The Risk of Not Seeing the Obvious

The analytical mind, while endowed with great talent in giving depth to the object being analyzed, in scrutinizing it, finds it difficult to visualize it in a dynamic environment, interconnected and in motion. On one hand, the ease in penetrating and capturing the essence of things, and on the other, the difficulty in visualizing the whole. Summarizing or, in other words, outlining superficially is what this mind refuses, depriving itself of a panoramic and often enlightening vision. The need to isolate and always go deeper, besides causing a lot of useless effort, can deprive it of seeing the essential.

Day and Night…

In thoughts, the ultimate and extreme movement not executed in life. And the consequences, all of them afflicting and pulsating as soon as the head rests and the eyes close. The need to annihilate, never forgetting a single word, carrying out all the violent impulses controlled by the rational manifesting itself, every night, while silence reigns outside. In life, in art, the effort to slow them down, the effort to mask their monstrous character, the effort for the predominance of conscience. And so the mind submerges into double life.

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…”