A few weeks back I wrote an article based on the writings of Dr. Carl Jung and his insights into the way that the very nature of human psychology makes the slide of the State, no matter how minimal or minarchist, into oligarchy and autocracy inevitable. If you have a statist (“state-ist”) form of government then it will mutate into an authoritarian, oppressive, and dominating one over time no matter what rules or laws create to try and prevent it from doing so. This is because of the way that the State manipulates human psychology to produce what Dr. Jung called “mass mindedness,” and what others have called groupthink and doublethink. People abdicate their individuality as they are consumed in the identity of the group. They reject information that would contradict what the group teaches and they suppress their own thoughts when those thoughts might challenge their belief in the doctrines of the group. Therefore, while claiming to be an individual they are actively working on obliterating their individuality, while claiming to champion liberty they are in fact proposing slavery – especially when we begin to talk about the State and its power to use violent force to compel mass obedience and submission to its values and ideas. The State’s values are always justified through manipulation of statistics and scientific information which allows it to portray itself as logical and rational and any others as illogical and irrational, thereby justifying the suppression of meaningful dissent as it is irrational or “crazy” and reducing the individual to a piece of datum in a collective, not a person with thought and feelings, hopes and dreams, life and liberty.
This week I will be building on this previous article by continuing to use Dr. Jung’s observations and insights into the human psyche in order to explain why the above described operation of the State sets it at opposition to religion, to explain why religion and the State are always enemies to one another and why the State always seeks to control, corrupt, or eliminate religion. For those unfamiliar with him, Dr. Carl Jung is one of the most important men in the history and development of psychology. The founder and father of analytic psychology, Jung believed that if we are to understand the mental health problems people have we must begin by analyzing their immediate life and seeing how it related to their problems and not just trying to tie current problems to past childhood trauma and/or sexual problems, as his contemporary Sigmund Freud did. My source for Dr. Jung’s quotations will be Jung’s 1958 book The Undiscovered Self, a fascinating commentary on the conditions of modern society and the situation that people find themselves in relative to the State. While I will provide source references for the quotes used, you may find the majority of the section I am excerpting on pages 13 through 21 at the above link and unless otherwise noted all page references are to it.
In order to free the fiction of the sovereign State – in other words, the whims of those who manipulate it – from every wholesome restriction, all sociopolitical movements tending in this direction invariably try to cut the ground from under the religions. For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him. But religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience. These do not refer directly to social and physical conditions; they concern far more the individual’s psychic attitude.
Pg. 13
The State is a fiction. It doesn’t have an objective existence separate from our conception of it. It is the idea by which those in power accumulate and maintain their power. As O’Brien put it in 1984, “The object of power is power.” (Pg. 332) The point of power is to use to, not to be restrained from using it. Therefore those in power want to use their power in every possible instance. In order to do this those in power must either diminish or destroy any organization or aspect of society that would challenge it as the supreme adjudicator of law and morality. The most powerful of these other forces is the influence of religion. It should be noted here that when Dr. Jung calls religion irrational he does not mean that it is crazy, he means that its experiences are subjective and take place within the mind of the believer. Therefore they cannot be subjected to objective scientific study to either by “proven” or “disproven” through laboratory experimentation. Irrational is not meant to be an insult for, as you may remember from the last article featuring Dr. Jung’s work, he says the irrational interior experience of the individual “is the true and authentic carrier of reality,” as opposed to the non-existent man defined entirely by scientifically derived statistics.
But it is possible to have an attitude to the external conditions of life only when there is a point of reference outside them. The religions give, or claim to give, such a standpoint, thereby enabling the individual to exercise his judgment and his power of decision. They build up a reserve, as it were, against the obvious and inevitable force of circumstances to which everyone is exposed who lives only in the outer world and has no other ground under his feet except the pavement. If statistical reality is the only reality, then it is the sole authority. There is then only one condition, and since no contrary condition exists, judgment and decision are not only superfluous but impossible. Then the individual is bound to be a function of statistics and hence a function of the State or whatever the abstract principle of order may be called.
The religions, however, teach another authority opposed to that of the “world.” The doctrine of the individual’s dependence on God makes just as high a claim upon him as the world does.
Pgs. 13-14
Religion provides a point of intellectual and moral reference outside of the reality we experience everyday, outside of the realm of scientific statistics which the State claims as the intellectual basis and justifications for all its actions. Because this the religious experience provides its believers with a frame of reference outside of the mundane ideas and demands of the world, options to see and think in ways other than those available to those dominated solely by statistical analysis and scientific arguments. This, by its very nature as being an alternative to the justifications of the State, challenges the authority of the State because it is inevitable that there come a time when religious commandments and State demands contradict one another. When God commands, “Thou shall not steal,” and those in power demand the ability to take as much money as they want from whoever they want without their consent and to beat, cage, or even kill those who refuse this demand – i.e. the power to rob the masses through taxes- who does the faithful obey, God or the State? If he or she is truly faithful to the sovereignty of God then the answer of course is God, meaning the disciple of God must oppose the State’s claim to extort monies from the public by force because it is theft . This the State cannot allow because it limits the State and its power.
From here Dr. Jung draws a difference between what he sees as religion and what he sees as creeds. Religion is the actual personal relationship that the individual being has with Divinity and the extramundane, those forces, experiences, and beliefs outside of the normal physical world. Prayer and gaining revelation through the Holy Spirit would be an example of what Dr. Jung is talking about here. Though these have physically measurable components, the actual experience is extramundane – spiritual and otherworldly in a way that the believer often finds impossible to adequately explain. In contrast to these are what Dr. Jung calls the creeds. Creeds are formal churches with defined doctrines that believers must accept in order to be members. The creeds themselves are not bad, but Dr. Jung notes it is easy to be a member of a creed, a church, for purely social reasons. I think all of us can think of those we know for whom church isn’t really a religious devotion but they do love seeing their friends there. So going to church is not the same thing as being religious. Those whose purpose for going to church rests mostly in its social aspects, for the sense of purpose and community they find there, often have no problem compromising their beliefs in the name of State dominated public considerations. It is only the truly religious, those whose relationship with Divinity is the dominating and defining experience and relationship of life, those for whom “the incontrovertible experience of an intensely personal, reciprocal relationship between man and an extramundane authority [God] which acts as a counterpoise to the ‘world’ and its ‘reason,'” that are led by their faith in God and His authority to challenge, question, even oppose the authority of the State and thereby to “lay the foundations for the freedom and autonomy of the individual.” (Pgs. 15-16)
The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world. For this he needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass. Merely intellectual or even moral insight into the stultification and moral irresponsibility of the mass man is a negative recognition only and amounts to not much more than a wavering on the road to the atomization of the individual. It lacks the driving force of religious conviction, since it is merely rational.
Pgs. 16-17
Have you ever wondered why so-called conservatives, minarchists, and libertarians end up supporting political regimes that are neither conservative, minarchist, or libertarian? How about the way that so-called progressives, liberals, and socialists end up supporting political regimes that are definitively neither progressive, liberal, or socialist? Here Dr. Jung explains one of the main reasons why. Ideology, political belief, for most people is simply not enough. When all that is left to define morality and right are which statistics you choose to cite or the studies you reference, any argument can be made by simply choosing those bits of datum that justify your position. Science can be made to say anything – just look at how people argue over masks and lockdowns or abortion for evidence of this – which of course really means it says nothing at all. Absent any final arbiter of course the State uses its immense power to assert its authority as the final final interpreter and enforcer and everyone else differs to that authority, not truly disputing it but really wishing to use it for their own rule.
The State has taken the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevailing trend towards mass-mindedness. The result, as always in such cases, is overcompensation in the form of fanaticism, which in its turn is used as a weapon for stamping out the least flicker of opposition. Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest. The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honored as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.
Pg. 17
I have previously written about the political nature of party politics, both in their Right Wing and Left Wing forms. Likewise, I have done an entire series evaluating the many ways that the State in general operates as a secular religion in the lives of the masses. Here Dr. Jung gives a excellent comprehensive explanation of how the State is essentially religious in nature and function. I would only add that the State is the worst aspects of religion all consolidated into one system. Its adherents are zealous fanatics and the mere questioning of its dogmas will earn you vicious attacks from all sides. Whereas most religions will allow you to leave in peace, every form of the State will cage your and/or kill you for your apostasy, which it labels “treason.” It demands the utmost obedience to the edicts of its leaders no matter how immoral, scurrilous, dehumanizing, or stupid. Just consider how crossing the road at any place other than where it gives you permission to cross can result in life damaging fines, jail time if you cannot pay, or even imprisonment or death if you resist. The State is a totalizing faith, a totalitarian faith, in that it dictates every aspect of human life and any rebelling against it is libel to be met with violence and even death. Only those who are members of its exalted positions can interpret its edicts even though they be men like any other, but they are not because their position gives them power and apparently the wisdom to manage the lives of hundreds of millions whereas normal men have not the wisdom to do so for any one else.
Dr. Jung then discusses how the social activities of the State – “Brass bands, flags, banners, parades and monster demonstrations” (Pg. 18) – mirror the religious rituals in both form and purpose. The one difference is that whereas religious rituals give power to the individual to transform his interior self and to defeat his inner demons the rituals of the State do not, with the result of this being that the statist (“state-ist”) clings even more tightly to the supposed authority of the government to determine right and wrong through man made law as the surest means of determining so. Having no ability to improve his Self the statist surrenders it to the State. Having dmeonstrated these parallels between the functions of religion and State, Dr. Jung then shows that the State promises the same things as religion does, but here in the material world:
The goals of religion – deliverance from evil, reconciliation with God, rewards in the hereafter, and so on – turn into worldly promises about freedom from care for one’s daily bread, the just distribution of material goods, universal prosperity in the future, and shorter working hours. That the fulfillment of these promises is as far off as Paradise only furnishes yet another analogy and underlines the fact that the masses have been converted from an extramundane goal to a purely worldly belief, which is extolled with exactly the same religious fervor and exclusiveness that the creeds display in the other direction
Pg. 19
The the State functions by promising earthly utopia while never actually being able to deliver Paradise is not as damaging to its cause as one might think. Indeed, this is partly why political parties and internal/external enemies are so necessary to the functions of governments. The political Right blames the political Left for its failures, and vice versa. It isn’t the vision or planning that failed, it isn’t that the job is impossible. It is merely the obstruction of the political competition that prevents the utopian goals of State from being achieved. External enemies perform the same function. It isn’t the nation that it is fault, it is our enemies – terrorists, Christians, Muslims, Communists, capitalists, Russians, Americans, the Chinese, etc. that are to blame. By utilizing these dynamics the failures of the State are transformed into the very justifications for it. This is almost certainly why so many today champion Socialism (a particularly good example of the State as religion) despite its 100% failure rate. Every past failure is blamed on some imperfection in doctrine or dogma and its promises of a perfect world without sorrow, suffering, or poverty, a place of perfect unity of all the masses – of a worldly Paradise – is seductive to the masses. Individuality and liberty seem small sacrifices for such gains to those whose understanding of what exactly they are giving up is dim to begin with.
The ethical decision of the individual human being no longer counts – what alone matters is the blind movement of the masses, and the lie has thus become the operative principle of political action. The State has drawn the logical conclusions from this, as the existence of many millions of State slaves completely deprived of all rights mutely testifies.
Pg. 20
If you wish to see the fulfillment of this, simply look at the way so many disdain freedom as a reason to oppose State mask mandates and lockdowns. It doesn’t matter that the lockdowns have been proven to be failures at altering the Covid-19 death rate in any manner or that the mandates themselves are what has driven so many to oppose masking in the first place not an opposition to masking as such. Politicizing the issue has only engendered resistance from people who would otherwise comply and because the lie that the individual’s decision no longer matters, further politicization – in terms of people calling for greater and greater State punishments such as fines and imprisonment, and the violence that attends enforcing such punishments – is seen as the solution. The most effective solutions – individual responsibility, liberty, and education – are rejected because the people are “mass minded,” they have made themselves slaves of the State by believing it and its violence are the only viable solutions to any problems they see.
All mass movements, as one might expect, slip with the greatest ease down an inclined plane represented by large numbers. Where the many are, there is security; what the many believe must of course be true; what the many want must be worth striving for, and necessary, and therefore good. In the clamor of the many there lies the power to snatch wish-fulfillments 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. All the thinking and looking after are done from the top; to all questions there is an answer; and for all needs the necessary provision is made. The infantile dream state of the mass man is so unrealistic that he never thinks to ask who is paying for this paradise. The balancing of accounts is left to a higher political or social authority, which welcomes the task, for its power is thereby increased; and the more power it has, the weaker and more helpless the individual becomes.
Pgs. 41-42
Dr. Jung’s description of why people so willingly surrender to the State – that it feeds them the fiction that they will be able to give up all adult responsibility for themselves and slip back into the “kingdom of childhood” where Father State and Mother Country will provide for their every need if the people will only do what they’re told – reminds me of French political/economics philosopher and politician Frédéric Bastiat’s definition of the State. In his 1848 essay titled The State, Bastiat wrote that, “The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.” No one cares that what they want is impossible for anything lesser than a god or perhaps they have deep faith in the god-like omnipotence of the State to do the impossible. In either case, whether they consciously think of the State as God or merely treat is as such, the outcome is the same – they seek to avoid responsibility for their own lives in the arms of the State. As one modern study on the way that religion shrinks as the size of government grows put it, “the power and order emanating from God can be outsourced to the government.” And, as Dr. Jung notes, those in power welcome this outsourcing because it means the surrender of the people to those who control the apparatus of the State – politicians. Politicians are continually working to fill the minds of the masses with greater and greater promises of an eternal childhood, because in order to even appear to try and accomplish the things the State promises, it, and thereby its managers, must ever increase in power in order to accept all the responsibilities of adulthood and provide all the pleasures of existence to the people.
The synthesis of these points made by Dr. Jung is the essence of why the governments of men are the enemies of God. The State by its very nature is set in opposition to religion and therefore to God. Both God and the State demand to be treated as the Supreme Authority in the life of the individual. The State always seeks to control and dominate religion, to subject it to the authority of the laws of man because religion demands that the individual place God and His laws above all, meaning that when God and Government contradict then man should always obey fear and obey God and not the State. This the State and its political managers cannot allow because it subverts the position, authority, and power of the State – which is to say the position, authority, and power of the politicians in control of the apparatus of the State. In order to combat religion then the State tries to overwhelm the individual with the power of the masses, to make him feel as a meaningless cog in the machinery of the State whose job is to obey, and to undermine the religious feelings of men by promoting the State in a religious manner, by essentially rendering the State into a secular religion itself furnished with all the rites and rituals that accompany religion. The outcome of all this is a secular religion that promises a material Paradise for the faithful and a physical prison and death for those who challenge its commandments (laws).
So the question facing every person, but perhaps especially the person of faith, can be summed up thusly: Will you choose God or Mammon, God or the State? (See Matthew 6:24) Because no man can have two masters. Either God is your Master or the Government is your Master. You cannot serve both because you will love one more and hate the other or you will be devoted more to one than the other. As you religious, or merely creedal as Dr. Jung defines those terms? This is an inescapable choice. If you do not choose God then you will end up worshipping the State, as Dr. Jung explains above. Even those who pride themselves on their rationality and scientific acumens, perhaps especially those who do so, will find them participating joyfully in the rites of the State and worship of its power, missionaries for its promised secular Paradise. In the words of Joshua the Son of Nun, “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve,” (Jos. 24:15) because if you do not then the choice will be made for you. And only one of them leads to peace, liberty, and prosperity. The other, as Dr. Jung explained, leads only to slavery.