Robert Parry: NYT Whites Out Ukraine’s Brown Shirts

[Karmadillo]

80. Poor you. I'll see your Orwell and raise you Jung.

Last edited Thu Feb 12, 2015, 11:32 AM - Edit history (1)

Why are you so unconcerned about fascism and the misery it inflicts when it serves neocon purposes? Maybe Carl Jung can help you. I'm sure you're somewhat of a decent guy and in some unconscious way, you're shamed by your embrace of the violence in Ukraine. You probably know instinctively that support for neo-nazis is wrong, even though consciously you've created an elaborate self-justification for your position. And so that shame, kept from your consciousness, gets projected on to posters here at DU who oppose the fascism you embrace. That seems a reasonable explanation for why you keep telling everyone on the board opposed to fascism in Ukraine that they really support fascism everywhere else but Ukraine (which, let's be honest, makes absolutely no sense). So here's Jung on how you're projecting this suppressed material on to others and how you can escape the process:

http://jennalilla.com/2013/01/22/the-ego-and-its-projections/

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Carl Jung says that our shadow is closely related to our projections. Because we are unable to see the shadowy aspect of our own personality, we project them onto other people. Jung explains:

“While some traits peculiar to the shadow can be recognized without too much difficulty as one’s own personal qualities, in this case both insight and good will are unavailing because the cause of emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in other person. No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projections, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself. He must be convinced that he throws a very long shadow before he is willing withdraw his emotionally-toned projections from their object…

As we know, it is not the conscious subject but unconscious which does the projecting.” (CW 9ii, para. 16- 17)

The problem with our projections is that they isolate us from our environment and from other human beings. Our projections block the formation of deep relationship with the people in our lives. If we are busy seeing our own projections how can we see others as they truly are?

“The effect of projection to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projection changes the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face… The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions” (CW 9ii, para. 17)

According to Jung, each of us must come to terms with the ways we have projected parts of our personality on the world. It is only in doing so that we can reclaim the wholeness of our personality.

“It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, course– for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.” (CW 9ii, para. 18)

So maybe if you would stop embracing fascism in Ukraine and joining in the neo-con push for more and more regime change and more and more chaos and more and more bloodshed, you'd be able to stop projecting the shamefulness of your position on to the rest of us and enter into discussions at DU without such irrational hostility.