Putting a finger on the problem…

Everybody has an opinion of what’s wrong with the show.  We can’t help at times to scan our surroundings and want to proclaim like Marcellus in Hamlet, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”  Our instinct on the matter is nothing new.  In many ways the historical conflicts and schisms we are living through are reflections of our interior states.

Putting a finger on the problem, and even harder, doing something about it, seems at times impossible.  I take comfort in the fact that Jung articulated how he saw the problem back in 1929.

“If science is an end in itself, man’s raison d’etre lies in being a mere intellect. If art is an end in itself, then his sole value lies in the imaginative faculty.  If making money is an end in itself, both science and art can quietly shut up shop.  No one can deny that our modern consciousness, in pursuing these mutually exclusive ends, has become hopelessly fragmented.  The consequence is that people are trained to develop one quality only; they become tools themselves.” Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, par. 731

My sense is that many of us have come a ways toward integrating these aspects in the way we live our lives.  Feeling like a tool lately?  What are you going to do about it?