Truly fascinating. I did not read the full essay by Jung, but I thoroughly enjoyed your commentary on it. Based on the excerpts and your essay, I think Jung is trying to explain an emergent property of humans. Just as you cannot describe a murmuration with a single bird, you must have a community of humans to see the patterns that emerge---which he frames as "gods" or a collective unconscious. I can see that Jung was an astute observer of human behavior. As a Christian myself, I cannot help but see things through a spiritual lens, and I think the fact that emergent properties of humans exist does not preclude the interaction between the physical plane of reality and the spiritual plane. It seems very likely to me that Jung was conflating psychological principles with the evidence of spiritual action---good or evil.
Thanks! Yea, I think that's a good way to put it. Jung definitely has a spiritual side - I don't think he'd be content with a purely materialist interpretation of his theory - but for our purposes 'emergent property' is basically what he means.
I need to read more Jung to be sure, but I think he'd argue that it's not so easy to distinguish the psychological and the spiritual. And a psychology that doesn't recognise this will always be incomplete.
Thanks, a great summary. Concerning environmental conditioning, I.e., rain forest vs. desert, how do you explain the diff between Eskimo’s and Teutons? They both lived thousands of years in the cold hostile north. And yet their cultures and appearance couldn’t be different.
Also, why is it that of all the vast multitude of human groups only Europeans, and in particular Northern Europeans, have blond and red hair and blue eyes?
Truly fascinating. I did not read the full essay by Jung, but I thoroughly enjoyed your commentary on it. Based on the excerpts and your essay, I think Jung is trying to explain an emergent property of humans. Just as you cannot describe a murmuration with a single bird, you must have a community of humans to see the patterns that emerge---which he frames as "gods" or a collective unconscious. I can see that Jung was an astute observer of human behavior. As a Christian myself, I cannot help but see things through a spiritual lens, and I think the fact that emergent properties of humans exist does not preclude the interaction between the physical plane of reality and the spiritual plane. It seems very likely to me that Jung was conflating psychological principles with the evidence of spiritual action---good or evil.
Thanks! Yea, I think that's a good way to put it. Jung definitely has a spiritual side - I don't think he'd be content with a purely materialist interpretation of his theory - but for our purposes 'emergent property' is basically what he means.
I need to read more Jung to be sure, but I think he'd argue that it's not so easy to distinguish the psychological and the spiritual. And a psychology that doesn't recognise this will always be incomplete.
Thanks, a great summary. Concerning environmental conditioning, I.e., rain forest vs. desert, how do you explain the diff between Eskimo’s and Teutons? They both lived thousands of years in the cold hostile north. And yet their cultures and appearance couldn’t be different.
Also, why is it that of all the vast multitude of human groups only Europeans, and in particular Northern Europeans, have blond and red hair and blue eyes?
Interesting, I'll check it out