Speaking of Carl Jung

[Ian Livingston]

Ha! Yeah, I failed postmodern communication 101. Can't keep it to the
superficial quip often enough.


On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:05 PM, Jed Kelestron <jedkelestron at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wish there were 'The Essential Ian' because I don't have time to read this post.
>
>
>
> On Mar 29, 2012, at 9:34 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm studying it when I'm unconscious.
>>
>> Really, Matthew, I do not believe Jung is some psychopompous guru who
>> spouted genius. I do not, on the other hand, dismiss him because I
>> know he was wildly wrong in many (even most) areas. I also find it
>> useful to know material in Plato, Freud, Lucretius, and Dylan, even
>> though I know they were all wildly wrong about many things. I read 'em
>> anyway, because great authors read 'em (or, in Dylan's case, hear 'em)
>> and their influence shows up in the work of others, and being able to
>> recognize allusions and influences increases my reading pleasure. I
>> can't read everything, either. There's no way I'll live long enough to
>> make it through my reading list. I'm a working stiff, so I only get so
>> many hours per year to read. But everything I read makes life a better
>> experience for me, personally, and helps me to become more available
>> to those with whom I spend time, so I have no intention of letting up
>> on it. Read Jung. I really enjoyed the volumes on alchemy. The notion
>> of syzygy is fascinating. I read them in conjunction with a
>> straight-through read of all Pynchon's novels and, although it
>> predisposed me to see Jung in too many places, it also made other
>> works available to me. Cormac McCarthy is another writer who is
>> strongly influenced by Jung--among others. But I only reach for
>> secondary sources to help me grasp difficult primary ones--except in
>> fields where I could never read the primary texts, such as math and
>> physics, among others. It is also, yes, I'll concede that, too, almost
>> impossible to call any non-fiction work a primary source, as every
>> discovery is built on work that has gone before, but I think you know
>> what I mean.
>>
>> We'll never know enough. That's the whole point of it all. I am more
>> entertained than offended by know-it-alls, when I meet 'em.
>>
>> Oh, and as to the location of the mind, well, serious neuroscientists,
>> Antonio Damasio for one, do not embrace the materialist claim that
>> mind is a function of the brain. Even those who favor the notion of
>> the embodied mind as a function of the entire physical organism find
>> room to be mystified, and leave certain areas of understanding to the
>> psychologists. There are, after all, it seems, things we understand
>> without knowing how they work.
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 8:22 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Good use!
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, March 29, 2012, Jed Kelestron wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've used it for a surfboard.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mar 29, 2012, at 8:12 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've not "read" the Red Book, only rolled in it's pictures.
>>>> Go there.
>>>>
>>>> On Thursday, March 29, 2012, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Back to Who might have read Wolin's The Seduction of Unreason? I have not.
>>>> I may now, BUT I have read some Wolin and have heard him speak once.
>>>> I think I read some of Wolin's Benjamin book and I know I read some of the
>>>> book on Heidegger he edited, since dealing with Heidegger was important to
>>>> me.
>>>>
>>>> I have read other philosophers on the conceptual emptiness of Freud
>>>> (and/or Jung by simple extension. That is, if the Unconscious goes, then the
>>>> Collective
>>>> Unconscious goes..). Grunbaum was one. Frederick Crews--a literary guy
>>>> previously cited here was another who turned on Freud(ianism)...
>>>>
>>>> I tell (usually to myself) one personal story. How, when I had first
>>>> discovered such ideas as Freud's, and full of confusion and wanting to learn
>>>> whatever "truth" was, I had read Sartre who argued against Freud's
>>>> conception of The Unconscious. I had a narrow, repressed upbringing,I say.
>>>> So, I was young and away from home (for the first time) at university [in
>>>> Toronto], yet felt overtly so happy to be on my own, to be learning every
>>>> day in a different country, full of life-and learning embracing happiness
>>>> (it seemed).
>>>>
>>>> That year,the song--later to appear in Vineland---I'm So LonesomeI Could
>>>> Cry was a pop chart hit. But I hated country music so I did not like it.
>>>> Overtly.
>>>> upon hearing it after some while of it being played often,one day when I
>>>> heard it, I was semi-overcome with an immense sadness. A feeling of home
>>>> sickness
>>>> from the song's lyrics I came almost immediately to believe.
>>>>
>>>> Which convinced me that The Unconscious and some other ideas which the
>>>> most logical philosophers and rationalists could refute with impeccable
>>>> scientific
>>>> reasoning, often missed something else, something perhaps true but
>>>> not so scientifically provable with---"you're gonna want cause and effect"
>>>> (?)----and, more literarily, "there are strangerthings in the world than in
>>>> all of your philosophy,Horatio".......
>>>>
>>>> this is one reason I love Pynchon and one way I think he uses such as
>>>> Freud and Jung........not JUST as conceits but as (some) truth carriers
>>>> metaphorically.......
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> From: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
>>>> To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>> Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 10:56 AM
>>>> Subject: Re: Speaking of Carl Jung
>>>>
>>>> I agree completely. Of course the question is how much do you interrogate
>>>> a text like Hegel's "Phenomenology of the Spirit" before going on to
>>>> secondary sources, and with the load of secondary material how does one
>>>> choose what to read? This is where one needs the guidance provided by
>>>> someone with experience and familiarity with the subject. In other words, a
>>>> professor or mentor of some sort.
>>>> As a character Jung is very interesting. His writing deserves to be read.
>>>> However, his ideas are hokum and the problem is that people continue to draw
>>>> on them because they continue to be granted legitimacy from certain
>>>> quarters.
>>>>
>>>> I'd like to take a gander at the Red Book. Must be bizarre.
>>>>
>>>> cheers Dave
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: David Mo
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant