“Primitive man does not analyze and does not work out why another is superior to him. If another is cleverer and stronger than he, then he has mana, he is possessed of a stronger power…”
“The Mana-Personality,” Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 7, ¶388
The more things change, the more they remain the same. All of us remember who had “mana” in our high school classes. They were the “cool kids” group. Who was popular and who was not? Whether we were a part of it or not, we all know what is meant by this unconscious power over others.
The mana-personality does not change, as we get older, although it does become more complex, and hidden from view. Today the obvious markers of mana-personality tend to be recognized in the form of who has the best toys—cars, boats, houses, and attractive spouses. Everyone has a certain amount of mana, and most want more. Some of us recognize that our mana grows if our neighbors’ mana grows, which is where the balance of love becomes necessary.
Election 2016 is an example of a time when primitive mana breaks through in the old tribal sense. It can be either constructive or destructive. The huge and building crowds of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are indicia of their mana-personalities. All of their followers want some of that power to make them feel better about their own lives.
The American Middle Class has long been told to sit down and shut up. The masters of the universe like nothing better than telling average Americans to “Get back in your box!” They’ve pushed and pushed until the distress of what was the American Middle Class has grown to an intolerable level. As the lead in the movie Network had it forty years ago (and it’s only become worse), “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
“Here we follow, quite naturally, the principle of non-resistance to all superior forces, up to a certain individual limit, beyond which the most peaceful citizen becomes a bloody revolutionary.”
Ibid., ¶395
Bernie Sanders tapped into our national distress early with his smart campaign addressing the pain of the Middle Class, and many who saw no other candidate addressing their points of pain soon followed. In the sense that Dr. Carl. G. Jung wrote about the Shadow, Donald Trump represents the Shadow of Election 2016.
“The living form needs deep shadow if it is to appear plastic. Without shadow it remains a two-dimensional phantom, a more or less well brought up child.
“Here I am alluding to a problem that is far more significant than these few simple words would seem to suggest: mankind is, in essentials, psychologically still in a state of childhood—a stage that cannot be skipped. The vast majority needs authority, guidance, law. This fact cannot be overlooked.”
Ibid., ¶400-01
Those who are drawn to an authoritarian figure (a “Daddy”) to beat up the people they don’t like on the playground are looking to Donald Trump as their savior. Those who are looking for wise stewardship of our fragile common purpose as a Nation are looking to Bernie Sanders for guidance.
The question for the American electorate and the rest of the world is whether we have an adult in the room. When you come right down to the bottom line for all human beings, all we really want is a modicum of security against the uncontrollable forces at work in nature and our societies, enough to eat, reasonable lodging, and something reasonable to occupy our idle hours. All of us would be quite satisfied with our lives if we could achieve a reasonable level of equilibrium on these factors.
But there are those among us who have seen their way clear to stack the deck against the majority, whether they are Wall Street investment bankers or Middle Eastern potentates. When the result is painful enough, we rebel in important ways.
Most of us don’t want to rock the boat. If you have a family to raise and a position in society to maintain, there is little you can see that will help your situation without making things even worse. This is why it is often young people and retired people who can challenge the status quo. The young have nothing much to lose, while older people have been burned enough to say, “Ouch!”
Enter the “mana-personality”:
“… a being full of some occult and bewitching quality (mana), endowed with magical knowledge and power.”
Ibid., ¶375
We see the consequences in Election 2016, with both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. It is easier to see than control. At some level, perhaps in our unconscious we could explain the situation as follows:
“I recognize that there is some psychic factor active in me which eludes my conscious will in the most incredible manner. It can put extraordinary ideas into my head, induce in me unwanted and unwelcome moods and emotions, lead me to astonishing actions for which I can accept no responsibility, upset my relations with other people in very irritating way, etc. I feel powerless against this fact and, what is worse, I am in love with it, so that all I can do is marvel.“
Ibid., ¶375
Sanders and Trump are providing us with the perfect matched set of the two sides of the mana-personality. Sanders the man who has been calling the right shots since his college days; Trump the egomaniac, who will take the Country down the road to destruction by force of will if we let him.
“The mana-personality is on one side a being of superior wisdom, on the other a being of superior will.”
Ibid., ¶396
“Both figures are ideal images: Napoleon on the one hand, Lao-tzu on the other. Both are consistent with the idea of ‘the extraordinarily potent’ … a dominant of the collective unconscious, to an archetype which has taken shape in the human psyche through untold ages of just that kind of experience.”
Ibid., ¶ 388
There is no doubt that Election 2016 will create America in a new form. Humpty Dumpty stacked the deck in favor of the banks and the 1%, but he is broken on the floor and something new must arise afresh. It seems to me that Bernie Sanders does have the mana, taken from Hillary Clinton, to create something new that can satisfy us all. If Donald Trump wins the election, we are in for a very dark period in America, because he will not create a proper container for all of our broken parts.
What we the voters need to do is step back from the psychic epidemics sloshing around in our mainstream media, and make sensible choices about what will be best for our children and grandchildren. We’ve had enough of name-calling and bully politics. We want governments that will fix our roads and bridges, protect us from lead in our water, educate our children, stay out of our bedrooms and places of worship, and make decisions based on the best interests of the Nation as a whole, and not only a privileged few.
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Replies
It was uncommonly difficult to tease out what Dr. Jung was talking about in his essay, "The Mana-Personality." Please do correct me, particularly if you think my understanding of Dr. Jung's work is flawed in some way.