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“....What the unconscious really contains are the great collective events of the time. In the collective unconscious of the individual, history prepares itself; and when the archetypes are activated in a number of individuals and come to the surface, we are in the middle of history, as we are at present. The archetypal image which the moment requires gets into life, and everybody is seized by it. That is what we see today. I saw it coming: I said in 1918 that the 'blond beast' is stirring in its sleep, and something will happen in Germany. ...”
C. G. Jung; Lecture 5; 1935.
The gunman is an archetypal image in American history. It is an image that has been resurfacing in American political culture, especially since 2008. Tea Party activists in particular are the agents of this image – wearing “side-arms” to political events; holding signs that call for blood to nurture the tree of democracy; and with politicians using the code words of violence in their speeches.
This violent urging has been fertilized by the feces fanning of rabid right-wing “journalists.” Over and over, they deliver a steady message of violence. If these coded messages were hidden, we would call them subliminal. However, they are open and obvious in their appeal to the subconscious fears and hatreds of their audience.
When discussing levels of consciousness, I combine Jung and Ouspensky: we have a population in the United States that includes a significant number of undeveloped people who inhabit the lower levels of human consciousness. They appear “awake” in most visually measurable ways (with the exceptions of those with tea bags pinned on their hats), but are actually as unconscious as a robot, an electric can-opener, or a lawn-mower. Their behaviors are programmed entirely by way of outside stimuli: they believe, for example, in the lies of Glenn Beck. They are convinced that Obama was born anywhere but the USA and is a racist; while worrying that non-white Mexican and Muslim people threaten their very existence.
When one takes measure of the sum total of all the highly energized low-level consciousness of thousands of Tea Party robots, supported in part by not only the amoral and immoral energies of the larger economic/political system, the sad fact is that our nation risks more of the mindless, destructive violence that took place in Tucson yesterday. For when a society has been fed a steady diet of fear and hatred, what is rooted soon blooms into the paranoid violence that killed – among others – a nine year old girl. Yet some question why is the USA feared and hated. It is because it is channeling the fear and hatred that finds expression in mass shootings, at home and abroad.
It is harder to view a picture correctly, when you are inside the frame. We see that the on-going divide on this forum finds expression in the examination of this tragic shooting. Some people say that they are not able, for example, to see any connection between the violent rhetoric of Tea Party politicians, and this shooting. I believe that they are sincere. But their vision is limited by blind spots.
There are also good people here, who question if this deadly act will help “wake up” Americans to the dangers posed by the violent imagery that has saturated the political-social discourse. We do need to wake America up. Yet that cannot be accomplished by way of the sleeping aides that are routinely administered by the media, or the social novocaine that Washington injects into society daily.
While the fog of unconsciousness can happen to groups, consciousness takes place one individual at a time. It can only begin to spread at the local, grass-roots level. But it can happen, if we all do our part.
Thanks,
H2O Man
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