A Graveyard of the Soul

Reddish Pink Sun in The Morning

 Jung's Shadow, it can be argued, protects the sacred. Let's start today with where the Shadow sits in the Symbolic Order, Lady Macbeth and a reappraisal of jealousy, then return to the swamp monsters of Conservative Social Values by looking at the expression "A stable ecology is the graveyard of the soul."

Alright chaps. When Macbeth and Lady Macbeth killed King Duncan, they got blood on their hands. Lady Macbeth did her best, they'd done a good job, a valuable job, she advised Macbeth - "A little water clears us of this deed." Her point was that water would wash away the physical evidence and all evidence of their guilt, leaving them rich and powerful and pure as driven snow. But "Out Damn Spot" those blood stains haunted Lady Macbeth, she saw them in her dreams they poked at her in the daytime. And why? Jung would have seen what he called a Shadow from the ocean wide subconscious where Lady Macbeth kept her repressed memories, feelings and passions looking back with disdain.

Here, with his Shadow, Jung had his chance to kick the sociobiologists in the gonads. "Jealousy" Jung believed, became manifest when I projected what I have failed to achieve onto others, making it easier for me to criticize someone else rather than attempt to interpret what my shadow is trying to tell me. And the point about the Shadow, the Shadow doesn't go away, ask Lady Macbeth if you don't believe me. It's the ultimate Street Corner Boy and I am the object of constant wolf-whistles.

 The question, "what are conservative social values?," like freedom, is better understood by what they are not. Take for example the Pope's encyclical of the 1890's that described the duty of Christians as citizens in Industrial Societies. To protect the family the Pope out right rejected socialism, instead the encyclical promoted just wages, workers' rights to organize unions, private property rights, and the state's duty to protect the working class. This encyclical laid the foundation for "Modern Catholic Social Teaching" it influenced politicians and workers movements. In the USA it remains the basis for what Baptist Educational Establishments refer to as "Christian Leadership" in their mission statements.

It's entirely possible that nuances between Catholic and Baptist understandings of the soul are as disparate as their understandings of marriage and baptism itself, but such monotheistic groupings do not have a monopoly on "Sacred and/or Profane." The priority of the family in almost all Christian teaching has resulted in the sacredness of the wedding vow as the basis of a family and society.  Whether it's "Christian Leadership" or "Catholic Social Teaching" the sacred forms the foundational values upon which the edifice is erected. I don't believe Adam Smith, Ricardo or Karl Marx saw themselves as in the business of formulating sacred foundations.  They wanted something that worked.

 And this is where we find ourselves forced to look at the expression: "A stable ecology is the graveyard of the soul." There's always a premise, the premise here goes along these lines: "Dignity is found in Freedom. Freedom is inherently unstable." The Reasonable Creature that Kant thought we are will always be unfinished. I think we can say Jung's Shadow reminds us of how far from the sacred we are. 

The Kantian Shop Floor

Cedar Eighteen Months Later

 A clearer explanation of yesterday's ramble through the thorns of Schlegel's contribution to my struggle with Conservative Norms, Mind and Society is clearly required. You can't just claim "Livelihood" is sacred, "Standard of Living" is profane and then proceed to have a sulk about Henry the Eighth's rape of the Monasteries without first offering a contextual framework to what Can Bobby has taken to calling "Our Kantian Shop floor."

 What is a Kantian Shop floor?

 Kant is described as a Transcendental Idealist. He was a Prussian Mr. Enlightenment. His argument at the end of 1700's was that because we are reasonable creatures we can think in a way that most other animals can't and as a result we do not have to live lives dominated by reflex reactions, our thoughts move in less instinctual and more deliberative ways. He also had a Critique of Pure Reason, which argued that in us, reason wasn't the answer to everything, even though our thought patterns were structured and reason was more profound than a substitute for instinct, reason could not answer every question, rather it was the way we creatures who possessed reason went about answering questions.

 Then one day an Evolutionary Psychologist said, "OK chaps! This is easy! Jealousy is all about how our males dutifully protect the purity of their genetic contribution to the future of our species." The enlightened's answer to that is "Bull Crap Sinbad!" And  I have argued that if you want to fight about the point blank error in Sinbad's happy go lucky approach to academic funding then you might be retarded.

 A "Kantian Shop Floor" reflects an understanding of us people that better aligns with a transcendental view of the human being that views us people in the way that the Stoics might, as opposed to the transactional view of the human being that views us as the hedonist might. And here the Stoics reflect an understanding of boundaries as preserving the ultimate happiness of the sacred. Hedonists may be jolly good fun but their boundlessness reflects the ultimate hangover of the profane. 

 In our exploration of Schlegel's transition from a Romanticism that saw the liberation of the body and the mind as a prime objective to a form of Romanticism that viewed white Catholic Nationalism as central to the release of the German Folk from the chains of foreign oppression and a return to a predestined purity of purpose, we hit on an understanding of the Sacred and the Profane which has shaken both Baxter and I to what remains of our yellow core.

 In an effort to recenter ourselves we had micro-waved cheese on toast and dreamed of beer, cigarettes, dancing girls and deep fried potato sandwiches smothered in salt and vinegar. 

Stoic Resignation or Transcendental Rebellion

Decor

 On any of the more vibrant Symbolic Orders of meaning, sacred and profane are both old hats. "Livelihood" is sacred. "Standard of Living" is profane. "Livelihood," implies an economy that values status and security. "Standard of Living," implies an economy of growth and income. As such you'd have to be retarded not to grasp that an ever improving profane is impossible but an ever improving sacred is possible. Go ahead, kick me to the curb, tell me I'm wrong, sack the monastery, sell the lead from the roof.

Boffing the Pool Boy

A Pool

 The argument from Kant is that because we people are reasonable we have a transcendental nature that enables us to transcend what the Enlightenment might have called "The Phenomenal Realm," but which Sociobiologists, evolutionary Psychiatrists, washing powder manufacturers and the Epstein Class would call "Biological Programming."

 In this area of "Boffing the Pool Boy" we have talked about how boundaries are a necessary reality for the "Sacred." It's always worth  having a look at Enlightenment ideas about the place the word "Sacred" has on the Symbolic Order. The enlightened argument was that everything in the world has either a Price or a Dignity. Something has a "Price" if it can be replaced by an equivalent. If something's irreplaceable then it has a "Dignity" and it's meaning ventures into the meanings of "Sacred."

 In Pool Boy Language, when you look at the face and don't see meat, instead see a person, the Pool Boy becomes "Sacred." The jealous other might vehemently disagree and in their demand for an obedience to boundaries request the death penalty but that still doesn't prevent the enlightened from seeing the Pool Boy as  creature capable of transcending biology from possessing "Dignity"and being "Sacred."

 The question goes this way : is an infidelity a breach of contract, a "Price" problem, or is it a desecration of the sacred, a "Dignity" problem. The answer cannot escape the emotion of jealousy, which as an emotion may be thought of as a transcendental creature screaming for the loss of an irreplaceable "Dignity." Or a transactional creature screaming for an adequate recompense that will replace what's been lost.

 Of the two, it should be pretty obvious where the Epstein Class has chosen to belong, and in my view no accident they all seem to be rich and famous.