I remember the day I decided to start these notes. Like all important decisions, this one came to me like a gust, seizing my mind and forcing immediate action. In the next instant, the thought of what to write. The consensus: start with the acknowledgments. So I wrote about Nelson, Dostoevsky, Swift, Pondé and a few others, and it was not a week from the decision to the publication of the first notes. Fair enough. To the initiate, I see no reasonable posture other than that of humility; it is necessary to be accountable to those who contributed in some way to his initiation. Gratitude is a noble and profitable exercise, recognition is a requirement of character. I say this to conclude: the faculty of gratitude seems to me a good parameter to distinguish the one who, by voluntary effort, strives to be greater than his vanity.
The Ultimate Utopia Is Stability
The ultimate utopia is stability—and a gross error to seek it in a world that is essentially unstable. In a reality of continuous and compulsory movement, even fear loses its justifiable character: the word is adaptation.
Carl Jung’s Acuity
It is incredible to note the acuity of some of Jung’s observations when applied to general conduct and its natural reflexes in a society. When we perceive that there is a search for external validation operating incessantly and encompassing even strictly individual acts, we understand why there is such a high degree of submission to the environment—this one, considered en masse as the sovereign arbiter. From this to the public demand for conduct against one’s will, even if disguised, under penalty of jail or lynching, does not take much time. And the reflexes? How predictable! The social man has no personality; he is a puppet of the collective behavior. All it takes is for one imbecile to get up on a stage, convince a claque, and then the endless mass of sheep, out of fear and need, will be embracing him.
Playing of Psychologist…
I have fun analyzing myself from Jung’s point of view. Adopting Myers-Briggs’ already widespread terminology, I am, for as long as I can remember, an unmistakable INTJ (with I and J that only get bigger). I try to visualize myself as Jung would do, then I insert myself into my surroundings: impossible not to conclude that I burn alive in a fire! But how, still, has there not been the violent reaction one might expect from someone like me? Perhaps there has been, and of this the increasing radicalization of my behavior is evidence. An independent, solitary guy with a need for planning, action and control cannot react calmly if bombarded all the time with the unpredictable, thrown into an increasingly submissive, unstable and invasive situation, deprived of stability and solitude. Decide, always, even if wrongly, but reaping the fruits of the individual act—the opposite is unbearable! I imagine myself adjusting Jung’s glasses: “Boy, not like this. It’s time. Do something immediately…”