Blogs

December 8th

Republican corruption: There are still a few days until the Electoral College meets. We itch with uneasiness as we watch Trumpus flailing about in his tragicomic, slow motion coup, and there are some forty days of non-specific crazy left until the inauguration. Many Repub diehards, such as those on the bipartisan House and Senate Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, refuse to certify Biden’s victory. Then we have the recently pardoned Michael Flynn, who has implored

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people – H. L. Menken

As freedom grows, the need to coerce and control opinion also grows if you want to prevent the great beast from doing something with its freedom. – Noam Chomsky

Public Education

Tens of millions of us are really dumb – or to be generous, profoundly misinformed – despite our educational system. Or, we have to ask, is it because of this system? In Chapter Five of my book I compare indigenous initiation tradi

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it. – Mark Twain

Our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three branches of government…You know, the House, the Senate, and the executive…my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of socialism. – Tommy Tuberville

Mr. Tuberville is a retired college football coach, a climate change denier and Alabama’s new Senator. He is also an ignoramus, or at least he p

How Many Elephants can fit into this Living Room?

Democratic Corruption: I don’t follow each section on Repub corruption with one on Dem corruption (or incompetence) to provide balance. I’ve had plenty to say about how the media constantly engage in false equivalencies. I do it to continue my chronicle of how this election in its entirety is merely one example of the ongoing collapse of the myth of American innocence, and of how privileged segments of our population continue to try and shore up t

America will have a Presidential President again in Joe Biden. – The New Yorker

How does that phrase land on your soul? Are you cheering the downfall of the fascist Trumpus (as I certainly am) and a step back from the precipice of irreversible climate change? Are you celebrating a return to “normalcy”? Or are you one of the millions of people who rejected him but apparently still supported his policies?

On 11/7 Biden was declared the winner – not officially, by the government, but by the four majo

Soul and Inspiration

Inspiration happens from deep within the visionary world. While reading, sensing spontaneous intuitive flashes, and dreaming with vivid imagery, we experience the world of the spiritual imagination. CG Jung called the soul a vessel filled with grace or spirit, energy dramatized in literary images, intuitive flashes, and nightly visions known as dreams. Dramatic images encountered during reading and spirit-filled dreams while sleeping are inspirations from the visionary world’

Part Thirteen – El Dia de los Muertos

Republican Corruption: By claiming that Trumpus is leading in the polls and repeating his claims that he can only lose through foul play, conservative media are setting the stage for potential violence. Trumpus Jr. has called for “every able-bodied man and woman to join Army for Trump’s election security operation.” A private mercenary group, Atlas Aegis, has recruited former soldiers to watch polling places in Minnesota. Police pepper-sprayed Black people at

Part One: The Appeal of Conspiracy Thinking

I’m intrigued by how many conspiracy theories are gaining traction today, and wondering how so many fellow citizens of my country can believe them. I see news interviews with people who believe such outrageous things, but in every other way they look and act like typical Americans while confirming that they think something is real that, in fact, has been discredited many, many times because there are no actual facts to back it up.

Yet, there are reasons

Could you imagine if I lose? I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country…I could raise more money. I would be the world’s greatest fundraiser, but I just don’t want to do it. – Trumpus, 10/15

Existing emotional instability or psychotic tendencies may be aggravated by corticosteroids. – Warning label for Dexamethasone, Trumpus’ anti-Covid medicine.

Thank you so much for your leadership. – Diane Feinstein to Lindsay Graham, concluding the Amy Coney Barrett hearing.

I am the le

Part Seven: Responding to New Age Conspiracists

Who is he, who even were truth on his tongue, his way of speaking it would make truth almost as offensive as falsehood? –  Herman Melville

A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. – Winston Churchill

In America the legacy of violent crusading is channeled through our unique emphasis on individualism, and, I would add, our narcissism: What is true for me, what saved my soul, is necessarily true for you as well, and i

Part Five: Save the Children!

I see it (the New Age movement) fundamentally shaped by an impulse to the irrational…it seems to lack any critical evaluation of itself. – Terence McKenna 

The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight. – Joseph Campbell

In March of 2020, a book with no stated author – QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening – entered the list of the top 75 of all books recently sold on Amazon. It alleged that Hollywood celebrities and top Democrats

I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. – Mark Twain.

The period from mid-September through the first week of October were bookended by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and Trumpus’ illness.

Republican Corruption: The release of Trumpus’ taxes revealed years of no payments at all, income from undeclared foreign sources, massive debts to unknown creditors, gargantuan conflict-of-interest problems when they come due soon, and the likelihood of outright fraud.

My new peer-reviewed book, The Mythology of America's Seasonal Holidays: The Dance of the Horae has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan. It explains how myths underlie our seasonal holidays, and how understanding the mythology enables us to celebrate holidays more meaningfully and enriches our lives. There are many depth psychology aspects to the myths in question, particularly in the Easter and Christmas chapters. I hope you enjoy it. Questions and comments about it are welcome here, or o

Republican corruption: The ACLU of Georgia revealed that as recently as 2019 the state had purged nearly 200,000 citizens for moving from the addresses on their voter registration applications – none of whom had actually moved. Mitch McConnell quietly rammed through several more extreme right-wingers to lifetime federal judgeships — people who will oversee future elections. And in the topsy-turvy drama of Florida ex-felons, A federal appeals court ruled that they must pay all fines and legal fee

Jung, Christianity, and the

Evolution of the Western God-Image

According to C. G. Jung, symbols emerging from the dreams and fantasies of his patients indicated that the Western God-image – the imago dei – was evolving in a way that contemporary Christian institutions could no longer contain and mediate. Jung felt that, if Western culture is to survive, we must engage these emerging symbols so that they may once again help us to mediate the dynamic, instinctual energies of the psyche in life-a

Let’s look at developments in a half dozen themes that I’ve been emphasizing.

The corruption of the Republicans continues unabated. Each day brings new revelations. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe announced that he would be scaling back election security briefings. Trumpus encouraged North Carolina residents to vote twice. He doubled down on his praise of white supremacist violence while repeating the old fascist strategy of claiming that his opponents will do (cheat in the elect

Jungian analyst Murray Stein writes:

“Steven Herrmann is one of those rare individuals who can brilliantly bring intellectual prowess and visionary depth together in a graceful dance of prose and poetry. In this work he presents the many cross-overs and parallels between two similarly gifted thinkers, C.G. Jung and William James. A comparative study of these two giants of modernity is long overdue, and Steven Hermann is perfectly prepared to cover this match in all its splendor.”

Murray Stein, Ph.

Part Seven

In previous posts I offered several main points to consider about this election:

1 – The corruption of the Republicans / the Elephant in the Living Room

2 – The corruption of the Democratic National Committee

3 – The naïve innocence of liberals and intellectuals

4 – The surprisingly neutral position of the Military-Industrial Complex

5 – Boy psychology: do either of these candidates really want to be President?

This month we have two more issues to ponder: the choice of Kamala Harris for Vic

Our Fall (Sept.-Jan.) Zoom lectures, free of charge (including several cancelled last Spring due to COVID-19). Full information on each lecture, with Zoom and CEUs registration links at https://www.junginoc.org  While we will avoid many of the expenses required for in-person programs, we will continue to incur other organizational costs which will ensure that, when we do meet again in person, we will be able to do so in a seamless way. Therefore, we encourage those who attend our online programs

Part Four

Two Senile, Old White Guys Who Want to be President – Or Do They?

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters. – Trumpus

This essay is not really about politics, except to the extent that politics reflects mythology. Our first responsibility as mythological thinkers is to cultivate discrimination, to take a step back and attempt to perceive the narratives that are being played out in our culture, how they circulate within our psyches, before w