If we take Jung’s idea of the Collective Unconscious seriously–and I personally believe we should–then groupings of emotionally connected people really do have a sort of collective psyche. And this psyche can be healthy or unhealthy, just like that of an individual. It has purposes, and meanings and habits.
The Great Evil we are presently facing consists in the main of redirecting deeply rooted American impulses towards generosity and courage–which I think Paul Johnson correctly identified as our most conspicuous national virtues–into cruelty, deceit, structural injustice, and cowardice. All these vices are proclaimed as virtues to stupid, emotionally empty (this has been the job of our media all these years, and our schools) people.
We are regressing, rapidly. We are losing what was good and unique about our nation, all on purpose. All in the service of lunatic ideas which only survive because the people pushing them obsessively all individually have their 10,000 hours of lying in place before they ever take office, so they are very good at it. And obviously, they have mastered the art of the Large Public Lie. They have talents, as individuals and groups. They are very literally the People of the Lie, as discussed in M. Scott Pecks’ book of the same title.
I feel all this. If I have been blessed with one superpower, it is the capacity to deal with quantities of pain and fear that would flatten most people. As I have said before, I don’t know why I am not dead. But here I am.