The harvest of Individuated Jackasses.

Ironweed Bloom

Freud died of mouth cancer in London, two days after Germany invaded Poland. For those in doubt or who may have been persuaded otherwise by conniving and devious men in suits sitting behind desks, the invasion of Poland occurred on the First of September 1939, it was the beginning of a World War that ended on the Second of September 1945 with the surrender of Japan. Oh Goody! In 1961 Karl Jung finished his last book, "Approaching the Unconscious," and in that same year, in Switzerland, on the anniversary of D Day, he died of heart problems. I was about nine or ten when he died and he was 85. Why now? The answer lies in the following sloppy précis of Jung's work:  "...integrating the unconscious into the conscious to raise a well balanced authentic self...." Worth noting that this account, for Jung, the authentic self was to be realized by integrating the unconscious self into the conscious self. But at the same time Jung probably never used the words authentic or well balanced. Those words may have come when the clear and rather obvious employment opportunities in head doctoring became more and more apparent. A name, a glass framed certificate, a title, an office with a leather couch, a pretty word and bang goes the unconscious self in this search for a happy and sterile authentic. There is nothing authentic about a well disciplined, hard-working mind managing something like a Department of Health and Human Services or anything else. No sir! Banjaxed, half witted and kettle drum crazy, that's closer to the free willed authentic of the unconscious and woe unto ye should such a deranged individual sit behind a resolute desk. What Jung suggested was, the unconscious self and the conscious self were engaged in a process of individuation. Freud didn't mess around either. He offered no cure, like a boarding school matron what Freud gave you was a couple of bandages before he kicked you back to the front lines. All the same, if we live long enough, happy days will be here again for us old people when casting a net across the political and theological spectrum fails to yield a rich harvest of individuated jackasses

The Consequences of 1983

We Twine to the Left

All right, rock on Tommy, it's Friday! Baxter might have moved a couple of inches to the left, Ivan's porking up more than somewhat, and by most accounts we should have been following the Lead Bull into the night at least two months ago. But no, looks like we're going to have to endure another cardinal error by the Church of Rome. You can't claim responsibility for a couple of "Meaningful Coincidences" on the internet, die of galloping leukemia at the age of fifteen and then five years later become a Saint without some sort of underhanded and untoward politicking. How did this happen? I'll tell you! 1983, a year that will live in infamy, and at the time I remember being asked to leave a bar for warning anyone who'd listen that this is exactly what would happen if Pope John Paul in a most thoughtless and uncaring manner demoted Saint Winifred, did away with the venerable full time position of Devil's Advocate and replaced it with someone who's given the washing powder title, Promoter of the Faith. Talk about playing a guitar in the Sistine Chapel to keep the youth out of the pinball arcades. The beautiful Saint Winfred is Welsh, she died in 660 AD, in her time she caused a great many genuine wells, she is the patron saint of virgins, martyrs, victims of abuse, incest, and unwanted advances, as well as healing and integrity, and frankly so what if in the course of her saintly career she might have bumped off a number of overly amorous princes and the odd price gouging grocer. We're all doomed! 

Synchronicity and Jung, a layer or a field.

Coincidence, maybe?

Let's talk Jung on what he called synchronicity, but first let's mention syncopation, the unanticipated offbeat which puts a bounce into a musical score that turns waltz into the wide eyed intensity of groove, jitterbugging, clash, cold weather swing and Doot. Why mention syncopation? Because in quantum physics there are currently at least 17 quantum fields. A field in physics is the word that describes an influence that isn't confined to a point but can be felt here as well as a billion miles away or in the case of an electric gramophone record player can be heard or felt 50 yards away by an average human ear. In a dance hall a gramophone record of the Merry Widow's Waltz, followed by a recording of the band Freur's Doot Doot, will fill a field with two rather different influences, moods, stories, cultures. With respect to synchronicity, it's Jung who suggests that in interactions between the internal mind and the external world there are sometimes moments of synchronicity. What's that? Jung offers this definition, synchronicity is a "meaningful coincidence" of events without a clear and obvious causal relationship. Along with a number of other possibilities, Jung suggested an acausal series of events that qualified as a "meaningful coincidence," might well come from a layer within reality where the psyche and the material world are intertwined. Jung didn't use the word field, he used the word layer. If he'd added the words or field to layer it would have made good sense to me.

Bias in Discourse

Sunflower

One of the most unattractive words in the current universe is the word Proto-Consciousness. One of the most obnoxious sentences in the English Language, and I have to paraphrase: "The warm, wet, and noisy environment of the brain is hostile to delicate quantum states." Sure, anything like the word moist suggests some kind of Christian Mingle and should be avoided, but we're not Milquetoast for god's sake. We people are an out of control example of the anomaly that is life. And yet, thanks to Descartes and whoever else he might have slept with, the offering from Process Philosophers that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, not an emergent property, does seem very wacky. So it's inevitable that words like moist and prefixes such as proto will enter the discourse.