Can Jung Teach Us Anything About MindShifting?


Carl Jung, frenemy of Sigmund Freud, and a pillar of Psychoanalysis.

He died in 1977, and in his later years talked about the interfaces between humans and technology. He felt that our relationship with technology would be the greatest danger we faced in the future. Here is a quote from one of his later interviews:

“The power of science and technics … is so enormous and indisputable that there is little point in reckoning up all that can be done and all that has been invented. One shudders at the stupendous possibilities. Quite another question begins to loom up: Who is applying this technical skill? in whose hands does this power lie? For the present, the state is a provisional means of protection, because, apparently, it safeguards the citizen from the enormous quantities of poison gas and other infernal engines of destruction which can be manufactured by the thousand tons at a moment's notice. Our technical skill has grown to be so dangerous that the most urgent question today is not what more can be done in this line, but how the man who is entrusted with the control of this skill should be constituted, or how to alter the mind of Western man so that he would renounce his terrible skill. It is infinitely more important to strip him of the illusion of his power than to strengthen him still further in the mistaken idea that he can do everything he wills. The slogan one hears so often in Germany, "Where there's a will there's a way," has cost the lives of millions of human beings.
… Man has no need of more superiority over nature, whether outside or inside. He has both in almost devilish perfection. What he lacks is conscious recognition of his inferiority to the nature around and within him. He must learn that he may not do exactly as he wills. If he does not learn this, his own nature will destroy him. He does not know that his own soul is rebelling against him in a suicidal way.”

Doesn't this presage a lot of what we are all feeling today? Don't you find it relevant?

Here is another warning from Jung:

“We need more understanding of human nature, because the only danger that exists is man himself — he is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. “

And he posited that there is a way out of this angst, as “Faith, hope, love, and insight are the highest achievements of human effort.”

How do you feel about MindShifting as a way to learn about human nature, as a way for us all to experience more faith, hope, love, and insight even as we are surrounded by the power of our technology?

The next MindShifting class starts April 22. Or, read the book.

Mindshifting Educators

Mindshifting is recognizing and shifting from the mindsets that hold us back to the mindsets that push us forward. I write about mindsets, Mindshifting, learning, and education, with the hope that these posts give readers more power over their own lives and helps them give others, like their students, more power as well.

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