AwesomeWriters

Beck Weathers Survives

March 9th, 2023

Excerpt from “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer

The first body turned out to be Namba, but Hutchison couldn’t tell who it was until he knelt in the howling wind and chipped a three-inch-thick carapace of ice from her face. To his shock, he discovered that she was still breathing. Both her gloves were gone, and her bare hands appeared to be frozen solid. Her eyes were dilated. The skin on her face was the color of porcelain. “It was terrible,” Hutchison recalls. “I was overwhelmed. She was very near death. I didn’t know what to do.”

He turned his attention to Weathers, who lay 20 feet away. His face was also caked with a thick armor of frost. Balls of ice the size of grapes were matted to his hair and eyelids. After clearing the frozen detritus from his face, Hutchison discovered that he, too, was still alive: “Beck was mumbling something, I think, but I couldn’t tell what he was trying to say. His right glove was missing and he had terrible frostbite. He was as close to death as a person can be and still be breathing.”

Badly shaken, Hutchison went over to the Sherpas and asked Lhakpa Chhiri’s advice. Lhakpa Chhiri, an Everest veteran respected by Sherpas and sahibs alike for his mountain savvy, urged Hutchison to leave Weathers and Namba where they lay. Even if they survived long enough to be dragged back to Camp Four, they would certainly die before they could be carried down to Base Camp, and attempting a rescue would needlessly jeopardize the lives of the other climbers on the Col, most of whom were going to have enough trouble getting themselves down safely.

Hutchison decided that Chhiri was right. There was only one choice, however difficult: Let nature take its inevitable course with Weathers and Namba, and save the group’s resources for those who could actually be helped. It was a classic act of triage. When Hutchison returned to camp at 8:30 A.M. and told the rest of us of his decision, nobody doubted that it was the correct thing to do.

Later that day a rescue team headed by two of Everest’s most experienced guides, Pete Athans and Todd Burleson, who were on the mountain with their own clients, arrived at Camp Four. Burleson was standing outside the tents about 4:30 P.M. when he noticed someone lurching slowly toward camp. The person’s bare right hand, naked to the wind and horribly frostbitten, was outstretched in a weird, frozen salute. Whoever it was reminded Athans of a mummy in a low-budget horror film. The mummy turned out to be none other than Beck Weathers, somehow risen from the dead.

A couple of hours earlier, a light must have gone on in the reptilian core of Weathers’s comatose brain, and he regained consciousness. “Initially I thought I was in a dream,” he recalls. “Then I saw how badly frozen my right hand was, and that helped bring me around to reality. Finally I woke up enough to recognize that I was in deep shit and the cavalry wasn’t coming so I better do something about it myself.”

Although Weathers was blind in his right eye and able to focus his left eye within a radius of only three or four feet, he started walking into the teeth of the wind, deducing correctly that camp lay in that direction. If he’d been wrong he would have stumbled immediately down the Kangshung Face, the edge of which was a few yards in the opposite direction. Ninety minutes later he encountered “some unnaturally smooth, bluish-looking rocks,” which turned out to be the tents of Camp Four.
– from Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

“I was in deep shit and the cavalry wasn’t coming so I better do something about it myself.“

I really like that quote. If only I could tap into that strength without putting my life in mortal danger… It’s uplifting to read about Beck’s survival. If he can survive becoming an ice cube on Everest for a night, then I should be able to handle my trivial problems.

Into Thin Air was a great read and should be a must read for anyone thinking about climbing one of these mountains. I climbed Rainier so I’m a bit of a mountaineer, but I don’t think I’m up for anything taller or any trip that takes much longer than those three days. Three days, maybe five days, possibly a week on a mountain trail… I think that’s enough for me.

The personality types that take mountaineering and climbing to dangerous extremes… I like to “get away” from time to time but what is it that they are running from?

I’m reminded of the girl on the Rainier trip who quit her corporate pharmaceutical job and then hiked the Pacific Crest Trail up to Rainier and joined our little expedition.

When I tell people that the reaction, and perhaps my initial reaction is: “Wow! Cool! She must have an adventurous spirit and a great personality!”

She did have a good personality and an adventurous spirit. But also there was an element of sadness to her personality. An “air of melancholy” that she hid well but sometimes… I don’t know, maybe my assessment is off.

But then what was she running from? Or should I say: what was she hiking from? 🙂

Back to Into Thin Air and Everest: it seems like a majority of people who go hike Everest write in their journals at some point something to the tune of: “What am I doing here? Why did I come here?” Hang on… let me find an excerpt.

“There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.”
– Thomas F. Horbein from “Everest: The West Ridge” by quote by Jon Krakauer in “Into Thin Air“
Excerpt from Memories Dreams Reflections by Carl Jung

March 9th, 2023

“From Tozeur I went on to the oasis of Nefta. I rode off with my
dragoman early in the morning, shortly after sunrise. Our mounts were large, swift-footed mules, on which we made rapid progress. As we approached the oasis, a single rider, wholly swathed in white, came toward us. With proud bearing he rode by without offering us any greeting, mounted on a black mule whose harness was banded and studded with silver. He made an impressive, elegant figure. Here was a man who certainly possessed no pocket watch, let alone a wrist watch; for he was obviously and unselfconsciously the person he had always been. He lacked that faint note of foolishness which clings to the European. The European is, to be sure, convinced that he is no longer what he was ages ago; but he does not know what he has since become. His watch tells him that since the “Middle Ages” time and its synonym, progress, have crept up on him and irrevocably taken something from him. With lightened baggage he continues his journey, with steadily-increasing velocity, toward nebulous goals. He compensates for the loss of gravity and the corresponding sentiment d’incompletitude by the illusion of his triumphs, such as steamships, railroads, airplanes, and rockets, that rob him of his duration and transport him into another reality of speeds and explosive accelerations.”

This excerpt is from the chapter titled “Travels”. I posted this paragraph because I enjoyed the poetic description of “progress.”

One can only imagine what Jung’s thoughts on the internet technologies would be.
Man the Reformer by Ralph Waldo Emerson

February 28th, 2023

Lecture Read before the Mechanics’ Apprentices Library Association, Boston, Jan 25, 1841

The cynical take on this lecture is: if man is so great at reform, then why are Emerson’s themes still so pertinent, if not more so?

Emerson laments that to make a decent living a Bostonian or American of 1841 must:

“sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of boyhood and youth as dreams; he must forget the prayers of his childhood; and must take on him the harness of routine and obsequiousness.”

And:

“the general system of our trade is a system of selfishness.”

He reinforces this idea with:

“Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success.”

His version of “not my problem”:

“none feels himself accountable. He did not create the abuse; he cannot alter it. What is he? an obscure private person who must get his bread. That is the vice, — that no one feels himself called to act for man, but only as a fraction of man.”

I admire Emerson and his ideas but on this next bit I’m going to be a little cynical.

“But it is said, `What! will you give up the immense advantages reaped from the division of labor, and set every man to make his own shoes, bureau, knife, wagon, sails, and needle? This would be to put men back into barbarism by their own act.’ I see no instant prospect of a virtuous revolution; yet I confess, I should not be pained at a change which threatened a loss of some of the luxuries or conveniences of society, if it proceeded from a preference of the agricultural life out of the belief, that our primary duties as men could be better discharged in that calling. Who could regret to see a high conscience and a purer taste exercising a sensible effect on young men in their choice of occupation, and thinning the ranks of competition in the labors of commerce, of law, and of state? It is easy to see that the inconvenience would last but a short time. This would be great action, which always opens the eyes of men. When many persons shall have done this, when the majority shall admit the necessity of reform in all these institutions, their abuses will be redressed, and the way will be open again to the advantages which arise from the division of labor, and a man may select the fittest employment for his peculiar talent again, without compromise.”

What strikes me as either insincere or absurdly optimistic is:

“It is easy to see that the inconvenience would last but a short time.”

If I hang up the keyboard and become a farmer I’m very sure that the “inconvenience” would not be a trifle and would “last but a long time” and I might not survive it.

Maybe in the first half of the 19th century it was easier to imagine that a person could change professions more readily. A sailor or “hideodogher” (the footnote explains: a “coastal vessel trading in hides” or “the master of such a vessel.”) I can imagine tilling the field for a season or two, or vice versa. But today…

It’s hard enough for me to imagine many people switching professions and farming but then on top of that Emerson seems to expect me to believe that there would be enough time in a person’s life to not only switch, but to then switch back to their original profession more suited to one’s “peculiar talents.”

These quotes I just thought stood out:

“We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.”

“Manual labor is the study of the external world.”

Emerson is particularly critical of and expresses some pity for the rich man’s son and his wealth and possessions Emerson explains:

“To him they are not means, but masters.”

In the parlance of our times:

“Mo money mo problems”
The Notorious B.I.G.

If you ever find yourself bitter that you were not born with a trust friend then remember Emeson’s description:

“we have now a puny, protected person, guarded by walls and curtains, stoves and down beds, coaches, and men-servants and women-servants from the earth and the sky, and who, bred to depend on all these, is made anxious by all that endangers those possessions, and is forced to spend so much time in guarding them, that he has quite lost sight of their original use, namely, to help him to his ends, — to the prosecution of his love; to the helping of his friend, to the worship of his God, to the enlargement of his knowledge, to the serving of his country, to the indulgence of his sentiment, and he is now what is called a rich man, — the menial and runner of his riches.”

Do you agree that:

“Every man ought to have this opportunity to conquer the world for himself.”

And:

“Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and too serve them one’s self?”

And like every person ever, he laments the impiety of the his and the next generation:

“The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of. We use these words as if they were as obsolete as Selah and Amen. And yet they have the broadest meaning, and the most cogent application to Boston in 1841. The Americans have no faith. They rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to a sentiment. They think you may talk the north wind down as easily as raise society; and no class more faithless than the scholars or intellectual men.”

And to continue my cynicism, he concludes a bit on the “touchy feely” as opposed to the practical side stating that the panacea for the world is the:

“sentiment of love. This is the one remedy for all ills, the panacea of nature. We must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible. Our age and history, for these thousand years, has not been the history of kindness, but of selfishness. Our distrust is very expensive. The money we spend for courts and prisons is very ill laid out. We make, by distrust, the thief, and burglar, and incendiary, and by our court and jail we keep him so. An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout Christendom for a season, would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our service.”

I lean left and I think we put too many people in prison for too long and it’s a system driven by profit and fear more than the aspiration to reform, but even for me, a modern liberal, it’s a bit much to think that we could shut down the prisons so long as we showered those within with love and gave them a field to till.

“We complain that the politics of masses of the people are controlled by designing men, and led in opposition to manifest justice and the common weal, and to their own interest. But the people do not wish to be represented or ruled by the ignorant and base. They only vote for these, because they were asked with the voice and semblance of kindness. They will not vote for them long. They inevitably prefer wit and probity.”

Donald Trump. I could mention some others: Bolsonaro. Modi. I don’t like the far right but I don’t like the far left either, as the two grow farther apart and ideas seem to be debated less and less… People instead relying on their identity to guide their decisions – we read so many headlines in today’s social media world but I don’t get the feeling that we’re reading the whole articles, much less books and Emerson lectures.

I don’t think 1 in 100 people today could define “probity” and much less do “the masses” prefer it. (Probity: the quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency)

“The state must consider the poor man, and all voices must speak for him. Every child that is born must have a just chance for his bread.”

Hear hear!

“This great, overgrown, dead Christendom of ours still keeps alive at least the name of a lover of mankind. But one day all men will be lovers; and every calamity will be dissolved in the universal sunshine.”

“Universal sunshine is a bit much Ralph Waldo. And I’m not sure about this sentiment, as I have not seen many people giving up much of anything, let alone elevation. I like the poetry of “universal sunshine” and I think that Emerson might be correct when he advocates for a simpler more agricultural and more spiritual life, not for the benefit of anyone else, but for one’s own benefit. He may be right, but I would say the majority do not believe him so, and there aren’t a lot of people turning down higher paying jobs in today’s marketplace.

“so is the great man very willing to lose particular powers and talents, so that he gain in the elevation of his life. The opening of the spiritual senses disposes men ever to greater sacrifices, to leave their signal talents, their best means and skill of procuring a present success, their power and their fame, — to cast all things behind, in the insatiable thirst for divine communications. A purer fame, a greater power rewards the sacrifice.”

Au contraire… the older I get, the more I seem to find myself amazed at how many fall under the spell of money. We seem to believe that “rich” and “intelligent” are interchangeable words. Mistaking “rich” and “morally correct” is even worse. While I think this last mix up is more subconscious, it also seems to me more widespread, precisely because it is unconscious and escapes our self-critical consciences. We believe ourselves objective and not susceptible to such a grievous mix up.

I remind myself of this experiment where people predicted they would be more critical of wealthier people when in fact the opposite was true. (I think this is the original study)

I picked out way too many quotes there… maybe I should have copy pasted the whole lecture. This is only my fourth blog post so a learning experience; I promise to be more selective with my Emerson quotes going forward.

On the whole, this lecture was uplifting. As I read I found myself playing with idea of buying a plot of land a little farther from the city and spending more time tending the garden. But… I did find Emerson to be a overly optimistic at man’s ability to reform anything, and much less so, the human behaviors long shaped by evolution.

Both our virtues and our vices are perhaps equally prevalent today as 200 years ago.

P.S. This lecture reminded me of something else I read recently; Carl Jung’s description of his “Tower” where

“There is nothing to disturb the dead, neither electric light or telephone.”

“I have done without electricity, and tend the fireplace and stove myself. Evenings, I light the old lamps. There is no running water, and I pump the water from the well. I chop the wood and cook the food. These simple acts make man simple; and how difficult it is to be simple!”
– Carl Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections, The Tower chapter

P.S.S. I ordered “A Book of Nonsense” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” by G.K. Chesterton today. Coming soon…
Excerpt from Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

February 28th, 2023

When I searched this quote, it looks like the second paragraph has been picked out often, but the first paragraph gives a little context:

“But, first, the idea of social betterment as it is understood since the October revolution doesn’t fill me with enthusiasm. Second, it is so far from being put into practice, and the mere talk about it has cost such a sea of blood, that I’m not sure that the end justifies the means. And last—and this is the main thing —when I hear people speak of reshaping life it makes me lose my self-control and I fall into despair.

“Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking
and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your
or my obtuse theories about it.”

It’s passages like the one above that when you read them you think “Ah! so that’s why Doctor Zhivago is a classic.”

When he says that life “is never a material, a substance to be molded.” he’s questioning the common (but overlooked/taken for granted) belief that the the universe is something that was constructed out of nothing by an all powerful intelligence who lives in the sky and has a long grey beard.

That belief has not been mine for quite a long time. I don’t recall if I ever believed in the creator on his thrown amongst the clouds. And like a lot of people, I’ve flirted with nihilism. I might still describe myself as a practicing Absurdist.

But absurdism and existentialism are very similar to nihilism in my humble opinion. The difference is that “a nihilist” doesn’t have as much fun and is maybe a bit bitter about being born.

Camus is the type that has a couple drinks and hops in a race car and… dies – but the type who takes advantage of life and lives life to the fullest. (Sidenote: Camus considered himself more a Stoic than an Existentialist) Then Sartre and existentialism sit somewhere between Camus and the Big Lebowski nihilists or the goth teenagers smoking cigarettes across the street from the school parking lot. (Sidenote: Camus and Sartre were first friends, then somewhat rivals, and then bitter rivals, although Sartre expressed his remorse when Camus died.)

Anyway… Pasternak comes closer to Eastern philosophies like Buddhism and Taoism and the Chinese idea that the universe and nature is something that grows and “happens of itself”, rather than something constructed or designed.

I thought I would do separate blog post about this next bit. The first time I had the “Oh… so that’s why ‘Doctor Zhivago’ is a household name…” was when I read the following excerpt about Yurii Andreivevich Zhivago’s general thoughts on the life. Maybe I’ll come back and write a couple words on it but I’ll include it here and now as it seems applicable to the idea of Pasternak’s personal philosophy having an Eastern flavor. (Sidenote: “Resurrection” I misremembered as “reincarnation.”)

“Resurrection. In the crude form in which it is preached to console the weak, it is alien to me. I have always understood Christ’s words about the living and the dead in a different sense. Where could you find room for all these hordes of people accumulated over thousands of years? The universe
isn’t big enough for them; God, the good, and meaningful purpose would be crowded out. They’d be crushed by these throngs greedy merely for the animal life.
“But all the time, life, one, immense, identical throughout its innumerable combinations and transformations, fills the universe and is continually reborn. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn’t notice it.
“Will you feel pain? Do the tissues feel their disintegration? In other words, what will happen to your consciousness? But what is consciousness? Let’s see. A conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one’s own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward, it lights up the way ahead of us so that we don’t stumble. It’s like the headlights on a locomotive—turn them inward and you’d have a crash.
“So what will happen to your consciousness? Your consciousness, yours, not anyone else’s. Well, what are you? There’s the point. Let’s try to find out. What is it about you that you have always known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself? Your kidneys? Your liver? Your blood vessels? No.
However far back you go in your memory, it is always in some external, active manifestation of yourself that you come across your identity—in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now listen carefully. You in others—this is your soul.
This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life—your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory?
This will be you—the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.
“And now one last point. There is nothing to fear. There is no such thing as death. Death has nothing to do with us. But you said something about being talented—that it makes one different. Now, that does have something to do with us. And talent in the highest and broadest sense means talent for life.
“There will be no death, says St. John. His reasoning is quite simple. There will be no death because the past is over; that’s almost like saying there will be no death because it is already done with, it’s old and we are bored with it. What we need is something new, and that new thing is life eternal.”
Failed Attempt to Procure The Red Book by Carl Jung

February 21st, 2023

Yesterday I ordered a copy of The Red Book from Amazon for twenty something dollars, apparently at a large discount. Free overnight shipping. I thought that was a cheap price for any book with illustrations and… that’s because this book doesn’t have the illustrations. It’s “A Reader’s Edition” Well… at $20 I’m not going bother returning it. And maybe it will be necessary when I do manage to procure a copy of the actual Red Book, because it’s written in calligraphy, in German I believe. So to appreciate the artwork, I guess I need the German calligraphy. I don’t want some fake Jung calligraphy… So perhaps not wasted money in the long run.

But looking into it just a little further, first, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be cheap to find a copy. Amazon currently has it listed for $214, a 27% discount from $300. That’s not exactly a cheap book.

Second, I found myself on the Wikipedia page where I read:

Biographers and critics have disagreed whether these years in Jung’s life should be seen as “a creative illness”, a period of introspection, a psychotic break, or simply madness.

Yesterday I wrote that it sounds like Jung walked a razor’s edge between sanity and insanity. Still… I’m surprised that… I read his own descriptions of this time period and I didn’t understand the extent to which he was consumed by his thoughts and mission, his “confrontations with the unconscious”.

I’ve seen some footage of interviews he did towards the end of his life on YouTube. As an old man he seemed witty and full of life. And humor.

How does a man with so many insights into the human condition, who has helped so many people with his poignant observations, how does that same man truly descend into madness?

I think when I was reading the memoirs I took what he was saying more figuratively than as intended…

Back to the book: it wasn’t published until 2009 (at $195) It’s interesting that it was kept from the public for so long. To who’s benefit?

It’s currently at the Library of Congress, donated also in 2009. So I can save the $2-300 and just go check it out? How is it that the United States ended up with the original and not Switzerland? Maybe there is a story there worth digging into.
Carl Jung on the Importance of Knowing Your Unconscious

February 20th, 2023

Some thoughts inspired by the chapter “Confrontations with the Unconscious” from Carl Gustav Jung’s autobiography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”

I mentioned that I was reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung to a coworker and he told me that was funny because there was some controversy this past week about a New York Times article by Kevin Roose where he asked the new ChatGPT powered Bing (search engine) about it’s shadow self. I’m only halfway through the article and it’s getting interesting! Perhaps it’s now important for even our technology to “know thyself”

One thought is that Jung’s theme concerning the importance of understanding the unconscious, integrating the shadow, or (summarily) to “know thyself,” seems to go hand in hand with walking a fine line between sanity and insanity, or normality and abnormality. Concerning his exploration of his unconscious he makes the observation:

“It is of course ironical that I, a psychiatrist, should at almost every step of my experiment have run into the same psychic material which is the stuff of psychosis and is found in the insane.”

That is unambiguous. And makes me wonder: if C.G. Jung, a man of profound intelligence and wit, and a man who makes the top 10 when it comes to investigating his own mind and the mind in general, if this man openly declares himself to border on insanity, what does that say about the rest of us? And what does that say about… me?

Earlier in Memories, Dreams, and Reflections he discusses a fellow psychiatrist whom he encouraged to undergo psychoanalysis with the assertion that in order to be able to help anyone else, he must first understand himself. This man was on the surface completely ordinary and identified as so. Normal job, family, hobbies, etc, etc, the whole 9 yards: a normal guy.

The man told Jung that he didn’t dream. Jung told him “You will soon” and noted that saying that to someone is enough to make any relatively normal person have and remember a dream that same night. (And sure enough, I had a dream that night and have continued to have and remember them since then and have started a dream journal, because if I don’t write them down right away, they are lost, I forget them. How many dreams have I forgotten in this way? That then gives me the impression that I don’t dream often?)

Anyway, Jung’s coworker patient continued to not dream for some weeks but then came in with a dream to share. The result: Jung ended the therapy. Told him: “You’re right, you are normal!” when he was anything but. That’s not an exact quote, let me find some:

“I have had some astonishing experiences with ‘normality.’”

“I realized that his normality was a compensation.”

“His emphatic normality reflected a personality which would not have been developed but simply shattered by a confrontation with the unconscious.”

He was too normal to be helped!

This makes me think of people and times when I’ve wondered to myself: should I say what I really think? Would that help them or is it too much?

When someone spends their life pursuing one course of action and one set of beliefs… sometimes it is past the point where you can do any good by introducing a new belief or poking holes in their dogma. And this explains why most old people are so set in their beliefs. Once you commit past a certain point… you’ve got to see it through.

Jung states that he’s in favor of psychotherapy by professionals but when it comes to the “layman” he holds the opinion that – yeah, check it out. A theme of this memoir indeed seems to be “know thyself.” Try to understand yourself. Question yourself. Because if you don’t… insanity awaits you!

But as far as practicing psychoanalysis on other’s, Jung has words of caution for the dinner table psychologist: “I am in favor of non-medical men studying psychotherapy and practicing it; but in dealing with latent psychoses there is a the risk of their making dangerous mistakes.”

I find this disturbingly relatable and to return to my thought: I think being honest is one of the most important ideals for a person to have, but again I wonder if at times I’ve said too much when I should have kept my mouth shut.

What is it that Marcus says? I didn’t find the quote I was looking for but this one will do: “It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.” The quote I was looking for was more specifically about not admonishing people if it’s not going to do them any good.

I wonder if I’ve made the mistake of violating that prescription… To act against both Jung and Marcus is surely a sin.

Taking a step back: so it’s true! The “normal people” are indeed the craziest of us! I’ve had this thought before (and the image of Christian Bale from “American Psycho” comes to mind) but it’s interesting to have some confirmation from perhaps the most respected psychologist.

“Unpopular, ambiguous, and dangerous, it is a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world,” is how Jung describes the investigation of the unconscious. And he is critical of Nietzsche for losing himself in thought: “I was not a blank page whirling about in the winds of the spirit, like Nietzsche.” Jung shows great respect and admiration for Nietzsche at times but is straightforward about his opinion of the latter years: he lost it. Lost himself in thought. Delved so deep that he lost touch with reality. (What’s the story about the horse? I think he had a public breakdown when he witnessed a horse beaten and declared himself one with the horse while crying in the street. (Citation needed…))

So if this investigation is so dangerous then why do it? As I said earlier, Jung seems to be of the opinion that the dangers of not doing so are worse (until you reach that point of ‘normalcy’ where you the unconscious half of you is no longer reachable to yourself…).

A general theme of this memoir and maybe his work and philosophy in general seems to be: if you don’t investigate yourself / your unconscious / your shadow side, then you will never be a complete person, and the fracture between the two parts of yourself will cause you and those in your life a lot of pain and… you might end up going completely insane.

Well look at that… I’ve written an article and didn’t even stick to my original idea, or develop it. But now having further evidence of my skill of blabbering on… perhaps there is hope for this blog after all!

But having not stuck to the program, here is a more uplifting quote that I will end with:

“What a dreary world it would be if the rules were not violated sometimes!”

– C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, from the chapter titled “Confrontations with the Unconscious”

Cloud Capped Towers

February 20th, 2023

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

by William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), no title, appears in The Tempest, Act IV,

Excerpt from “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer

Some thoughts inspired by the chapter “Confrontations with the Unconscious” from Carl Gustav Jung’s autobiography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”