“Real improvement can be hoped for only if there is a
radical change of consciousness. I fear all other measures will
remain unreliably palliative since they do not penetrate to the
depths where the evil is rooted and constantly renewed.”
…………………………………………………………………. —Carl Jung
By Way of Compensating
By way of compensating for the loss of a world
that pulsed with our blood and breathed with our breath,
we have developed an enthusiasm for facts— mountains
of facts, far beyond any single individual’s power to survey.
We have the pious hope that this incidental accumulation of
facts will lead to a meaningful whole, but nobody is quite sure,
because no human brain can possibly comprehend the gigantic
sum total of this mass-produced knowledge.
The facts bury us.
No one has yet become a good surgeon
by learning the textbooks by heart.
Yet the danger that faces us today is that
the whole of reality will be replaced by words.
This accounts for that terrible lack of instinct
in modern man, particularly the city-dweller.
He lacks contact with life and the breadth of nature.
All time-saving devices, amongst which we must count
easier means of communication and other conveniences,
do not, paradoxically enough, save us time but merely
cram our time so full that we have no time for anything.
Hence the breathless haste, superficiality, and nervous
exhaustion with all the concomitant symptoms— craving
for stimulation, impatience, irritability, vacillation, etc.
Such a state may lead to all sorts of other things,
but never to any increased culture of the mind and heart.
Author, Anonymous
From Salty Politics, 02/23/26
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