Speaking of Carl Jung

[Jed Kelestron]

That's better. 



On Mar 29, 2012, at 10:36 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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