This is a compelling examination of the nature of consciousness, the fact that an objective view of the mind, as articulated by the reductionist approach, that is, the study of the brain and the localization of thoughts as the interplay of neuronal signals, is ultimately bound to fail. Jung explores the problems that an objectivization of the mind entail, and the flaws of blindly applying the statistical method, pointing out that the very same methodology underlies the rationale of many political institutions, that measure man against a hypostasized average - the "reasonable man", the "ordinary person", without regard to the fact that such an average may say nothing about humanity in the aggregate, and that such judgments are in any case flawed, based on the premise that objectivity is possible, when in reality all phenomena are emanations from the unconscious mind. Those who insist on constructing a unified theory of the world are missing the point entirely and chafing at the limits of human knowledge:
"Judged scientifically, the individual is nothing but a unit which repeats itself ad-infinitum and could just well be designated with the letter of an alphabet. The individual, however, as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete man as opposed to the unreal ideal or "normal man" to whom scientific statements refer. What is more, most of the natural sciences try to represent the results of their investigations as though these come into existence without man's intevention, in such a way that the collaboration of the psyche - an indispensable factor - remains invisible. Under the influence of scientific assumptions, not only the psyche but the individual man and indeed all individual events whatsoever suffer a levelling down and a process of blurring that distorts the picture of reality into a conceptual average. In this way the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which in turn usurps the function of the real life carrier, whereas, in actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstracct idea like the State. Both are hypostatized, that is, have become autonomous."
"It is astounding than man, the instigator, inventor and vehicle of all these developments, the originator of all judgments and decisions and the planner of the future, must make himself such a quantite negligeable. The contradiction, the paradoxical evaluation of humanity by man himself, is in truth a matter for wonder, and one can only explain it as springing from an extraordinary uncertainty of judgment - in other words, man is an enigma to himself."
"The structure and physiology of the brain furnish no explanation of the psychic process. The psyche has a peculiar nature which cannot be reduced to anything else. Like physiology, it presents a relatively self-contained field of experience, to which we must attribute a quite special importance because it includes one of the two indispensable conditions for existence as such, namely the phenomenon of consciousness. Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists for us only insofar as it is consciously reflected by a psyche. The carrier of this consciousness is the individual, who does not produce the psyche of his own volition, but is, on the contrary, performed by it and nourished b the gradual awakening of consciousness during childhood. If therefore the psyche is of overriding empirical importance, so also is the individual, who is the only immediate maniefstation of the psyche
Jung acknowledges religion as a way of correcting for the erroneous over-objectivisation of empirical events, which occur first and foremost, as psychic data. The bridge between the perceiving subject and stable object is bridgeable alone by God, without which man is an easy prey to psychic forces beyond his comprehension, unconscious forces that operate through the community-politic in ways often akin to "mass possession":
"Just as man, a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individal will never find the real justification for his existence and his own spiritual and moral autonomy anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. 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."
"Even today people are largely unconscious of the fact that every individual is a cell in the structure of various international organisms and is therefore causally implicated in their conflicts. He knows that as an individual being he is more or less meaningless and feels himself the victim of uncontrollable forces, but, on the other hand, he harbours within himself a ddangerous shadow and adversary who is involved as an invisible helper in the dar machinations of the political monster. It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group."
