It is my understanding of Jung that the individuation process leads one away from the general madness of the collective. But then how is an individuated person to exist in a culture/society that is insane? Is the degree of social adaptedness an indicator of how much one is "really" an individual, and therefore conscious?
Hi Kafiri,
It's a very complex issue, I think . . . and an important question to ask, because if we assume that individuation is instinctually driven and therefore intended as an adaptive process, what is it that individuant's are actually adapting to?
Sometimes the common psychological usage of the term "adaptation" carries a meaning much closer to what we might more accurately call "socialization" or "indoctrination". Obviously, that is not compatible with the Jungian notion of individuation. Not in today's world, at least. But my guess is that this kind of indoctrination (very generally speaking) would have produced more or less healthy (adapted) individuals in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness. In other words, the tribal cohesion that results from our unconsciously expressed sociality instinct is evolutionarily successful in the tribal environment.
But in the modern world we have thousands of loosely affiliated tribes living together in the same space, off of the same resources. We cannot any longer allow ourselves to become indoctrinated to one tribe, one dogma, one totem . . . not without risking non-survival or at least limited adaptivity. Much of adaptivity today is a matter of being able to negotiate and relate to many tribes simultaneously. Doing so successfully greatly improves our chances of developing strong support networks and gaining access to a wider range of resources. This network of resources and support relationships is ideally more functional, because it comes closer to approximating a fit, complex system . . . one with fail-safes and redundancies built it.
The "cognitive organ" that we developed to be able to negotiate in such networks (albeit on a smaller, more tribal scale) is the ego. What I think we have in the modern world is an environment that places much greater demands on the ego than the ancestral, tribal environment did. One of the obstacles to the modern individual is developing an ego that can navigate this modern environment efficiently. Some of the social traits that used to be beneficial to tribal living are now impediments. For instance, tribal prejudices (e.g., classism, racism, religionism, etc.).
In the past, the beliefs or dogmas of the tribe helped unify the group into a more successful social/collective organism. But today, many prejudices cut of potentially fruitful resources. The modern "Multitribe" (founding its philosophy on post-enlightenment humanism) even looks at such prejudices as ethically-impaired. Social morality has always been the expression (more or less unconscious) of "what is good for the group's success".
But giving up prejudices and age-old tribal dogmas is painfully difficult for us. It requires "consciousness", or the ability to see from another person's perspective, even a person quite unlike oneself. Therefore, consciousness asks of us to be able to see more of ourselves in others/Others . . . and to increasingly see differences between people that are based on tribal affiliation as arbitrary. This arbitration of tribal affiliations is a great threat to those of us who remain insistent upon our tribal identities and affiliations. It is an attack on the gods or totems . . . from the perspective of the individuals and groups who remain tribally affiliated or identified.
At least since the 20th century, it seems we have been in a period of backlash. Enough pressure to modernize/de-tribalize was exerted that it polarized those people who were ready to embrace modernization against those people who felt it was a violation of the sacred totems and dogmas. It may be more accurate to say that, within each of us, such a battle is raging between our tribalist and our modern natures/inclinations. After all, even in the more humanistic, so-called "liberal" category of people, there are many still seeking a tribe. Atheists and naturalists and scientists also tend to gravitate toward tribalism, not just religionists and fundamentalists of all stripes.
What we've seen in America since the end of the 70s is the rise of evangelical, tribalistic Christianity into the political arena. This belief-group was becoming an endangered species . . . because it primarily just wanted to be left alone and not have to adapt. But its maladaptation started to impair its survivability, and so it set out to empower itself socially, seeking political presence, increasing its aggression . . . and finding a powerful ally in the neoconservative movement. It's a Faustian pact (when looked at unblinkingly), because the evangelical community must sacrifice any sort of philosophical or spiritual sense of ethics and purpose in order to be bolstered by the economic power of the neoconservative movement. But the evangelical attitude is that it doesn't want to think, it just wants to believe and be left alone. So it grants the neoconservatives and a few morally ambiguous go-betweens associated with the evangelical community all right to make policy and determine ideology.
The neoconservatives have really jerked the evangelical community around . . . but they have thus far been able to blame all dissatisfactions on the "liberals" (or on some group of Others like illegal immigrants). The contemporary Democratic party has done something similar to its "liberal" constituency, but perhaps less drastically and less successfully than the neoconservatives have.
In any case, this is just an example of the "fundamentalist backlash" that is basically the cry of tribalism. If there were no threat to tribalistic fundamentalists, there would be no backlash. But this is all the ideological facade spray-painted over the real evolutionary fluctuations of modern society. The people of true power, those who determine the economy don't want pure tribalism. Tribalism is not as profitable on the global, economic stage as modernism is. Modernism means more and more complex interconnectivity among all kinds of people and groups (and tribalism is segregationist and divisive as a rule). More "commerce" means more profit (to put it very simply, but not, I think, inaccurately). Tribalism tends to be more isolationist; it has relatively limited interest in trade with Others.
But although both the empowered (read: wealthy) neoconservatives and the empowered liberals want "globalism" in the market, a sociopathic contingent of these globalists has an even greedier idea (that so far has failed because of its impracticality . . . but continues to tempt). These people just can't get the luscious idea out of their heads that if the "best" of globalism could be properly mated to the "best" in tribalism, unbelievable profits could be had (by the very few, of course). That is, they want to keep the global trade structure (even accelerate it when possible), but they also want the markets to be controlled to insure extreme profit making (for those who control the markets). This is the philosophy behind movements like the World Bank.
What this basically means is that first world corporate interests want to "buy" third world governments that will return the favor of the empowerment and backing afforded them by the corporate interests by subjugating the people they govern, allowing extremely low-priced exports to be sold to first world countries. This is of course terrible for the working class populations of these third world countries. The U.S. and Western Europe have decimated Latin America for hundreds of years by employing this tactic. It involves undermining democracy in these Latin countries and installing or supporting fascist dictators . . . simply because this allow the goods exported from these countries to be purchased cheaply in the first world.
There are many subtle complexities to this, of course . . . many of which I don't well understand. But this is the gist of it. Democracy at home, fascism abroad. This has been the economic plan of the U.S. for some time now . . . and the neocons simply want to increase this pattern. Fascism is a form of mass tribalism, although it is not a healthy, adaptive form (and no mass tribalism could ever be adaptive), because it depends on terror to generate "unnatural" or non-instinctual cohesion in the tribe. But fascism is dependent on more than just terror. In almost every instance, fascism is also dependent on outside, wealthy interest funding fascist power. Without that funding, most dictatorships would probably be overthrown by the oppressed people fairly quickly. The wealthy outside interests fund dictatorships in order to have access to cheap goods. Everybody wins . . . except the majority, working-class populations of the oppressed countries (and therefore, the majority of the human species).
Of course, first world populations like ours are entirely complicit in this abhorrent process. So the powerful interests have to spend a vast amount of money at home to run a propaganda machine to keep consciousness of this whole system away from the voters.
This is the situation we are trying to individuate in . . . and it is not very favorable. Corporate-political spin discourages consciousness of Otherness (because it has been radically abusing Otherness for ages). So if we want to develop a social consciousness, we have to seek alternative sources of news and information. The evangelical community in America has never had any interest in seeking outside information . . . and so doesn't even recognize that, in today's world, neglecting to inspect and critique information sources is deeply unethical. But that is what modernism is: diverse information sources. And that is one of the many aspects of the modern that the evangelicals don't want to be troubled with.
But because so many of us don't want to be troubled with the Problems of the Modern, the more sociopathic manipulators continue to structure society as much to their own financial benefit as they can get away with. That means encouraging the polarization between the modernists and the tribalists by stimulating conflict over so-called "hot-button issues". The ones that have no real resolution (like abortion) work the best. The important thing is just to keep the battle of the Opposites raging.
In order to understand the structure of modern society in terms like these (or in much more sophisticated terms along the same line), we have to be able to evaluate information accurately. That accuracy is dependent on our ability to access multitudes of diverse information and also to discern the personal agendas behind the information sources. To discern agendas in others accurately, one must be both informed about the needs of others and also knowledgeable about human psychology (which is derived through self-knowledge). So to be successful modernists, we must (among other things), become information specialists and psychologists. The individuation process can be a great aid in this, because it increases familiarity with Otherness and with self. Individuation moves us toward more complex, more "whole" perspectives of human psychology. It increases our understanding of agency on many levels, because its makes a natural study of our projective consciousness. It expands and illuminates the intricacies of the self/other psychological dynamic that is the core of our psychology.
But individuation is not merely strategic and selfish. To increase one's understanding of the self/other dynamic is the bring our instinctual sense of morality (that what is "like us" is worthy of rights, protections, empathy, connection) into a much larger plane of being. We cannot expand our understanding of the self/other dynamic without also applying our ethical sense to this expansion. So individuation means the instinctual sense of sameness that was initially expressed through tribalistic participation mystique is channeled through individuated consciousness (the development of the unconscious ego) and gets applied to all kinds of other people, animals, and even things (if taken far enough, abstracted or conceptualized enough . . . which is what the organ called the ego does).
Our environment today (modern society) is in a transitional state. We are all both tribalists and modernists . . . and some lean more to one side or the other. This transitional environment means that there is nothing fixed to adapt to. We can individuate and adapt to "pure modernism" . . . but we will still be faced with enormous antagonistic social pressures, because "pure modernism" is not considered the norm. The modernism that has emerged has not emerged consciously, but because it was more evolutionarily successful. That is, we don't really know what we are doing. We didn't mean to get ourselves in this predicament. But now we are here and must either adapt or go extinct in the face of dire evolutionary pressure.
The anti-individuation pressure society (in its "madness") exerts on the would-be individuant is two pronged. On one hand, there are so many forces of tribalism that compel us to be or stay unconscious. These are extremely tempting because quite often these tribalistic forces have sweet, juicy things to offer us. For instance, Eros, community, support, belonging, protection, enablement. Hugely important things for our radically social species. Also, tribalistic affiliation and its companion unconsciousness can help us avoid many moral responsibilities. For our species (like all species), morality is relative. Moral decision making is terribly hard. But tribal affiliation allows us to wash our hands of much responsibility. If the tribe asserts that such and such an act is OK, then there is the support of Eros behind any potential unethical act. The individual, on the other hand, is responsible for all consequences of his or her actions and attitudes.
And the truth is that, especially in complex modern life, we are constantly faced with morally gray decisions to make. It is easy to make a black/white decision . . . but to live with oneself when forced to chose (and guess which is) the lesser of evils is not easy . . . not without community or the support of friends or family or some other tribe. Being part of a tribe makes all these morally ambiguous decisions mostly routine and pre-determined (that is what tribal dogma is for). The conscious individual is not in an ethically enviable state.
The other prong of difficulty facing the individuant is the problem that individuation (beyond the first few blinks of consciousness) places the individual into conflict with various tribes. Eros, empathy, humanization are often entirely dependent upon affiliation. Only those who affiliate are granted human status in the group. The individuant therefore has to choose constantly between connection to others and consciousness. We have evolved to be connected to others. Some people are more solitary than others, but most people lose their sense of meaning if they start to feel too alone.
One of the great struggles for the individuant is feeling (consciously) that s/he wants to be connected with others, but realizing that many others will only accept such connection under the condition of affiliation and essentially unconsciousness. The individuant is thrown into a situation in which his or her god (the Self) is in conflict with his or her tribe. Navigating and negotiating this inevitable conflict is almost always excruciating. It isn't as if the individuant doesn't want to be connected to others. In fact, the increased sense of morality and empathy that comes with individuation allows the individuant to feel more like others (even as s/he recognized more and more differences among everyone).
It is really no wonder that modern existence is maddening . . . and for individuants most of all. Which is why so many potential individuants end up in psychotherapy. These are people being torn by the evolutionary event at hand in the Problem of the Modern. Of course, most who feel some pull toward individuation find that individuation demands too much of them, too many sacrifices. It seemed exciting and "soul-searching" at first, but when the shadow work became apparent, the naive excitement rapidly faded away.
But modern society being as multi-tribal and opportunistic as it is, "failed or failing individuants" have been able to find what they feel is the best of both worlds. That is, their dabbling in individuation work has given them an interest and allowed for the formation of interest groups of people who share in this individuation dabbling. As a result, we now have a number of tribes of what are essentially "individuation dabblers". This is what the so-called New Age is based on. There was a very similar New Age market in "religious commodities" around the turn of the Common Era, and Christianity was one of its products (eventually attaining monopoly status).
It's inevitable that tribes of individuation dabblers will form and that their memberships will greatly outnumber individuant's who have stuck with the process. The call of the tribe is enormously powerful . . . and to be fair, what most people want from the stirrings of individuation is to find some place where they can feel accepted as an individuation dabbler or non-radical individual.
The only real problem with the various individuation dabbling tribes of the New Age (among which I would count all walks of Jungians) is that these tribes are not really adaptive socially (nor could they be, because they haven't really individuated). That is, they have no increased ability to navigate diverse information sources or understand agency in social interaction with great facility. Likewise, they do not have a sense of ethics or "conceptual empathy" that reaches beyond their tribal affiliations (although these New Age tribes often like to wield exalted dogmas of universal oneness, these are really only "make-believe" and are rarely if ever put into practice . . . and the falsity of such dogmas as banners waved is typically evident in the calm ease with which oneness is promoted . . . as if complex, morally gray decision making is an entirely obvious and stress free enterprise!).
These cults or clubs may find happiness in their tribalism, but they are too socially dysfunctional to have any positive impact on greater society. Only rarely are they socially active and helpful to others in need . . . and their idea of "consciousness-raising" is not truly informative (is not a tool of useful information evaluation for others), but rather differs not at all from "indoctrination". I.e., it is self-interested.
But can real individuants, who would seem to be a small and inevitably alien-seeming minority do anything to benefit the modernization of society? Or are they too underrepresented, too radically different?
That seems to me to be the real question that will determine our future. If individuants take actions to "raise consciousness" will anyone care? Will others recognize the usefulness in improved information evaluation and conceptual empathy even with the attached cost of potential ostracization and limitation of Eros? I'd like to think there is hope . . . but I don't really know how to best go about this. Other than helping the people we can help to embrace their own individuation, by raising consciousness, trying to propose better ways of evaluating various sources of information and methods of comprehending agency and human psychology (the evolutionists, for instance, have been challenging the agency of spiritualism and trying to explain it more accurately as biologically related . . . but they generally have a very long way to go before they will have much influence over spiritualists).
But the potential progress in a redefinition of the language in which we understand agency or psyche/spirit is that it could lead to de-tribalizing spiritualistic mindsets. As these ideologies are deconstructed in this way, the chance to replace them with a more universal, conceptual sense of empathy is increased. No more Us vs. Them, because the definition of Us has expanded to include more. I see that as the potential of rationalistic or scientific language in the realm of spirituality. Deconstructing dogma stands to increase ethical consciousness, because dogmas (religions, creeds, etc.) are essentially arbitrary restrictions on the application of human empathy and instinctual morality. Dogmas (directly or indirectly) define who is in and who is out. Tribalistic dogmas are always less ethical than individuated consciousness. After all, they were designed to serve and protect the tribe.
Yours,
Matt
