C.G. Jung and George Orwell’s doublespeak

George Orwell’s iconic 1984 stand as perfect examples of the societal structures Jung warns against. Granted, all dystopian literature set in a totalitarian future could fall into this category, but two of his books are probably the two best examples of the genre. Animal Farm, and Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-four show totalitarian systems and are highly relevant today.

Modeled after the Stalinism, the basic pattern was repeated by Mao’s Big Leap and the Cultural Revolution, by Pol-Pot, just to name a few. It’s about state totalitarianism, and if you look too much to right or to the left you become a road-kill by well-meaning national or transnational organization. The best example the European Union, the hunger of central power and the severe distortion of reality by language intended to disguise, distort, or obscure its real meaning was aptly foreseen in “Nineteen Eighty-four” Political language, George Orwell wrote nearly 60 years ago, is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. It is a pity that Orwell won’t be around to write a new book about the double-speak that passes for the European Union’s and the national finance ministers official discourse on the EU crises. A fundamental concept to control of the thought is to control of the past. Therefore, a gigantic effort is operated today to fit all existing publications of the current political correct line and to overpower by sheer mass production the unwanted. Especially worrisome can that be seen in dispute parts in some Wikipedia articles.

George Orwell lived out Jung’s theory of The Shadow. Dr. Carl Jung argues that the future depends on our ability to resist society’s mass movements. Only by understanding our unconscious inner nature-“the undiscovered self”-can we gain the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. In his book The Undiscovered Self, C.G. Jung points with logical assertions that “it is chiefly in times of physical, political, economic and spiritual distress that men’s eyes turn with anxious hope to the future”. The only way to combat these stresses and worries is for humanity to embrace its potential on both a conscious and unconscious level. Without a finely tuned awareness of self, we are doomed to pass control of the individual self onto an external collective entity such as the government. The Individual’s Understanding of Himself: “It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward ey and prevent it from looking at the individual life within.”

Much of the book warns against succumbing to the will of the collective without first consulting the needs of the individual. Humanity must open itself up to acknowledging its equal capacity for good and evil. But perhaps the strongest evidence attesting Jung’s accuracy is the near rabid, even quasi-religious nature of the political debate even in, or perhaps especially in, the European Union which has ‘officially’ removed religion from its pitifully so-called failed “constitution”. The religion has gone underground, and political assertions of the churches in Europe have the air of dissident meetings. The same ist true for families in one parent stays at home.

Perhaps Jung’s approach is helping us to find the inner self first, and then unite to counter the mass-mindness and its pursuit for maximized profits, whether in the form of a government or a global corporation and the lure of a motherly state taking care of life’s hardship of the never-grew-ups.

Where there are many, there is security. What the many believe, must of course be true. What the many want, must be worth striving for, necessary, and therefore good. In the clamour of the many, lies the power to snatch wish-fulfilment by force. Sweetest of all however, is that gentle and painless slipping back into the kingdom of childhood, into the paradise of parental care, into happy-go-luckiness and irresponsibility…to all questions there is an answer….
C.G. Jung in “The Undiscovered Self

“Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of “Four legs good, two legs bad”, which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion.
George Orwell in “Animal Farm”