Carl Jung : Return To The Simple Life

Carl Jung

Collected Works, Volume 18

[Translated from “Rückkehr zum einfachen Leben,” DU: Schweizerische Monatsschrift, Jhg. I, no. 3 (May 1941). An editorial note in DU states that it is a summation of Jung’s reply to a questionnaire sent out by the Schweizer Feuilleton-Dienst (features service) to various eminent Swiss, on the effects of wartime conditions in Switzerland.]

RETURN TO THE SIMPLE LIFE

What are your views on a return of the Swiss people to the simple life ?

The return to the simple life can be regarded as an unhoped-for piece of good fortune even though it demands considerable self-sacrifice and is not undertaken voluntarily. Thanks to the mass media and the cheap sensationalism offered by the cinema, radio, and newspapers, and thousands of amusements of all kinds, life in the recent past has rapidly been approaching a condition that was not far removed from the hectic American tempo.

Indeed, in the matter of divorces, Zurich has already reached the American record.

All time-saving devices, amongst which we must count easier means of communication and other conveniences, do not, paradoxically enough, save 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.

Do you think we should turn more and more to the treasures of our culture ?

As the booming book trade in many countries shows, if the worst comes to the worst people will even turn to a good book. Unfortunately, such a decision always needs a compelling external cause. Unless driven by necessity, most people would never dream of “turning to the treasures of our culture.” The delusion of steady social improvement has been dinned into them so long that they want to forget the past as quickly as possible so as not to miss the brave new world that is constantly being dangled before their eyes by unreformable world-reformers. Their neurasthenic craving for the latest novelty is a sickness and not culture.

The essence of culture is continuity and conservation of the past; craving for novelty produces only anti-culture and ends in barbarism. The inevitable outcome is that eventually the whole nation will yearn for the very culture which, owing to the delusion of better conditions in the future (which seldom if ever materialize), has almost (or entirely) disappeared. Unfortunately our world, or perhaps the moral structure of man, is so constituted that no progress and no improvement are consistently good, since sooner or later the corresponding misuse will appear which turns the blessing into a curse. Can anyone seriously maintain that our wars are in any way “better” than those of the Romans ?

The craze for mass organization wrenches everyone out of his private world into the deafening tumult of the market-place, making him an unconscious, meaningless particle in the mass and the helpless prey of every kind of suggestion. The never failing bait is the alleged “better future,” which prevents him from adapting himself to the actual present and making the best of it. He no longer lives in the present and for the future, but — in a totally unrealistic way — already in the future, defrauded of the present and even more of the past, cut off from his roots, robbed of his continuity, and everlastingly duped by the mocking fata morgana of a “better future.”

A tremendous disillusionment is needed to save people from wishful thinking and bring them back to the sound bases of tradition, and to remind them of the blessings of a spiritual culture which the “age of progress” has destroyed with its nihilistic criticism. One has only to think of the spiritual devastation that has already been wrought by materialism, the invention of would-be intellectuals equipped with truly infantile arguments. It will be difficult to get rid of the kind of thinking whose very stupidity makes it so popular.

Do you believe that happiness is found not in material but in spiritual things ?

To remove the ideal from the material to the spiritual world is a tricky business, because material happiness is something tangible (if ever it is attained), and the spirit an invisible thing which it is difficult to find or to demonstrate. It is even supposed that most of what goes by the name of “spirit” is so much empty talk and a clattering of words. An attainable sausage is as a rule more illuminating than a devotional exercise; in other words, to find happiness in the spirit one must be possessed of a “spirit” to find happiness in.

A life of ease and security has convinced everyone of all the material joys, and has even compelled the spirit to devise new and better ways to material welfare, but it has never produced spirit. Probably only suffering, disillusion, and self-denial do that. Anyone who can live under such stresses and still find life worth while already has spirit, or at least has some inklings of it. But at all times there are only very few who are convinced from the bottom of their hearts that material happiness is a danger to the spirit, and who are able to renounce the world for its sake.

I hope, therefore, that the scourge which is now lashing Europe will bring the nations to realize that this world, which was never the best of all possible worlds in the past, will not be so in the future either. It is, as always, compounded of day and night, light and darkness, brief joys and abiding sorrows, a battleground without respite or peace, because it is nothing but the melting-pot of human desires. (...)

Can there be an optimism of austerity ?

Instead of “optimism,” I would have said an “optimum” of austerity. But if “optimism” is really meant, very much more would be required, for “austerity” is anything but enjoyable. It means real suffering, especially if it assumes acute form. You can be “optimistic” in the face of martyrdom only if you are sure of the bliss to come. But a certain minimal degree of austerity I regard as beneficial. At any rate, it is healthier than affluence, which only a very few people can enjoy without ill effects, whether physical or psychic. Of course one does not wish anything unpleasant for anybody, least of all oneself, but, in comparison with other countries, Switzerland has so much affluence to spare (however honourably earned) that we are in an excellent position to give some of it away. There is an “optimum” of austerity which it is dangerous to exceed, for too much of it does not make you good but hard and bitter. As the Swiss proverb trenchantly puts it: “Behind every rich man stands a devil, and behind every poor man two.”

Since “optimism” seems to have been meant, and hence an optimistic attitude towards something unpleasant, I would add that in my view it would be equally instructive to speak of a “pessimism” of austerity. Human temperaments being extremely varied, indeed contradictory, we should never forget that what is good for one man is harmful for another. One man, because of his inner weakness, needs encouragement; another, because of his inner assurance, needs the restraint of austerity. Austerity enforces simplicity, which is true happiness. But to live simply, without regret and bitterness, is a moral task which many people will find very hard.

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