The Perils of Hollywood, Madison Avenue and syphilis.

Sweet Annie and her Spider

No doubt some parts of Hollywood and Madison Avenue prefer a Jungian interpretation of myth. A follow your heart, personal growth, discover a true sense of self, the assurance that vulnerability is strength, blubbing like a baby is healthy and on into other cringe worthy expressions of sobriety. Other parts of Hollywood and Madison Avenue would prefer to reaffirm male authenticity by sending Clint Eastwood or John Wayne to prove their metal on the Eastern Front to look tough and smoke cigarettes in Stalingrad rather than endure the alternative of dying in a kitchen while making a vegetarian quiche. My own view, the Paleolithic Age started coming to an end about twenty thousand years ago, yet still lingers around like a mother's boy who misunderstood that head stone for the Paleolithic, that book for all and none, Thus Spoke Zarathustra which came from the devious mind of Friedrich Nietzsche who after eleven years of mental issues died childless at the age of 55 from complications of syphilis in the August of 1900.  The final eleven years of his life and his legacy was left to his sister, Therese Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche to manage. Therese's husband was a teacher and an anti-Semite activist who'd dreamed of creating an Aryan colony in Paraguay. He killed himself in San Bernardino, Paraguay, in 1889 at the age of 46. Mr and Mrs Förster were not exactly Joy to the World and bunny rabbits. As Lutherans they fundamentally approved of eternal struggle and the value of the end times. More exciting, Therese's selective misinterpretations of her brother's work supported her husband's activism and finally achieved a moment of fulfillment in 1933 when President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. The result, trains ran on time and Germany not Paraguay was hedged to become a blue eyed blond Aryan paradise. Therese had no children she died of a stroke and either syphilis or dementia in 1935, she was 91. The German Chancellor and a number of other fascist big-wigs, to add a veneer of veritas to their frail and unsupported understandings attended her funeral. Of interest, usually it takes about twenty years to die of Syphilis, which means, if it was Syphilis, Therese would have contracted it sometime in the First World War when she was around 71.

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.