The Disaterous Split in Western Civilization, Times Two

Many would agree that Western Civilization is falling apart, in fact is split in two. The general reactions to this are not yet showing a way that a new whole could emerge, because they also are split in two.?

Quotes are from Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and the New Ethic.

“...the Western inflation of the ego– that trend which has been so vehemently pursued by European civilization since the time of the Renaissance– still colors the individual's philosophy of life. This means that the feeling or obscure intuition of an existential peril and insecurity coexists with the certainty of an ego which believes that it can do, know, and organize everything and which rejoice is in the motto, “Where there's a will there's a way”. The polarization of these opposite positions– the self-assurance of the ego on the one hand and the ever-increasing pressure of the dark side on the other– finally leads to a split in the personality both of the individual and his group.

Within the split in the psyche there are two general reactions: one negative and nihilistic, and the other illusory and mystical.

The negative and nihilistic reaction shows a hostility to consciousness and a love of all things transgressive.?

“If the value-system of consciousness is an illusion, it follows that the renewal of consciousness is impossible and that the attempt to achieve it must be abandoned. The result is identification of the ego with collective anti-values…”?

Radical politics, popular culture, and now education, even in the lowest grades, are permeated by this identification with anti-values.

The illusory and mystical reaction seeks…

?“...a Utopian anticipation of a state of redemption…” and “believes that it has already achieved a state of being beyond the opposites. The ego attempts to evade the problem of darkness and the shadow side of the world and of man in an illusory way by means of a mystical, inflationary expansion of the individual...to be found in many mystical, sectarian, and political movements... Nowadays this redemptive character generally takes a political form, but it’s not difficult to see how, in this case, politics is the ‘opium of the people’, and, in fact, a substitute for religion.”?

A growing spirituality is emerging, promoting this mystical, inflationary expansion of the individual. However appealing the transport, however compassionate their advocacies (and they are wonderfully, if at times selectively, compassionate), if the problem of darkness has been evaded, or elided, it isn’t gone. The oneness of the collective assumes a shared, if unspoken, political bias in its members. And darkness lives on the other side.

The two reactions can exist side by side.

“Neither reaction is in fact able to abolish or resolve the reality of the shadow problem which modern man is required to deal with. Owing, however, to the instability of their protagonists, both the collectivist movement, with its tendency to nihilism, and its counterpart, which is coloured, very often, by the illusions of pseudo-liberalism, can have extremely dangerous effects in the realm of politics and social life.”?

And here is one dangerous effect for the individual:

“The tyranny of the collective and the experience that his personal constitution is conditioned at every point undermines the position of the individual, and a mass psychology which denies the significance of individual personality and principle deprives the ego of its last vestige of support and self-confidence.”

Then, if the collective doesn’t win, the individual feels defeated.

Neumann posits a New Ethic that shows a way out of the split in the collective and in the individual. It is not based on conventional or collective ideas of right and wrong, good and evil. What he offers is that our standard for what is good is: what promotes the integration of the personality, and what is evil is: what promotes its disintegration.?

Worth considering. It could lead to integration of the splits.