WOS : POST 8 : Is the internet the beast of revelation?!

From : http://home.swipnet.se/~w-73784/beastrev.htm

Internet - the Beast of Revelation?



Is the Internet a technological and economical monstrosity inaugurating a new era of Babylonian idolatrous profaneness? The Book of Revelation speaks about the beast who will appear at the end of time and whose number is 666. It so happens that the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is "wav", equivalent to the English w. A fact is too, that the ancient Hebrews, lacking digit signs, used the letters as digits where the value of the digit corresponds to the letter's place in the alphabet. Consequently, when John speaks of the beast named 666 he speaks of the beast named www. John explains that "no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name". People shall be forced to worship this beast, says John. To me, it seems like John hits the head of the nail. Today, most companies are forced to accept the obligatory "www" before their names on façades and signboards. The World Wide Web is becoming an idolatrous mantra, a slippery octopus who stretches its tentacles into every corner of modern life. The global Internet economy together with information technology expands according to "new economical laws" - in other words, they are wreaking havoc. The native country of the undersigned, as the most computerized land in the world, is today replacing teachers for computers and automatized learning. Within a few years every citizen will have access to broadband, as the result of a governmental venture, because, as they say, the future lies in the Internet. We are being pressured to worship the beast.

Now, what kind of journey are we embarking upon? The situation at hand can be likened to a man who lacks a firm foundation in the past, who has failed to put down his roots in the fertile soil of historical humanity. This man, in order to compensate for the frustration of a meaningless life, the lack of nourishment from the soil, takes every chance to project meaning and joy of life on a technological future. He runs to the computer game shop and buys the latest sophisticated game in order to amuse himself for yet a while. He tries to evade the encroaching grey fog of boredom by resorting to artificial means of conjuring up libido. This man is a neurotic. It is typical of the neurotic to try artificial means of living to replace an ardent, truthful life according to his true inborn nature. So what we see today, on a collective scale, is a neurotic compensation for the astray spirit of mankind. This spirit is lost in the vast ocean of the collective unconscious, and our materialistic era is not even aware of the ocean. Internet and technology is no true remedy to the situation. It is the fake solution of the neurotic who wants to remain on his Happy Technological Island, isolated from the age-old spirit of humanity. Stephen L. Talbott puts it very aptly, in the interview with Dolores Brien, when he says: "in many regards the technological society is a kind of paradise for human beings who wish to act on the level of automatons. [We] choose to sleepwalk through our lives. [Our] technologies are working powerfully to entrain us in their automatisms".

This fake solution of mankind becomes very tragical since so much time goes wasted in building a Happy Neurotic Island to abide on for decades to come. This will additionally delay the revival of a healthy spirit of mankind. People will develop neurotic symptoms over time. Theorists cultivate very quaint thoughtways to intellectually defend this development, in order to exorcise a gnawing doubt that things aren't well, after all. Notions of such nature are expressed in the article "We are an endangered species" (D. Brien). Michael Heim argues that Jung overvalued the past of mankind at the expense of undervaluing the future. What sense can we make of such notions as "individuation" and "the self", then, questions Brien, and suggests that since these notions refer to the inborn past of mankind they are becoming irrelevant to our technological age. Wolfgang Giegerich uses a similar argument and says (see "Psychology's basic fault"), "the idea of the process of individuation, if critically examined, proves to belong just as much to a historical psychology as does the psychology of the anima mundi. Today, the real life of the psyche is not in the individuation process. [The] individuation process as a whole belongs to historical, archaeological psychology ". He goes on to say: "The true opus magnum of today takes place in an entirely different arena, not in us as individuals, but in the arena of world affairs, of global competition, [the] overwhelming pull towards maximizing profit." Giegerich instead peddles the nineteenth century Hegelian notion of the developing world soul and says: "The soul may show itself in, and play through the lives of, individuals and collectives, but it is not itself something pertaining to the one or the other. With the opposition of 'individual' and 'collective', psychology still remains subject to the anthropological fallacy, i.e., to the assumption that the psyche is a part of humans [...]".

From the above excerpts we can see how Giegerich is trying a neurotic solution for the collective. The abolishment of "individuation" and "the self" goes hand in hand with neurosis since natural individuation is arrested during neurosis. The denial of the self means to put earplugs in and to ignore the cry for help from that age-old king who is drowning in the ocean. Instead these theorists advocate building a Happy Neurotic Futuristic Island where there is no need of individuation, where we are comfortably cut off from our historical roots and instead engage in global competition of maximizing profits and enjoy ever new technological roller coaster rides with computer games and ever more advanced cellular phones with Internet capability, and the like. But sooner or later the roller coaster will go off the rails and a collective illness will paralyze society. This is happening in increasing measure right now. People are developing strange symptoms and the cost for society will become enormous. Contrary to what these authors claim we cannot deny our past, neither our psychic nor our physical. If our "historical, archaeological psychology" does not have its place in our technological age then it's the latter which is inadequate, not the psychic nature of humanity. For instance, our Stone Age psychology demands, among other things, a fatherly figure (regardless of sex) as a teacher at school, not a computer with an automatized learning program (see C.G. Jung, "Child Development and Education", par.107a, where he argues that the psychological role of the teacher is even more important than the information he teaches). The overestimation of technology and the Internet is an attempt at a neurotic solution which will lead to tragic consequences. The import of our Stone Age nature is evident in case of our bodily nourishment. It is high time that we went back to a Stone Age diet. If we don't stop eating modern junk food then it will have devastating consequences as many illnesses will increase uncontrollably, of which the increasing diabetes plague is only one example. We must cease consuming empty calories like products containing sugar, wheat products, white bread and white rice. Instead we must turn to raw vegetables, fruit, nuts, unpolished rice, oats, rye and radically increase the intake of roughage. The protein intake was high with Stone Age man, so we may eat much meat. Stone Age man didn't drink coffee and alcohol, so these habits must be reduced. Butter must be replaced for vegetable oils. If people followed the Stone Age prescription, then our "welfare illnesses" and obesity would grind down to a minimum and our overall fitness would enhance radically. This reasoning is applicable to the psychic nourishment, as well. There is no way we can evade our inborn "historical, archaeological psychology", but we can do something about the cultural misdirection of our time.

The erroneous argument that Jungian individuation, as a solitary, individual process of introversion, cannot help in advancing the collective, is incessantly repeated. This builds on a misinterpretation of human nature and of the archetypal representative of this, namely the self. In fact, as Joseph L. Hendersson explains in "Cultural Attitudes": "One cannot finally escape the true meaning of this [Anthropos] image; it tells us that man is both individual (that is, unified) and collective (that is, a multiplicity), and in his multiplicity he feels himself to be part of a cultural whole consisting of many parts, which offers the widest view of man's social capacity for feeling."(p.23). Hendersson argues that "[a] stage of individualism, even selfishness, is inevitable at the beginning of any process of self-discovery [(however)] there must come a time for a reacceptance of the social dimension of life in the process of individuation itself."(p.18). Furthermore, in "Two Essays", par.404, Jung says: "The self could be characterized as a kind of compensation of the conflict between inside and outside.". The gist of this is that the individual, through individuation, moves closer to the self, and becomes more social and more individual at the same time. It lies within the individuation process itself to find a way in the outside world. The self tries to heal the split between our inborn psychic nature and the outside world. When these two worlds don't go hand in hand the wisdom of the collective unconscious, alongside conscious understanding, is the only rescue, because it takes into consideration both our inner nature and contemporary culture. Adaptation to reality can only be effected with the collective unconscious as foundation. We have to listen to the age-old inner man when moulding the future so that it develops in a way compatible with our inner needs. To heal the psychic split of today the notion of the objective archetype needs to be elevated into public consciousness. In exchange for the obsolete world of gods and spirits man has to become aware of the facts underlying these notions, namely the archetypes, and thereby invoking afresh a relation with the collective unconscious. We must dress up the eternal truths in a new clothing. But we will never manage the trick of pulling our own hair, lifting ourselves up from our indigenous psychic nature.



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© Kadmus 2000