tramples on the individual.

Many of Jung's observations in 'The Present and the Future' still hold true today.

He surely hoped that his observations would prove wrong and that humanity would mature more internally.

Gurdjieff, who approached from a different direction than Jung

The Armenian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, who lived from the late 19th to the early 20th century, wished to remove the weakness of humans who fall into collective hypnosis and become slaves to numbers and the state, using an approach different from Jung's.

In last year's article, I stated that Gurdjieff's life 'could be said to have been dedicated to waking people from hypnosis and turning machines into human beings.'

The short story 'The Parable of the Magician' introduced here is a story often cited by Osho, and it depicts the situation in which humans are placed extremely accurately.

It is also quoted in the opening poem of David Icke's 'Moon Matrix 1' (Hikaruland).

Perhaps we are still 'sheep who have been made to believe they are human'.

Czeslaw Czechowicz, who met Gurdjieff in 1921 and accompanied him from Constantinople to France, maintaining a direct relationship with him for 28 years, has written his memoirs.

This is currently available to read in translation on Kindle.

I would like to conclude this article by introducing some of Gurdjieff's words as recorded by Czechowicz.

"Only those who realize they are imprisoned within themselves can become free. To do so, one must earnestly desire to escape and prepare in a wise manner. One must think carefully and investigate who it is that is trapped in the prison, and what this prison is made of." (CzechowiczMemories of Mr. Gurdjieff, Part 1)

"Who is it that is trapped in the prison, and what is this prison made of?" This question seems to be something we should turn our attention to from time to time, even now.

Recommended Gurdjieff Introduction

If you would like to read something about Gurdjieff, I recommend the novel Gurdjieff's Afterimage (Bunshun Bunko) by Kentaro Komori. It is also available on Kindle.

"Do not be deceived by decorations that appear knowledgeable at first glance. (Omitted) Long, technical terms and foreign words that use many syllables are usually just decorations to cover up one's own ignorance." (From Kentaro Komori's Gurdjieff's Afterimage, Bunshun Bunko, dialogue by Pyotr Demyanovich Ouspensky)

Rather than such things, what Pyotr Demyanovich praises is "a sincere and meaningful question based on one's own experience."