The Self, the Not Self, and the Animus

I've been traveling all night to reach the coast of new found land
To meet the girl from my dream... she's not there
I sit down by the sea at the coast of new found land
and I dream... I dream... about leaving.
-Seabound, "Avalost [vox]"

There's a young lady of my acquaintance who has been seeing visions of a mysterious stranger. She's been having romantic troubles of late, not thrilled with the avenues for companionship open to her. More and more, her mind has been turning to these thoughts of the mysterious stranger who will come and sweep her off her feet. Obviously, the plot of every Harlequin romance novel ever written. The bodice rippers wouldn't sell if there weren't a market, and with that market an undercurrent of something in our collective imagination.

So who is this mysterious stranger? He has no face, no name, few discernible attributes. His form is in shadow, his mien enigmatic. What little we do know of him is exotic somehow; foreign and unusual. Is he perhaps Jung's animus given form in the imagination?

`The mysterious stranger is the Other, the Not Self. Where the Self is known, the Not Self is mysterious. Where the physical features of the Self are familiar, a daily observation, the Not Self is foreign and exotic looking. The thoughts, desires, and motives of the Self are known, intimately familiar; the Not Self's thoughts are unknown. The Not Self has few apparent limitations, while the Self's shortcomings and vices are deplorably known. The Not Self is everything the Self is not.

All this mystery allows the Not Self endless possibilities of being. The known exists as one thing only, the unknown can exist in an endless plenum of possibilities. The unknown is also endless. Whenever we meet someone new, they are unknown. Being unknown, they can be anything. Slowly, as they reveal themselves, their endless possibilities reduce themselves to one actuality. The Not Self, being unphysical, being an archetypical ideal, will never allow itself to be reduced from possibilities to actuality.

Because the Not Self can be everything, without ever being anything, it never disappoints. We spend years trying to realize the Not Self in other people, with each never quite managing to rise to the level we seek. In time, perhaps, we learn to settle with someone who matches our ideal of the Not Self as closely as we can find. Otherwise, we might spend most of our lives in pursuit of the ideal of the Not Self.

...

In Carl Jung's theories, the Animus represent the eternal male principle, as the anima represents the female principle.. The anima/us is the first of the unconscious archetypes that the maturing mind confronts, the principle by which the self is molded. The Self defines itself in opposition to the anima/us who is the Other, the opposing principle. Confrontation with the anima/us is perhaps one of the most important processes for defining the self; the eternal hum of yin and yang. The journey of the Self – the Campbellian hero's journey, if you will – is the eternal pursuit of the Other, the anima/us. The anima/us is sought after, but never caught; never defined, never demarcated. the Self seeks completion through the Other, as neither Self nor Other is complete without its counterpart.

In this case, the idealized, mysterious Not Self that is the center of romantic fantasy is a manifestation of the animus. The sense of mystery and the unknown is the counterpart to then known, rationalized Self; the pursuit of the Not Self is the pursuit of the animus. It is the quest for completion.

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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org

A Salute

As I traversed the river bridge today, I passed a man. He was an older gentleman, with greying hair, shirtless, getting round about the middle. He was jogging, struggling through the sun and the heat and the humidity. Cars whizzed passed on the freeway mere steps away.

Over his shoulder rested a flagpole. On it were flying a full-sized U.S. flag over a black MIA-POW flag. Both flags whipped back and forth under the turbulence of the freeway and the steady river breeze.

The tableau had all the sanctity of a profound religious ritual. An onerous ritual performed at some cost; a ritual requiring commitment and will, one that could be easy to blow off as too hard. Yet it was a ritual with no exoteric meaning. He conveyed no clear message: this was no protest, no political statement. What intrinsic meaning he intended, only the man himself would know. Any other meaning is only that which the viewer chooses to ascribe to the sacred rite from without.

Still, I'm left with the unshakable belief that some sacred truth was on display. A sacred truth that required strength, will, and commitment from its prophet. Sir, I salute your truth, and honor your sacred rite - even if it remains unnoticed by everyone else on that bridge. Perhaps I honor it because no one but you and I will?

The most sacred rites of all are those done for no-one but oneself and one's spirit.

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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org 

The New World Order is craftier than we thought.

Measles is making a comeback in the U.S.

Gaining strength in the patriot community is the belief that vaccines, especially the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine, cause higher rates of autism. Some cite this as a New World Order plot to reduce the population - kill them off by mandating the use of dangerous vaccines and all that.

So, to fight back, there are communities and clusters of people who have chosen not to vaccinate their children. Take that, NWO!

As a result, these children are now more vulnerable to measles. Some of them are dying.

Umm... take that, NWO?

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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org 

Swine Flu Explanations

Let's play a little game. Following are some of the explanations I've heard put forward - in all seriousness - for the current outbreak of swine flu. For fun, I've included an original theory: the most outlandish one I could think of. Find the one that's mine among the theories of the fringe:

1) The flu is transmitted by cell phone towers. Turn off your phone before you're infected, and stay away from these pillars of death.

2) The current flu strain was engineered in a military-industrial-intelligence laboratory. It accidentally escaped.

3) The flu is genetically engineered to kill only Mexicans as a eugenic weapon deliberately released by the global elite.

4) The swine flu virus is the genetic counterpart to the Confiker computer worm. The anticlimactic non-action of Confiker through April first was just a cover for its release of the virus.

5) The current flu outbreak of the widespread use of flu and other vaccines. Some of those vaccines my have been intentionally contaminated.

6) The only reason anyone is getting infected with this flu is because their immune systems have been weakened by years of flouride in the water, heavy metals, and stealth infections.

7) There is in fact no swine flu. Instead, the Mexican people have rebelled against their government and have begun a civil war. The American mainstream is covering up the deaths of the Mexican rebels with a spurious story of 'swine flu'.

8) President Obama is patient zero. He was deliberately infected before his trip to Mexico of recent weeks. The evidence is in his initial speech to the Group of Twenty in Europe; the President suffered two coughing fits during the speech.

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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org 

Non-verbal Communication

One continuing difficulty with communication is in the fact that our mechanisms of conveying meaning lag behind the change in social behaviors and conditions. Coupled with the fact that almost every means of communicating becomes subverted by those who wish to deceive, it is sometimes a wonder that any meaningful exchange occurs at all.

Witness my experience of last night. I was returning home from my place of employment, and needed to stop at a bank branch to use the ATM. The time was around 12:30 AM when I pulled into the bank's parking lot. The night was dark, and cold, though not unpleasantly so. As I entered the parking lot, a young woman crossed my path and entered the bank, presumably with the intent of using the ATM herself.

Conventional mores suggest that it was my role to wait patiently, and use the ATM in turn after she had finished. There was little difficulty in me for that. However, what ought I do to signal my intent to do so?

As is habitual, I was dressed in black. Much of my outerwear is black leather, and the overall tone is somewhat quasi-military. My general manner of dress conveys a set of tribal signals, and makes use of certain ingrained archetypes to send preconscious signals of danger to many members of the mainstream culture. In short, I sometimes frighten people. There are certain reasons why I do this, and allow it to happen, but those reasons did not apply to this situation.

How then was I to convey that I had no intent in this situation to be dangerous? I lacked any intent or inclination to assault, rob, rape, or kill this young woman. I merely wished to use the ATM when she had finished her transactions. However, I was conscious of the suggestion that my intent was not clear.

Was I to follow her into the building, waiting some socially acceptable distance away? Or should I wait outside, knowing that doing so might be construed as "lurking in the shadows?" I decided to wait outside, underneath a street light, with my hands visible and a stance that suggested restful waiting; a stance hat was not poised for sudden movements. I offered her a "good evening" as she left the building, and moved slowly and with copious personal seperation into the building.

I hope I didn't frighten her. Doing so was not my intent.

Emergency Exit

I was walking past the Macy's store in downtown Minneapolis (formerly Marshall Fields, formerly Dayton's). Lining the inside of the windows is a glossy, opaque, black sheeting. The black is opened up here and there to display store items: mannequins with the latest fashions, shoes, handbags, assorted consumer products.

Then I noticed the door. It read "EMERGENCY EXIT - ALARM WILL SOUND." The letters read from left to right when viewed from the street, and were positioned in front of the opaque blackness. The words would be reversed and unreadable from inside the building.

This then couldn't be an exit from the building. Is this, perhaps, the emergency exit from the bustle and stress of a modern urban center? Is it an emergency exit from a nation that is declining politically, crumbling economically, and terminally fractured socially? Or is this perhaps an emergency exit from a cold, cynical, and ultimately meaningless world?

Where does it go to?

I tried the door. It was locked. No alarm sounded.

At least it wasn't an emergency.

Addendum to Hyperreality

For a brief time this summer, there existed a program on the Genesis Communications Network titled "the Ron Paul Roadshow". This program was hosted by Chris Moore and Linda Hunnicut from the "Ron Paul RV".

On the first day that this radio show went into production, the Genesis producer inquired if there was a bird of some sort in the studio. He was informed that the source of the apparent bird sounds was in fact Buddy, a small monkey of indeterminant species. Buddy continued to play a small part in the production of each episode of the Ron Paul Roadshow.

Much later, in a discussion at the Genesis studio, the subject of Buddy the monkey was broached. It was observed that there may exist a radio show of the "wacky morning" variety that would employ regular monkey noises. However, Buddy the monkey would not serve well on those radio shows, as he cannot be expected to perform on cue. Therefore, such a radio show usually would employ either a sound board (either physical or digital) with pre-recorded monkey noises, or a human voice simulating monkey noises.

This is an example of hyperreality. A non-physical monkey is experienced by an audience as more real than an actual flesh and blood monkey.

An Allegory of Rivers

Picture a rapidly moving but pacific appearing stream. It winds over the terrain, never ceasing its flow. As the stream flows over its bed, a careful observer notices that its surface is not completely even. Whorls, eddies, ripples and ebbs appear, disturbing the streams otherwise placid flow.

Underneath the surface, all is not so simple. The stream flows over a rocky bad, tumbling and jostling over rocks and logs. Currents bend around obstacles, and the entire stream is shaped by the form of its bed; it bends and twists within its banks. The stream is sometimes wide and shallow, sometimes narrow and deep, and always more complex than it appears on the surface.

Silt runs underneath the sunlight skin, the consequence of water's rubbing further upstream, a process visible only by its consequences. Fish dart here and there, their presence only guessed at by the flash of sun off scales as one surfaces momentarily. Their maneuvers take place in an environment alien and isolated from the outside world.

This stream is a human mind, its surface the visage exposed to the outside world. The whorls and eddies we may see are the consequences of submerged obstacles we cannot. The aim of counseling, then, is not to remove the rocks and logs and physical obstructions of the stream bed – that is too complex a task, and one will destroy the nature of the stream in the process. Only the dead are so uniform. Instead, it is the job of the counselor to help smooth and round the obstacles of the stream bed, so they cause less conflict and confusion as the stream progresses ever onward to a new horizon.

Ruminations on the Silver Key

"I dreamed last night that I was a butterfly. Or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man?"

"No, you just log on regularly to ButterfliesOnline.Com"

First off, The Silver Key.

Hinduism, Platonism, certain modes of Buddhism, Hare Krishnaism, Gnosticism, and The Matrix all suggest that the world we experience via our senses is not the real one. They suggest that beyond the veil of what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is a wholly different plane of reality. DesCartes postulated the possibility of the existence of a demon whose purpose it is to decive us as to the nature of reality. Further, most assert that this other reality is somehow fundamentally different. It is more real, or more important. Only an enlightened or illuminated few are able to perceive this world; lesser lights may feel there is something more to reality than they are able to know. But the goal of these philosophies is to attempt to break through and find out what one can about this true reality.

The theory of hyperreality also posits that the world we live in exists somewhere between the real and the virtually real. Disney serves up reality that is more real than the real thing. Joe Dowling wants fake red cabbages that look more like red cabbages than actual, real red cabbages. The milk in the pictures on the front of cereal boxes is Elmer's glue and water; it looks more like milk than milk. The symbol representing a thing is more real than the real thing [much more on this later].

Meanwhile, it has become fashionable in certain circles to decry "virtual world" web experiences and those who use them. Whether it's World of Warcraft, Second Life, or the world wide web as a whole, the recurring cry is "get a life!" Granted, this level of virtual reality is not total - although immersive, there is no way at present of mistaking WoW for sensory input in the real world. One biological body sends out signals to the mind: hunger, thirst, fatigue. Although there are those few persons who - considered psychologically unbalanced by many - confuse the importance of the two planes of exisistence, life goes on, at becomes easy to sense which is the more fundamental mode. Death is trivial in WoW, it is not in the human existence.

What puzzles me, then, is why choose? What makes some planes of reality more "real" than others? Why are some modes superior to others, and why choose? If we as a species accomplish a jump to a true virtual reality (or a multiverse of virtual realities), does that represent an expansion of ourselves, or a diminishment? Is enlightenment just a realization that all reality is virtual?