Amerika

I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life (Jung, [1961] 1989:140).

[Contemporary man] is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by “powers” that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food – and, above all, a large array of neuroses. (Jung, 1964:82).

Jung saw collective neuroses in politics… “Our world is, so to speak, dissociated like a neurotic” (Jung, 1964:85).

The People’s Encyclopedia of “Facts” Preferred to Reality

I thought these quotations really summed it all up: our new myths don’t explain our world, specifically not the question of “what should I do with my life that is meaningful” — the answer you’ll get will be some variation on the intellectually lazy, insincere “whatever you want to do, man.”

In my experience, people enjoy life best when they’re bonded to reality and other people by doing things that help the others that they esteem. Family, friends, people who rise above the rest… social natural selection. Societies that force us to be nice to each other just make us surly and hateful, and idiots proliferate.