Mirrors of Projection

It was in C.G. Jung’s writings that I first encountered the rather useful concept of projection. Jung held that the collective unconscious holds permanent energetic structures he labeled archetypes (“primal patterns”)—an old, old concept with a hoary history… Plato’s ideal, eternal forms were of this category existing somewhere in a transcendental space, the very model and source of all things visible; in scholastic times they were transferred to the mind of God; during the Enlightenment Locke, for instance, brought them back to earth and suggested that archetypes were simply things out in the world that our minds turn into patterns. What goes around, comes around. In the transitional twentieth century, the archetypes go back into our chests, and if we seek to trace them further, we find them in that quasi-divine collective unconscious which was Jung’s reinvention of divinity. They reside there in Platonic silence, energize us, and we project them out into the world. There you have the root of this conception. The archetype of “father” is projected onto leaders, of “mother” on the nanny state, of “evil” onto capitalism, socialism, the red menace, or Muslim terrorism. Jung wisely suggested that people should withdraw their projections in order to mature.

Let’s walk hand-in-hand for a moment with this archetype of the Wise Old Man. Jung thought that the mirrors of our projection take on the energy of the archetype itself, and that, by projection, we thus form god-like entities that rule us in our turn. Not bad when you think about it. The rational way, Locke’s way, is much less exiting. Without the psychic energies that reflect malignly from so many structures of reality, CNN’s coverage of news would become—as it already is for the aware—a crashing bore. If we genuinely saw the reality behind today’s bogey-man, Al Qaida, we wouldn’t get very exited—much as in McCarthy’s day careers and reputations would not have been destroyed had we really looked at communism as it really was. When we don’t see reality, it turns into a mirror. It reflects back what we are.

Okay. But what is your solution, Mr. Darnay? And what does science say about this subject? A solution? I don’t have one. One of our more interesting projections is that the world arrays itself in a series of problem-solution sets, and if we can just get enough people behind us, we can get the problem solved. If this state of affairs troubles you, look for a solution within. Turn off CNN, for instance, or decline to participate in polls. Now as for science… Or should I have capitalized that word?

Life, Liberty, and Property

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it,that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. [John Locke, Two Treatises of Government]

Locke [1632-1704] is the source of the slogan that heads this post. The words of the slogan are a modification of the quote shown above. In that same book Locke uses much the same phrase three times more. In one case he speaks of “life, liberty, or estate,” in another of “a power…to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate,” and finally he speaks of “life, liberty, or possessions” again, but this time leaving out health. From this we get Jefferson’s elegant edit in the Declaration of Independence: “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The modified phrase also appears twice in the U.S. constitution, in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Both prohibit depriving persons of “life, liberty, or property”; in both cases the same qualifying phrase also appears: “without due process of law.”


In thinking about government and rights, Locke relied on natural law doctrines that find their rootings in antiquity. His own intention was to erect rational fences to defend the people against arbitrary government and offered justification for overthrowing rulers who violated natural law.

But natural law also deals with humanity in the collective, thus with communities and states, both of which, it turns out, are necessary features of individual liberty. Collectives also have rights, and these in turn limit individuals rights. Collectives may restrain some to protect others; they may defend themselves and, in the process, cause (at least indirectly) the death of their warriors; and they can require contributions necessary to maintain their activities. Life, liberty, and property, therefore, are not absolute rights but delimited in complex ways when the one and the many must both be accommodated in our thought.

Taxation is not theft. Extreme forms of right-wing thought maintain that it is, but what such advocates demonstrate is their own irrationality. We do have anarchists among us. But when such modes of thought begin to influence the masses, one begins to see the consequence of neglecting or outright banning ethics in school in favor of “social studies.”