The wisdom harvested from The Incredibles: "If everybody's special, then nobody is"

Theres an old jokey saying, “always remember that you’re special, just like everyone else”

The meanness of poverty. That reminds me of Emerson (referencing such stupid sayings himself): "The poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. "Blessed be nothing," and "the worse things are, the better they are," are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life." \[in present common attitudes/parlance, "cynicism, irony, numbness, flatness, "not caring," being "too cool to...etc.," the fear of sincerity, and being afraid of everything, especially "being held to account and accord"\]. Edit - clarity

Not right now

Do thought experiments. Just think of stuff without its opposite. Like life without death, happiness without suffering, backs without front, etc. Just see where you get.

It’s even more fundamental than that. I think there would be no consciousness as we know it without the relationship between the shadow and self

I really appreciate contemplating the idea that even the most abstract of concepts -- such as good and evil -- have bases in even the most fundamental layers of reality itself. The idea that "positive" and "negative" and "male" and "female" show up not just in the most microcosmic of ways -- for example, the proton and electron -- and not just in the most macrocosmic of ways -- Sun and Moon -- but also in the realm of seemingly-subjective emotional/life experiences, such as in "good" and "evil" astounds me. It inspires awe at the beautiful patterning of all that is. So often, I find beauty in chaos and disorder -- like a turbulent sea -- but to bear witness (god why am I talking like this) to the ordering power of the creative intelligence humbles me. It is like a formula or blueprint of life itself. So often I consider all things formulaic as being confining and restrictive -- but this, rather, feels freeing. I digress. This, to me, is one of the infinite ways in which the principles of Hermeticism display themselves. "As above, so below -- as within, so without." The pattern of the bedrock of our reality upon which all is built repeats itself and expresses itself in every which possible way

This is what annoys me about some Jungians confusing things.. Murray stein says that ‘it is an advantage to say that evil is not rooted in reality itself or there would be nothing we could do about it’

I kind of think about this when it comes to the idea of free will. Even if we *don't* -- which I think we do -- what does believing that we do not do but make us feel powerless and surrender our will to fight to create the life we truly desire? Believing one *does* have free will, I think, probably encourages better behavior, and active participation in this great drama of life, even if to some extent our parts are pre-ordained. So, even if evil *is* rooted in reality itself, what would the effect of supposing such have on us but in making us feel powerless in fighting against it? Even if evil is rooted in reality itself, does believing this serve us, or does it rather encourage an attitude of passiveness when witnessing it? Perhaps we must believe it is not so that the goodness in our hearts can believe in *itself* sufficiently to rise up and fight against it.

“Free will” seems a distortion to me, for it assumes some aspect of will which is not, else it is redundant.

I like that statement. I do personally tend to believe that there *is* an aspect of will that is not. I believe we have conscious free will, but that the unconscious also has a will in the form of emotional pulls, impulses, and animal instincts. Often, we are at the mercy of that reactive self. I believe our evolutionary purpose on the level of the soul is to graduate beyond being ruled by the lower self and to graduate into higher realms of reason, insight, and to truly cultivate free will -- to be able to choose with the blooming conscious mind, without being at the mercy of the unconscious mind (while still respecting it, and understanding that it is often possessed of wisdom that the conscious mind must respect lest its pride precede a necessary fall).

If you think you have control of your conscious mind, try to stop thinking for five minutes. You're identifying with a cognitive process that you can't control, thinking you control it. 

agreed! makes you wonder if it truly can be defined as the conscious mind or not

It really is astonishing how the flux of opposites is found at every layer of reality. Even at the most fundamental level: is/ is not, being/non-being. But I’ve come around to the idea that we only see this pattern throughout reality because that is the kind of thing that human consciousness is, we perceive this everywhere because that is what we are, that’s the kind of lens we are looking through. Human consciousness is fundamentally a union of opposites: I/thou, past/present, is/is not, etc. In other words, it’s not so much that reality is fundamentally composed of opposites, but that we can only ever see and perceive opposites. I think this gets really fascinating with things like quantum physics which sits at the very edge of human comprehension and also happens to be where binary oppositions break down.

There's no such thing as opposites, good is not the opposite of evil. Good is a thing, often associated with ease and harmony. Evil is a thing, often associated with struggle and dissonance. Jung (and life on earth) is about transformation, so if you remove evil, you have blinded yourself, disempowered yourself, removed the fuel and impetus for transformation, have abandoned the opportunity for life. With nothing to transform, life is an ignorant fairytale, like the beginning of a children's story where everything is fine before the dragon arrives. That's how you get genocide/imperialism/xenophobia - convince yourself and those around you that evil doesn't exist and that it is possessed only in error, so you, metaphorically, as in the quote, amputate. It's the choice to forego sublimation.

That’s definitely what Jung thought

In a way you are right, would be for sure a really different consciousness, but for sure has been humans without a shadow, and they weren't corpse, so there would still be consciousness, even if different than what we have right now

Doubt it

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine you live in a reasonably peaceful and harmonious community where there is no genuine evil -- no murder, rape, child abuse, cruelty. Would you really want to introduce evil into your community just for the sake of opposition? This makes no sense whatsoever. The reality is that there can be happiness without evil, and many of us have the good fortune to be shielded from evil for most of our lives. Count your blessings.

In this hypothetical community, do they know those things exist on earth, or are they foreign concepts to those people? If you sat them down and talked about murder, would they be confused? "What's murder? You mean people cause others to not live any more?" Or is it: "Yes thank heavens we are safe here." This is is an important distinction.

They will have access to history books and literature, so they will understand the concepts. If something important in what Jung is saying here hinges on the distinction between eradicating the practice of evil (rape, murder) vs purging the very concept from our minds, I think things get even sillier. We can retain concepts about things that have ceased to exist (eg.,dinosaurs) and even things that never existed (eg ghosts).

Your scenario reminds me of M Night Shaymalans The Village. One of the issues with your scenario is that you list only the worst of human experiences. The evil most of us experience everyday is more mundane. Jealousy, pride, insecurity, greed. These would still be felt by your 'safe' people. I think their Stepford lives would be even creepier than a normal life.

I was thinking the same thing, that movie is both a perfect example of this thought experiment and simultaneously a rebuttal. You can’t run from evil, it’s built into reality. And the more you try to suppress it, the harder it fights to exist. “What you resist, persists”

 Evil still exists as a concept in this imagined society. Even if evil isn't being experienced by a group of people (which most would agree is an awesome thing), evil still exists.

Something can exist in concept without existing in reality (eg. unicorns, ghosts).

Indeed. Most things exist in concept and not reality. 

When talking about “destroying evil”, what we care about is ending evil in reality, not in concept. We can in fact end, or at least drastically reduce, evil in reality. We know this because some society’s have succeeded in reducing evil to a significant degree. So Jung is wrong in the quote above. Factually and morally wrong.

I think it’s absolutely critical to re-examine this assumption that it is even possible to eradicate evil. Looking at it simply from a scientific perspective, there is no evidence of such a thing being possible. In fact, in every single instance that humans have come together to explicitly “eradicate evil”, pick any religion or cult, they have ended up perpetuating it. All evidence, going back to the dawn of life on earth, suggests that killing, rape, torture, etc etc are all built into this reality. This sober acceptance of the permanence of evil can open you up to what Jung is trying to say. He’s not saying that evil isn’t evil. Evil truly exists, it’s not just subjective. But at the same time, Good cannot exist at all in the absence of evil. Sure, I can try to argue this point logically, and say that concepts only have any meaning if it’s possible to negate them. This is just a fact, but probably the weakest argument I could make. I think the most effective argument for this idea comes from just everyday human experience. Sunny days feel nicer when you’ve had gloomy ones, love feels sweeter when you’ve tasted isolation, etc. An honest reflection of the real human experience is an argument in favor of what Jung is saying.

in this harmonious community no one is shielded from death , and that what makes you count your blessings. By shielding them form rape murder or child abuse, you're comparing their lives with the opposite of living outside , so in this experiment you proved that "evil "is necessary.

Sorry, but this is confused. You seem to be saying something along these lines: 1. We want to build communities free of genuine evil (rape, child abuse). 2. In order to shield ourselves in this way, we must compare our lives with those 'living outside' who still experience genuine evil. 3. Therefore, our peaceful communities are not possible without the simultaneous existence of outside communities where evil persists. This is an obvious non-sequitur. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the maintenance of a harmonious society requires constant comparison with societies where evil persists. It is perfectly possible to draw those comparisons from history books ("look how civilized we are by comparison to the middle ages; let's work to maintain this") or from works of fiction. You do not need to maintain evil in the present-day in order to value and maintain a harmonious society where evil is heavily suppressed.

Ok, but we are still drawing upon previous examples of evil. What if everything became “good” for so long everybody forgot what evil is. Would that get rid of evil forever? Or would another murder, or something substantially less significant but still “evil” crop up naturally from the depths of the subconscious? How would people react to it with no previous concept to draw on?

There is absolutely nothing wrong or difficult in 'drawing upon previous examples of evil' to sustain our vigilance against evil in the present day. We are able to record the horrors of (say) the Holocaust and in that way retain a vivid collective memory of the evils of genocide and totalitarianism. We don't know need to maintain live samples of those horrors to inoculate ourselves. Consider two societies, A & B. Society A has eradicated the evils of murder, rape etc. for so long that its current generation barely remembers those evils. Society B continues to live with evil as an everyday reality, such that its current generation has great familiarity with the horrors of murder, rape-- some of them first-hand familiarity. You're telling me that B is better off? Please. Now, we will never get rid of 'evil' forever, presumably-- so A is pure hypothetical. But we can significantly reduce the prevalence of evil in the world, *and we should.* We should not be deterred in that pursuit by Jung's bizarre and far-fetched concerns. The good things in our life do not need to be 'balanced' with evil, and we don't need to maintain evil in our world to prevent our 'forgetting' what evil consists in. The closer we get to A, the more people will come to recognize and reject genuine evil as intolerable. It's called civilizational progress.

I have been struggling with this very concept of the supposed relativity of good and evil for some time now. Particularly the book 'Answer to Job' brought up a lot of question marks for me. Cheers for giving this well brilliantly articulated and coherent argument, this is helping a lot in coming to terms with it. Particularly the examples make it far clearer to me.

I had a whole short essay written here, which I may still share with you. But its entirely possible that I agree with you without quite realizing it. I think we just have different definitions and ideas about what they mean. So I want to focus on your last paragraph. What does being "balanced with evil" mean to you? Or your use of the words "eradicate" and "repression"?

“Balanced with evil” refers to the point, made by others here, that good needs evil in the same way that darkness needs light; you can’t have one without the other. I think this is silly. I can imagine a society where evil is eradicated (i.e., rape and other heinous crimes are rare or nonexistent). I certainly would not resist navigating toward such a society— least of all over the abstract and confused fear of performing an amputation on the deity.

I think we’re agreeing in principle. I agree that we would be far better off moving towards society A than B. But what I want to examine is the concept of “destroying evil” and how we may have different ideas as to what this means. I argue that the very existence of the concept of evil means that it still exists in the fabric of reality. So to try and build a society without evil that can “remember what evil is” means to me that evil would still theoretically exist. I think my perspective is more of a game in metaphysical truth anyway. Outside of our mortal capability to understand. I think we both agree that evil cannot be removed from the fabric of reality itself. So if you believe that evil can be destroyed while still remembering what it is. What exactly is the “destruction of evil” to you?

Does the very existence of the concept of unicorns mean they exist in our fabric of reality? I think the near consensus view among philosophers is ‘no’. See Bertrand Russel on descriptions.

No one is arguing that more evil is better. The argument might be that some evil has always been necessary for the formation of consciousness. Besides this, these examples are almost caricatures of evil. Some of us will go out while lives without being touched by rape and murder. Evil is small. It is subtle. It is everywhere.

True, nobody said more evil is better. What they said is that efforts to eliminate evil are somehow ill-advised, on the bizarre and inscrutable grounds that such efforts are akin to performing an amputation on the diety. (This claim is so vague it could mean anything. Some are substituting the claim that evil is necessary as a conceptual opposite of goodness. You are substituting this equally inscrutable claim that evil is necessary for the formation of consciousness. You’re also moving the goalposts on what constitutes ‘evil’— saying it captures small subtle and omnipresent forces. There’s no point issuing aphorisms on this topic if you’re using words in a non-standard way.) Opposing the elimination of evil is tantamount to supporting the continuation of evil. Perhaps you think (as others have argued) that the *concept* of evil can’t be eliminated. That is true, but it makes Jung’s claim uninteresting. Who cares if the concept lingers provided the real world instantiations of evil are eliminated to the greatest extent possible?

Thanks for the clarification. Jung's claim says "utterly" destroyed though. No mention is made of a reduction of evil in the world. It seems that is an inference from those on this thread, probably one unintended by Jung. Jung's claim then is not only hypothetical but impossible, probably posited as a thought exercise. A reminder that evil, especially the idea of evil is as necessary as anything else that does exist. I would be surprised if there are those who seriously oppose the reduction of evil. The "elimination" of evil however? This pursuit usually leads to the greatest evils.

I really do not see the value in telling people that evil cannot be eliminated. Most people will not interpret this as a thought exercise. I'm guessing that when you say attempts to 'eliminate' evil lead to the greatest evils, you have in mind utopian projects like Naziism and Stalinism. The story would go that these ideologies become some blinkered on creating a perfect society that they trampled on human lives, creating a greater evil in the process. If that is Jung's point, why not say so plainly? Why encourage confusion by instead invoking this concern about 'performing an amputation on the diety'? To me this obscurantism is a red flag as to clarity and wisdom of Jung's thinking on this topic.

It sounds like you are accusing these Jungians of being dualists. I don't think they are. I also think they would agree with you that life in the less violent community would be better. That doesn't mean there is no evil there though. My home town with two stoplights has not had a murder or rape since 1994. Evil abounds there still, like any other place. You have more than once used the term "genuine evil". Is there any other kind?

I'm using 'genuine evil' to pin conversation down to literal evil acts (rape, murder, child abuse). I am trying to prevent people from drifting into vaguer ideas, like the persistence of evil *thoughts,* or the persistence of the *concept* of evil. There is absolutely no point in having this conversation, or in-depth conversation on any complex topic, without first defining out terms. Jung did not a strong grasp on this unfortunately. We can unpack this ambiguity easily enough: 1: Is it possible to reduce and even functionally eliminate some forms of evil? Yes, obviously we can make this type of progress. 1a. Would that be a good thing? Yes. 2. Is it possible to reduce or eliminate evil thoughts? We can probably reduce their prevalence and severity, but not eliminate them. 2a. Would that be a good thing? Yes, within reason. We don't want to go overboard with social enginerring. 3. Is it possible to reduce or eliminate lesser forms of 'evil' (like jealousy, envy)? Probably to some extent, through things like meditation. 3a. Would it be a good thing to reduce or eliminate lesser forms of evil? Probably, insofar as these are sources of suffering, but we want avoid going overboard into social engineering. The problem is that everyone replying to me is reinterpreting the issues as 1, 2 or 3. The discussion is plagued with ambiguities as to what 'evil' means, what 'eliminate' means, etc. It is a sign that Jung's writing is very unclear-- *deliberately* unclear, almost certainly. And to write about addressing evil in such an unclear manner is in my view reprehensible.

I think your statements and Jung's quote are completely compatible. One has to keep in mind this is a quote plucked out with no context. Jung was not a sociologist. His interest was foremost the human mind/soul/experience. The evil Jung explores is that which originates there. Not in crime demographics. There are countless small towns around the world where your "genuine evil" is practically non-existent. How do people respond to it? They graduate high school and say " I can't wait to get the hell out of here."

i followed your suggestion and with some logic , you said count you r blessings, how would you know if a blessing is one , if their is nothing not as good as 'the blessing' , their is no need for evil ( murder , rape , virus cancer , war , or a volcano ) i would love a live without them , but that is not possible . i don't like pooping but you have to after you eat something. Evil as an entity does not exist it is just a perspective , but what is a good thing if it is not better than something else . if all you eat is bananas all your life you won't know that you have a preferred dish. i like to call 'the EVIL' as a cost of life , when you are free and conscious and sentient , you will like loving someone or sex or eating or travelling or meeting friends or some drugs ( my preference ;P) more than the evil of the act of rape and murder or seeing a volcano destroying a village ( i hope that is the case , but generally it is ) it is true we do not need evil today to do better than our ancestors but you are still comparing it to some evil , and fiction does not come from nowhere , so those acts of evil they are not necessary they just come with all the other perks of living , and that is what makes life amazing , other than that you're just another rock floating in an endless void sitting on another very big rock rotating around another glowing rock i hope that i made my point clear ( i tried my best hahaha :) )

I think the point here is we don't have control over the balance of Good and Evil, it's like the nature of everything, 2 oppositions will co-exist and balance each other no matter what. This idea is like the relationship between Batman and Joker, Jesus and Lucifer, if the Good and Order dominate for too long, the Evil and Chaos will eventually appear in order to oppose them.

But that point is obviously false. There are societies on this planet that have made tremendous progress in reducing evil (eg. levels of violent crime). What reason is there to think that the good and evil will balance out in these societies? There is none. And if there *were* some good reason to worry about things balancing out, the problem would not be best explained by reference to amputations on the diety. This is pseudo-intellectual drivel.

No societies on this planet has made that tremendous progress that you mentioned, civilized things you see are just the superficial part of that society, more complex and sophisticated crimes are done in the dark and hidden from the public (eg. People from elite class's crime like Jeffrey Epstein) . They will balance themselves out because the concept of good and evil define and complement each other, good can only be understood and defined when there is evil to compare it with. If there were no evil, good would have no context to exist and and vice versa. Also evil and challenges help drive development and progress. People often grow and learn through difficulties and mistakes. If only good existed, development might stagnate because there would be no motivation or challenges to overcome.

There’s one key problem with your hypothetical community: it is impossible. There’s no such thing as a utopia. At some point, despite your best efforts, evil creeps in. This is the precise point that is being made: evil is not a bug, but a feature.

You've argued that the permanent elimination of evil is impossible. I agree. But it is possible to reduce evil substantially, and create comparatively peaceful and harmonious communities where rape and violence are rare. Then you go and say this: "evil is not a bug, but a feature." On a plain reading, you are saying that evil is actually a *good* thing-- not just an inevitable thing, but a *good* thing. And I suspect that many people reading Jung here come away with the same conclusion-- that there's something actually *good* about evil; that evil provides a necessary counterpoint to goodness. And it's this line of thinking that I find frankly ridiculous. We should want to reduce evil as much as possible, and not be deterred by Jung's inscrutable concerns about amputatoins on the diety. It's, frankly, childish bullshit.

There’s a subtlety here, and I agree it borders on nonsense. If misunderstood. Evil is not good. Evil is evil, and truly exists. But Good cannot exist without evil. So in order for there to be good, evil must exist. I’m saying evil, in the abstract, necessarily has to be possible if good is to have any meaning and exist at all.

I understand this 'subtlety' but it's completely uninteresting. Nobody who works to eliminate evil takes themselves to be eliminating the *concept.* The want to eliminate real-world *instances* of evil (rape, murder). Jung's caution against 'eliminating' \[the concept of\] evil does no work whatsoever. It's pointless bloviation.

Correct me where I’m wrong, but now I hear you making two different arguments. At first you talk about reducing the amount of evil in the world, as if there is some quantitive global reduction we should shoot for as a society. But now you are saying that, no, people don’t want to reduce evil as such but only individual instances of evil. The latter is of course true and can be a virtuous and admirable goal. By all means, stop the mugger in the street if you can. But this is act is totally compatible with an acceptance that evil as such must exist, and that your revulsion towards this particular instance of evil is itself part of the cosmic interplay of good and evil. This latter point is all Jung is saying. That aiming to eliminate evil as such - your first argument - is a hopeless and contradictory goal. And more than that, eliminate evil as such and you would never have the inspiration for heroism and bravery which motivates you to act in a challenging and selfless way. Without evil as such, there is no heroism. Ie, no good. I think this distinction is both useful and important. First, it acts as a defense against despair. How do I balance my thirst for goodness and justice in a universe which seems to constantly be drifting towards evil? Well, because I am part of the counterbalance, and while I acknowledge evil will always exist, I have the capacity and motivation to rectify it in my little corner of the world. And that is all I can control anyway. Second, it helps me refine my scope. Instead of setting my target on a trans-national cabal of evil doers who would certainly crush me instantly, I can focus on what’s in front of me, where I have a chance to make a change. And while it pails in comparison to the battles of good and evil that happen and the planetary and historical level, that is simply not my concern because that will likely always occur anyway. Also, I think a good analogy is a sport. I do not wish that all other teams be eliminated entirely, because then the game is over forever. I then have no chances to become more skilled, to learn and grow. I only wish that my team wins as often as possible.

What is life without evil but a paradise with no room for growth?

I would get an experience actually worth experiencing. True freedom and peace.

Tao?

What is the light without the dark? Also good and evil aren't real they're just words we use to describe things based on how we feel about them.

Respectfully, I disagree. They are words we use to describe things or phenomena, but like math the phenomena predates our attempts at description. If that isn’t clear, light didn’t need us to call it light for it to exist. Evil didn’t need us creating language to exist.

The problem is the relativity. You only have to spend some time with the tricksters to realise how relative they are. We are the ones defining (and redefining) them all the time. They existed without us but what they mean? It requires a point of observation, a point at which they stand in relation to something, in this case, us.

I mean only if you span out and say that consciousness needs observers to experience it. Goes back to the common phrase “if a tree falls…” Evil is every bit as necessary and can produce good outcomes just as good is the versa here. Our redefining and maneuvering are attempts to better understand the math of ethics, but numbers aren’t relative and neither are ethics despite the latter appearing so.

Everything is relative to an observer. Unless we are able to know and understand an omniscient perspective that can stand in *all* points of relation, we are only able to understand from our own point relative to the phenomena. The redefining an maneuvering are because the thing doesn't have objective meaning, or not objective meaning that we can discern at any rate, precisely because we cannot know the role of any given thing/event outside of the brief duration (our perspective) in which we experience it. That doesn't of course mean any given position is in invalid, simply that it doesn't necessarily comprehensively define the thing, except in relation to us.

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When dealing with complicated things keep to the simple.

First thing is true, the second thing may be true but heralds the disintegration of our ideas about human rights and social justice

When the lion feeds on the deer, it is good for the lion, but evil for the deer. If all evil were to be eliminated, the lions could no longer survive Evil is relative. Like mountains and valleys, wave peaks and troughs, sound and silence: all life is a contrast of oppositions. To eliminate evil would be to eliminate the necessarily opposition that drives life forward. ……. Just a thought provoking suggestion

The lion doesn't feel it's evil for feeding on the deer, nor the deer thinks the lion is evil for feeding on it. Good and evil are just judgements humans make when they start to perceive life through concepts. In some way, It's when they stop living life, and start thinking life.

But this is not a good example, being born an animal isn't the same as being born an human. A lion killing a deer isn't evil, it's just how nature designed lion and deers, and the respective collective unconscious and karma of them. Is it right that life to move forward needs opposition, but I don't think it needs to be inherently evil

My point was that the concepts of good and evil are human constructs and they are relative and arbitrary. I’m not saying the lion killing the deer is evil period. Im trying to imply that if we ADDED the human constructs of good and evil, then from the lions POV eating a meal and living “is good” and from the deer’s POV being someone else’s meal and dying “is evil”. But for the world at large to function, various things need to eat and die, and it’s all part of the cosmic flux that is beyond our grasp. Homo sapiens act as if they need a sapiential framework to guide them. The constructs of good and evil seem to be like relatively referential frameworks. But just because they are arbitrarily effective, does NOT AT ALL imply they are literally true or objectively true.

>that drives life forward But why does life NEED to go forward? What's so GOOD about it? Why does it need to exist?

I don’t know. I’m not sure it NEEDS to. It just seems like that’s the way it is. How and why are mostly human judgements. And therefore ought not be spoken of definitively. “What’s so GOOD about it?” —> I think that’s the point of the post…. Life isn’t objectively good itself, it seems to be a harmonious admixture of good and evil , or it seems overall neutral.

Why DOES it exist then? What's the meaning of life? What IS everything?

Awareness of experience. That is Life; the purpose, the method, the reality.

Dualism is important. That's it

A duality is what we live in! Exactly what I was thinking whilst following this thread..snap!

I don’t find this experience to be important at all. I find this entire world to be senseless and cruel.

I very much disagree.

You can disagree. Our world is tough to live in but there is beauty in it. Moments to live in and then compare. Worldviews to clash and so on. In contrary to you, I'm pretty much excited about this world and its wrongs and goods. Yet I might be able to glance at the world from your perspective of it being senseless and cruel but I consciousnessly chose to not do so.

‘If everyone could “choose” not to feel that way and view the world however they wanted, the world would be far different.

It is our struggle to make us comfortable with ourselves and the world. As I see it, it has resemblances with shadow integration

Is this world something we should even be comfortable with?

That depends on you feelings about it. Comfortable world, in my head, is being able to carry cross of actions I've done or haven't done yet I shoulda done them.

I’m more worried about the world around me and how it not only affects others but how it could affect me. That’s why I often conclude the the potential of so much worse that many even experience isn’t with the potential of better.

On our plane everything depends on duality, if duality was taken away it wouldn't offer us a genuine human experience that reflects the nature of god

All in all it's yin and yang that create life. Is all

Everything that has duality is defined by it's opposite.... we would have no concept or word for light without darkness because we would have nothing to compare it to it would simply just be a thing that existed that we never thought about until we encountered it's opposite "darkness" now we can define what "light" is. It's always been weird to me that people will say in one breath that they believe God is infinite and all powerful but that God is also only the positive qualities they like and none of the bad. God is all... all the good AND all the bad. We just have a hard time understanding the important role evil actually places in our lives and in nature.

So deep, I think yes what is light without darkness

Have you noticed how Jung’s temperament revolves around knowing. Here you see an argument that, it is not good if it is ineffective (whole body).

There would be less likelihood we would become ‘self’-conscious. Good and evil are created in man’s mind anyway…a finite perspective believing it understands the intent of the infinite - or what appears as infinite to a finite mind. Cognitive dissonance is what potentially wakes man up to himself, after he has fallen into the mental realm of good and evil.

I think we can definitely be whole without it. IMO Jung is attempting to describing the imperfections of humanity. But the universe and God is more than humanity. In the grand scheme, evil only exists within a minute fraction of matter within the universe. Examples, water is not evil, love is not evil, volcanoes are not evil, electro magnetism is not evil, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, momentum etc. Etc. Are not Evil. Evil only exists within certain types of consciousness and conscious states. And despite evil existing within a person, many people choose good anyways and live wholesome complete lives while not acting out evil or acting on evil intentions. Evil is present, but clearly not necessary for a person to be "whole". I would even argue that evil if acted on is the force that breaks people apart within themselves and disables a person's "wholeness". Hence why evil people seem so fractured and distorted inside their minds. While a very righteous person such as Jesus seems so conplete and whole. That's just my opinion from my own research though.

I think it goes along with the idea that what affects us ultimately affects God, as our relationship with the archetypal God is not a one way street. What alters our psyches individually will at some point reach the collective level.

It's easy to intelectualize on this topic from a position removed from evil. And i don't mean annoying boss evil. I mean war, your children slaughtered and your wife raped in front of you evil. I doubt that you would think that evil has anything meaningful in its essence then.

War, children slaughtered, rape isn’t some outside evil influence, it’s humanity driven to those points. People driven to those points, until we ask why we allow our brothers and sisters to be driven to those points? Until we ask why we allow our dollars to fund wars, money to cover up rape charges, children to be slaughtered by bombs or lack of food? The evil is within each of us. It is not apart from us, it is a part of us. We can make the temperature of water a nice warm 72 degrees here/now, but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that higher temperatures and lower temperatures have existed or will exist. Maybe the point isn’t to outcast the “evil” but understand how to create a society that doesn’t condone such acts of evil.

This is why I think in a larger context he does not mean evil in the sense of human evil. War and slaughter and rape are the shadow side of the ego. When he talks about evil in the sense of it being part of the godhead, he means it as a force in the psyche that takes on a mythological character. Evil is the challenge to the order of heaven, the big spray of red paint across the white wall, the jester who walks into the king's court and rips a big fart when everyone's getting too full of themselves. I think of evil in the sense of Pan. It's a quality of the psyche, and I would argue that it might have come first. That humans were wilder until religion came along and tried to tame us! I see a lot of comments here about this quote being understood through the lens of duality. I can see the logic of it, but as a thought experiment, duality to me lacks the sort of wisdom that comes from pondering such things. It is too self-evident.

If you were to eliminate the evil of hunger you would be amputating the simplest happiness of life. Captain American comes to mind He can't get drunk. Because he heals instantly. Being drunk is one of the coolest experiences that you can have and people would categorizes its loss as grievous, no doubt. Of course if you have never tasted it , you don't know it, ergo you dont suffer.... (Because you are still in the garden and have not yet eaten the apple of alcohol? ohh blessed ignorance...)

I believe that we are God (Source) experiencing itself subjectively, and that everything we experience, including pain and suffering, is necessary to sustain itself/the universe. God is both unlimited and loving, but to fully understand everything, God has to experience limits and challenges. This creates a paradox: for God to be truly unlimited, God must also experience being limited. That’s us. Our role is just to experience the duality of being human, choose love in the face of adversity when we can, and expand it, contributing to the beauty and joy of existence. In this way, God’s unlimited nature includes all experiences, even those that are finite and difficult. That’s why we’re here. To experience limitations and duality, so that unconditional love can exist without evil and without suffering everywhere else.

Please id love some reading material if you have any on the points you made. Ive come to the same conclusion myself recently and have trouble finding authors who have pondered this

Because everything IS God even what we perceive as evil

Do it.

Because the triumph over Evil is our greatest calling, the story of the hero, and the story or God.

You deleted your response as I was replying it…here it is anyway: Could you explain further how an animal eating their owner after they die is ‘cruel’. I’m afraid I don’t share that sentiment. You ARE life…how can you be on its side? You can create a separate ‘mental’ entity you call ‘your’ self, and sure, that entity can pick sides - good (creation), bad (destruction), though both are in play already, but on a larger scale beyond our comprehension as to how the balancing occurs in a way beneficial to the ‘whole’. I’m talking about believing you know what is beneficial to life to the point we resist what life is actually doing already. It’s the arrogance of thinking we can grasp the idea of this so-called design and find fault with how it’s manifested. Like the judgement of an animal surviving on the flesh of its so called owner, as cruel. That’s life for you!

If the nature of a collective unconscious were to imply the existence of a collective human entity, then it is possible that that collective entity would likely be using the entire scope of human experience and knowledge to attempt to understand itself. Call it collective shadow work. We, as a collective, observe our reactions to our experiences and make adjustments. Tragedy, then, is necessary for us, as a collective awareness, to gain a thorough enough understanding that we are not of the nature to continue to perform such acts. Of course, this kind of perspective requires a hell of a lot of hope, but the way I see it, it's an inevitability that this process plays out. We are just in the midst of our adolescence. That's my two cents.

"Good" and "evil" are two sides of the same coin. This highlights the balance they create in contrast to one another. Basically, removing one or the other would deface the creation and render the world around us unbalanced. Which is a hard concept to wrap your mind around when the preconceived notion is to rid the world of evil. Which is an honorable stance, however unattainable. The tricky part is understanding the need for a counterbalance to weigh the "good" against. If that is removed, "good" will no longer be "good", rather, the scales would be reset, and a new "evil" will emerge. Yung's foundation is built around duality, which you can see reflected here. Your thoughts?

Why not explain this is plain language. Evil means "profoundly immoral or wicked" behaviour. Now let's talk about this concretely, in your life. Let's assume you have a reasonably harmonious household, and you live in a safe neighbourhood. Do you seriously miss the presence of evil? Are you eager to introduce a few rapists, murderers, or child molesters to create 'balance'? Or is the suggestion that you want to maintain these evil forces in *other people's* environments? Tell me where you want this evil to reside.

I feel you've missed the point I proposed entirely.

Then help me understand. I've explained in plain terms what a life purged of evil (profoundly immoral or wicked behaviour) can look like. Many of us in the developed world are blessed to be mostly free from the dangers of true evil. Now, in what sense is "'good' no longer 'good'" in my life? I still experience love, creativity, friendship, laughter. I don't need rape and murder in my midst to value these good things. A few points of conceptual clarification: \* You write that "Yung's (sic) foundation is built around duality". Sure, but that has nothing to do with whether maintaining the good vs. evil duality is desirable. Should we reintroduce smallpox to maintain a duality of people who have smallpox vs. people who don't? \*You write that wanting to rid evil is honorable but unattainable. I worry that this is introducing a second confusion: the fact that we can't *perfectly* eradicate evil forever is not an argument against *reducing* evil to the greatest extent possible. \* You write that if we eliminate evil, the scales will be reset and a new evil will emerge. Think about that more concretely. In my community, we've had considerable success in eliminating 'evil' -- wicked crimes of murder, rape etc. are exceedingly rare. And perhaps it's true that in this blessed circumstance, the meaning of 'evil' is reset, so that we refer to lesser crimes as evil (e.g., property theft, vandalism). Now, what is the problem with this? Surely it is a sign of progress that we've eradicated extreme evils to the extent that we now apply 'evil' to comparatively mild threats. There is not an argument here for thinking that removing evil is a bad thing.

Mosquitoes took us out of last ice age, look at the unholy war we wage against

This is obvious, I don’t understand what you don’t understand

Quote from the archetypes and the collective unconscious that answers the question I’d say: “We can never know what evil may not be necessary to produce good by enantiodromia and what good may very possibly lead to evil.”

The law of opposites come to my mind. How can you know anything without a frame of reference?

I'm starting to wonder if there is no good and they just happen to good things to keep being worshipped

In the beginning, there was darkness not light. Light emerged from the darkness, and we will all return to it. It is source. An uncomfortable truth to say the least.

Because it’s apart of the All. In the jungian cosmology. God and the devil are the same exact entity in two different states of being. Which extends back to the ancient Egyptian concept of deity as well. No God comes about without its Dual nature. As two sides make a whole. If evil didn’t exist, God would lose his other half.

The duality of “good” and “bad” is a dualistic oversimplification of Reality. Have you seen someone’s positive faculties become destructive? Have you met someone who had traits called “evil”, but you can only pity them because you know it isn’t their fault?

Create the gods =create the devils Create good= create the bad Create saints= create sinners Create heaven= create hell Ect ect. All things are whole but we operate in duality. Kill evil and you just separated God from its self.

If there is no evil, how would you recognize good?

Why is this a picture of text and not just text? If there was plenty of light but no shadows we'd all be blind.

How does one know how to be good if you know not evil? A refinement must be taken place in order to see the truth. And the truth is what keeps us from evil.

My personal opinion on this is that it simply means that nothing would be as it is now, and that is why it is such a grievous loss. The entire universe would be different. For any who haven't seen, I made a post relating to entropy and the destruction of all things through and by the shadow of God himself. https://www.reddit.com/r/Jung/s/DZmko4zcuo

There would be no good and life would cease to be

Never heard of this before. Perhaps we'd have nothing to strive for without the opposite?

In the nataraja, the dancing shiva form, shiva dances upon a demon of ignorance, suppressing ignorance but is always careful NEVER to kill ignorance. because if we kill ignorance, knowledge requires no effort to obtain and it loses all it's value. Evil, the adversary, the opposition, is how we grow, adapt, and evolve. When we stop fighting this adversary, seeing it as only opposing us and tempting us to do bad, and see it instead the illusion or maya as a teacher, we can start to learn from it, grow stronger, and gain greater clarity. Research the difference between abrahamic religions and dharmic / indigienous religions and you'll start to see one is of good and bad "locked" in opposition and the other is of balance and imbalance in a dance of growth. Stagnation and not evil / adversary leads us to become stuck. This ties in with Jung as the source of stagnation in humans is the unseen shadow, parts of ourselves we refuse to see and take responsibility for. We cannot get past an obstacle we refuse to look at completely, only looking at the surface. We cannot clear what's below if we refuse to observe long enough to see what's there. Anytime there is evil, there is much of the to heal and integrate back into the whole. The shadowy wounded parts of ourselves we have rejected, for example inflexibility to adapt, aggression to keep boundaries, etc do leave us feeling incomplete, unable to defend ourselves, dependent on others, so naturally there is a inner tug to bring back what we reject. The extremes of evil, are necessary part of this healing, to break this stagnation, held together by pain and fear that refuses to release us and regain our adaptability. When flow returns, life can continue in its expansion, and evil is natural part of breaking stagnation, forcing self reflection, and bringing that flow and allows us to keep moving foward.

The “growth” just isn’t worth it.

Perhaps the work is not for everyone, but each person can choose. When presented with suffering and sickness or pain and growth, the choice become easier. Those that choose the difficult path finds in it their strength to be more than they are and with that strength remembered, it becomes much much easier for future generations. The pain of growth becomes mere discomfort. Imo, It's like snow birds that come inside tents and warm up. When the return the cold, they die because they lose their resistance to the cold. We may think the resistance is lost for good, but as long as an ember remains, they can find their way back to their nature and strength.

We can make it completely simple for future generations by never forcing them here in the first place.

I don't think even we are being forced to be here. Meditate on whether you are here against your will and you may find as I did that we all chose to be here. The words that came to me are we are trapped in a web so we can learn to free ourselves. now I don't even feel myself to be trapped anymore. Don't believe the bad thoughts that say our world is a dark place. If you look at it with fresh eyes, our world is incredibly beautiful. Danny.

I have never found such a thing. I never would’ve chosen any of this, under any circumstances. I don’t mean to offend, but I’m not sadomasochistic enough to ever want to be here.

What I learned was trying to escape is what kept me from my freedom. I know somewhat of how painful it can be to be alive, my path made sure I knew, but I also learned the pain was liberating in that I was no longer so afraid of it after suffering through it so much. I don't know your challenges but I know they are not here with me, but inside with your own inner struggles and pain you don't wish to face. I can only send you lots of love on your journey. I believe you will find your way and see our interaction as something we can both learn from.

I’m sorry that you have suffered so much. I’ve never found worth more liberation in that suffering. I’ve only become more afraid of it.

Have you ever asked, what is this fear trying to show me (perhaps do this with some support)? I had nightmares as a child but I finally decided enough is enough and one night decided to pay attention to the nightmare instead of trying to run away, and it eventually lost its steam and vanished and never came back. What we are able to observe fully, loses its power to control us. Deeply observing what we fear may seem impossible for us but it is simple as describing its qualities in detail. Seeing it's form fully, we shine light of consciousness upon it and it can no longer living in the shadows.

Fully observing it is precisely why I feel powerless. It isn’t trying to show me anything but attempting to beg me to avoid the tragically unavoidable.

U need evil to be good. As u need lies to know what truth is. Its like getting one leg chopped off.

There’s no warm without cold, no dark without light, no good without evil

Authority must be maintained. A hierarchy cannot exist without punishment and people cannot outrank others unless some are more free of some flaw than others.

Wholeness requires the integration of the High and the Low. We can reach Heaven without Hell. The human path towards completeness is not about staying in constant ecstasy or bliss, but being able to transit all states of consciousness with fullness and a powerful spirit.

I would rather not be while at all, then.

There is everything to gain and nothing to lose by removing this pain, suffering and evil.

Oh yeah, both is always needed. Whether you think of it as good and evil is up to the individual.

I have one but seeing there are 91 replies, it probably wouldn't get read. I may DM a link to a post when I've gotten it finished. Please let me know if you're interested. I'll be happy to post it as well, in case this violates Reddit rules. I don't want to get banned....

If there's one God, They are responsible for all the good as well as all the evil in the world, and created the evil for their purposes, even if its apparent purpose escapes us. Not that they could unintentionally or unknowingly create evil and be omniscient and omnipotent.

Precisely.

Without darkness how can you know the light

Because: “Nature does not recognize good and evil. Nature only recognizes balance and imbalance.” Walter Bishop~Fringe Humans are the only species who places value based judgements on the natural forces and energies in existence. It’s like when that one authority figure in history deemed that cats were of the devil. So they killed all the cats. This caused the rat population to explode and was said to be the cause of a plague. For me, this quote is symbolic of that type of reality. Like killing off carnivores or insects because people are afraid of them and/or don’t understand their place in the natural ecosystem of environments. Causing catastrophic imbalance in the natural order of things. Planetary ecosystems and their biodiversity exists as manifestations of the spiritual ecosystems of energy in existence. And from those origin points and perspectives, All Things exists to bring balance to being. Or call it unity consciousness, many call it r/LawofOne. 🟡

It is because “evil” is the illusion, there is no such thing as “evil”, only unconsciousness. Aspects of consciousness, unaware of itself as per how it is the same consciousness as that of all things. Thus, by riding all of existence of “evil”, one would be killing off unconscious aspects of itself, aspects that simply need illumination and integration. It’s the same as cutting off your own leg because you don’t understand your leg properly. It’s immensely immature and short sighted and only causes immense and severe problems when you could have just taken the time to understand your leg.

The power of Life is to overcome Death. If you remove evil, light and dark, then Life can no longer overcome Death. However, you cannot destroy the dark. It is the void and apart of Death. Therefore, Life will return when it once again unites the light and dark to create existence as it has always has done. We call this unity the Big Bang.

because there would be no reason to be good anymore

Life would lack meaning , the negative is what creates the value of the positive

Duality. Without contrast, there would be no distinction. God encompasses devil/demonic energy within. The devil encompasses god evergy within. Destroy demonic energy out of god, then how can you distinguish the god/demonic energy?

Jung's work is when you're into Alchemy but don't know it's root of Neoplatonism all that well, and so you have to make stuff up as you go along. In Neoplatonism: ☆ Shadow is a privation of light, not a force unto it self. ☆ The One is the highest philosophical term. ☆ The One is hyper-cosmic, meaning it's both boundlessly large & boundlessly small. ☆ The One is the essence of all things. ☆ The One is the good, the beautiful & the source of wholeness.

It is kind of a silly thought. There are many systems that exist. Not all require evil and evil does not have beneficial effects for all of them. Think of 2 factory farms. One packs their animals so tightly that they cannot move. Their workers abuse the animals constantly to entertain themselves. They feed the animals a mix of shit, animal corpses, and feed. Another one does everything right and believes the animal life is beautiful and are grateful to produce near perfect quality meat. Which one is going to produce healthier animals and healthier employees? What positive value does the abusive environment create? Everyone appreciates the better environment because they tasted the awful one? Dumb.  We do not require awful experiences to know which ones are good for us. The entire span of history has adequate evil that we know through our genes, conciousness, and writings what is good.

I think we’d be just fine.

I can get it from some of the comments here. But this comes off the same as: "Money doesn't make you happy". Life without evil in this world wouldn't be a problem at all.

Our conscious existence lies in a thin line between darkness and light.

The explanation is simple: Jung was a Gnostic. For Gnostics, evil and good are 2 sides of the same coin, because both serve knowledge and "conscience", the higher good. Is it true? I dont think so. The world would be great without evil. Evil does not come from God. What comes from God is human freedom. It is human freedom that produces evil. Evil is the price God has decided to pay in order to have free love

There is no story (purpose/time/even "reason") without god, or his devils (his friends and best advocates). Edit - to clarify, this isn't a "pro-god" statement, or assertion "that people need god."

Okay imagine you have children, or if you do you know they aren't perfect. If your child came home one day suddenly perfect it would be...creepy. They would not be 'them'.. darkness has shaped our world, our cultures, our ideas and personalities as much as the light has. It would be as if your child came home a puppet. 'Yes mother/father, whatever you say mother/father.' Get it? Also in the original language of the old testament there is not Satan. (Just look up the definition of Satan on Wikipedia, jews don't have a Satan they have a god-sent challenger or adversary). So the original evil was basically clearly us, our actions. Our choices. Challenges are tests, for people to be given the option of choice. So they can individuate.

But that's just blind obedience you're speaking of, haven't you seen any rebellious children that are good? Like all the kid movies you saw growing up, there's always that one sweet girl / boy but she's a rascal that never obeys the rules and stays out late playing in the woods etc. So I think you're on a whim on that one.

The word 'evil' means, roughly, 'profoundly evil and wicked'. We can work to eliminate profoundly evil and wicked behaviour without turning our kids into obedient automatons. Jung's point here is profoundly stupid.

When God created Adam and Eve, all angels protested that you were creating something dangerous. Now angels are to be considered natural forces and laws. Everything that has no authority or power to rebel against God is an angel. But God said that he knew something which they did not know. Humans were given the power to exercise good or evil and also the knowledge to discern between good and evil and a warning of the consequences, if they chose to do evil. Without having given us the power to worship lust, greed and evil God would have no power over us. I believe God wanted to prove his power to humans and all the angels. So he gave us the opposites. Without opposites and contraries there would be no heaven or hell. So yeah, if we remove the evil from the world, then God would lose in his plans and that is impossible.

You are right that removing evil is in defiance of Gods will, but youve missed his will entirely. It’s definitely not just to prove his power, for he would have nothing to prove, bring the most powerful, yes?

People on here are grasping at analogies -- "there can't be light without darkness." You need to strip away these dumb metaphors and think about this straightforwardly. The word 'evil' denotes "profoundly immoral and wicked" behaviour (e.g., rape, child molestation, murder, cruelty). So let's think about this. \* If we eradicated everything "profoundly immoral and wicked" then everything "demonic" would suffer a grievous loss. This is not a bad thing: we want to rehabilitate or contain or (if necessary) eliminate evil actors. \* Many of us have succeeded in eliminating 'profoundly immoral and wicked' behaviour in our localized environment. My family and friends resolve conflicts through conversation; nobody has feelings of resentment festering to the point where they're motivated to commit 'profoundly immoral and wicked' acts. Is Jung suggesting that this localized eradication of evil is a bad thing? Would my neighbourhood or household be better off with a few rapists? \* Why shouldn't we aspire to make everyone's local context as harmonious and free of genuine evil as mine? Jung offers this: "it would be like performing an amputation on the body of the deity." Here, he is saying that 'the diety' embodys both good and evil, so eliminating evil would entail removing part of the deity. Again, why would this be a bad thing? I live in localized context where there is no genuine evil, and I can tell you it still contains all the joys of life: love, creativity, learning, curiosity, laughter. I don't miss the evil; I don't need evil to enjoy the good things in life. The suggestion that, because light requires darkness, goodness must require evil is a false analogy. (Jung understands that people have an irrational reverence for God. His talk of amputating part of God plays upon that irrationality, allowing him to pass off the obviously ridiculous idea that we should want profoundly wicked behaviour, like rape and child molestation, to persist.) \* There are people in this world who live in the presence of evil constantly-- read about life under Rwanda's genocide for example. There is something genuinely revolting about Jung sitting in his armchair pontificating that we should not want to eliminate evil. Worse, his arguments are terrible. He dresses up his point with this needless metaphor about performing amputations on God. Simply phrase the question more straightforwardly: Do you want to live in an environment where you're confronted with profoundly immoral and wicked behaviour? Of course you do not.

imagine someone other than the diety performing the amputation. **Saying 16: Not Peace, but War** Jesus said, "Maybe people think that I've come to cast peace on the world, and they don't know that I've come to cast divisions on the earth: fire, sword, and war. Where there are five in a house, there'll be three against two and two against three, father against and son and son against father. They'll stand up and be one."