Carl Jung Sez...

[rucky]

"Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population. One should not overestimate the thickness of this stratum. It varies from country to country in accordance with national temperament. Also, it is regionally dependent on public education and is subject to the influence of acutely disturbing factors of a political and economic nature. Taking plebiscites as a criterion, one could on an optimistic estimate put its upper limit at about forty percent of the electorate. A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified either, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man's outstanding peculiarities, and even where it exists it proves to be wavering and inconstant, the more so, as a rule, the bigger the political groups are. The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness.

Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temparature rises above this level, the possibility of reason's having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic. Under these conditions all those elements whose existence is merely tolerated as asocial under the rule of reason come to the top. Such individuals are by no means rare curiosities to be met with only in prisons and lunatic asylums. For every manifest case of insanity there are, in my estimation, at least ten latent cases who seldom get to the point of breaking out openly but whose views and behaviour, for all their appearance of normality, are influenced unconhciously by pathological and perverse factore..."

C.G. Jung, "The Undiscovered Self" - 1958

There's more stuff in here that's right on the money...

my favorite quote: "Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself."

[mrsteve]

1. Amazing mental image

"Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population."

Sounds like, as Roger Waters once wrote, "the jackboots kickin in your door"

[DisgustipatedinCA]

3. you can relax

on both sides of the tracks
and maniacs
don't blow holes
in bandsmen by remote control
and everyone has recourse to the law
and what's more
no one kills the children anymore

Thanks for putting a wonderful album into my internal "player". Sorry if I got any lyrics wrong; I'm doing it from memory.

[Nay]

2. Very interesting. One of the reasons

I have always shied away from many fellow human beings is that I could always feel this irrational, lunatic undercurrent in them, just waiting to jump out and form into a howling mob. I always knew I would not be IN the mob -- I'd be the one chased by the mob.

[mrsteve]

4. I was almost ready to say something very similar

But I was afraid of being called paranoid, or an intellectual elitist, or both. :crazy: :evilgrin: