When Jesus asked for a Rolex - reply to Tom

["Jurriaan Bendien" <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tom,

You will notice that Jung says specifically:

In order to find valid answers to these questions a complete spiritual
renewal is needed. And this cannot be given gratis, each man must strive to
achieve it for himself.

You have to pay the therapist, so Jung is providing a rationale for his own
occupation. This is precisely the principle on which the whole "consumer
society" is founded, why you have to pay for your psychotherapy, and why
e.g. there are far more means of transportation than are actually being used
in a reasonable way, for example. That of course has its positive and
negative features, as a dialectician would say, but a Marxist seeks to grasp
the contradiction involved.

I am reminded here, funnily enough, of that Charlie Brown cartoon, where
Lucy puts up her psychiatrist's office with the sign "the psychiatrist is
in - five cents".

As Phd students in 1986, Geoff Pearce and I decided that we should
conceptualise the epochal crisis of late bourgeois society in terms of an
economic crisis, a social crisis, a political crisis, and a
cultural-ideological crisis. We were inspired by something Althusser had
said in a different context, and elaborated on that.  Each of these concepts
has a specific meaning, and my remarks about spirituality refer to an aspect
of the cultural-ideological crisis.

This involves many different aspectsc of course, but the aspect I am
referring to now, is that when the ruling ideas don't deliver answers
anymore, then what happens is that the rulers go and scratch around for
"new" ideas to justify capitalism and imperialism, but these "new" ideas
turn out to be largely a rehash of the past, simply because a system in
decline cannot acknowledge reality for what it is,. within the current
ideological framework. New ideas are only generated by the real struggles of
the progressive social classes, who seek to expand the realm of freedom,
equality and justice for all.

The only "new" ideas to come out of the Iraq war are ideas about how you can
kill and control people more accurately, and how you can clear up mess
better, once you have created it. And that is the cutting-edge of bourgeois
progress as conceived by the neo-conservatives. And I am not kidding,
because a highly respected general like Colin Powell affirms the historical
justification of the "liberation" of Iraq.

The more progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie realise this is mad, then
they need new formulas for humane capitalism, but they are difficult to
find. Basically what Dean represents is the more liberal, technocratic wing
of the bourgeoisie, and they figure there are other ways to heal the social
fabric, for example, through using modern technology (refer: Ernest Mandel,
Late Capitalism, Verso, chapter on "The ideology of late capitalism").

If the old ideas don't work anymore, then two things happen: you replace
them with new ideas, or you spew out the old ideas.
As regards the new ideas, I have already said that, insofar as they aren't a
rehash, the bourgeois have to steal them somewhere, but if nobody's talking,
then there's a problem, then you have to spy. As regards the spewing,
Trotsky discusses the vomiting process involved in fascism, where a
regression to archaic forms of barbarism and irrationalism occurs
(pre-capitalist ideas). In the USA, that potential barbarism has two main
historical sources: inside the USA: the extermination of the Indians and the
enslavement of Africans, these define the internal precedents of barbarism
imposed by the past.  Outside the USA: the experience of repressing, killing
and brutalising people in other nations. So then you have two main sources
there, for potential barbarism in the USA.

But for the Jungians, it's just all a matter of an individual change of
heart, and then Bob's your uncle, you just have to reconcile the anima and
the animus without turning into an animal. But as a friend of mine would
have said, "not on your Nelly".

Christians will talk about the rapture, and suchlike. The conspiracy
theorists will trace out conspiracies. They cannot conceive, that an
individual might be related to other individuals, whether they like it or
not, and that this relation might define whether they can have a change of
heart or not, that it might define the range of options that exists. They
just make very simple things very complex, and one thing I liked about
Australiasian culture is that they generally don't do that. But the European
and American bourgeoisie doesn't regard Australiasia as being very
"cultured", because Western civilisation there originated from workingclass
settlers (including convicts, okay, but the convicts were almost all
workingclass in origin as well).

I don't say that Jung is wrong about the importance of spirituality, I am
only saying that people ALREADY HAVE IT, the only discussion we can have, is
about the extent to which they are self-aware about it, and what specific
forms that takes, and which forms of that are healthy, or not healthy. And
Jung doesn't have the last word to say on that at all.

But if somebody attacks another country militarily on the basis that he is
(allegedly) guided by Christ in this, then you have to condemn this, as a
form of unhealthy spirituality, simple as that. And then you should be
asking, what is the original cause of this unhealthy spirituality ? And you
cannot reduce this to Bush's previous drinking problem, you have to see the
reformed drunkard operating a leader of the American imperialist apparatus.
I posted a small piece from the Trilateral commission, and if you read that,
you will see very precisely how these people think. Of course, they do not
talk about imperialism, only about "interests" and "strategy" which centres
on the question of "how we bring these Chinese people around to our point of
view", our way of life, but you can see exactly what they have in mind. You
don't need a grand interpretation for that, you just need to access publicly
accessible facts and collate them.

Best regards

Jurriaan





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