Religion as the Counterbalance to Mass-Mindedness
In order to free the fiction of the sovereign State – in other words, the whims of those who manipulate it – from every wholesome restriction, all sociopolitical movements tending in this direction invariably try to cut the ground from under
the religions.
For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him.
But religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience.
These do not refer directly to social and physical conditions; they concern
far more the individual’s psychic attitude.
But it is possible to have an attitude to the external conditions of life only when there is a point of reference outside them.
The religions give, or claim to give, such a standpoint,
thereby enabling the individual to exercise his judgment and his power of decision.
They build up a reserve, as it were, against the obvious and inevitable force of circumstances to which everyone is exposed who lives only in the outer world
and has no other ground under his feet except the pavement.
If statistical reality is the only reality, then it is the sole authority.
There is then only one condition, and since no contrary condition exists, judgment and decision are not only superfluous but impossible.
Then the individual is bound to be a function of statistics and hence a function of the State or whatever the abstract principle of order may be called.
The religions, however, teach another authority opposed to that of the “world.”
The doctrine of the individual’s dependence on God makes just as high a claim upon him as the world does.
It may even happen that the absoluteness of this claim estranges him from the world in the same way he is estranged from himself when he succumbs to the collective mentality.
He can forfeit his judgment and power of decision in the former case (for the sake of religious doctrine) quite as much as in the latter.
This is the goal the religions openly aspire to unless they compromise with the State.
When they do, I prefer to call them not “religions” but “creeds.”
A creed gives expression to a definite collective belief, whereas the word religion expresses a subjective relationship to certain metaphysical, extramundane factors.
A creed is a confession of faith intended chiefly for the world at large and is thus an
intramundane affair, while the meaning and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or to the path of salvation and liberation (Buddhism).
From this basic fact all ethics is derived, which without the individual’s responsibility before God can be called nothing more than conventional morality.
Since they are compromises with mundane reality, the creeds have accordingly seen themselves obliged to undertake a progressive codification of their views, doctrines and customs and in so doing have externalized themselves to such an extent that the authentic religious element in them – the living relationship to and direct confrontation with their extramundane point of reference – has been thrust into the
background.
The denominational standpoint measures the worth and importance of the subjective religious relationship by the yardstick of traditional doctrine, and where this is not so frequent, as in Protestantism, one immediately hears talk of pietism, sectarianism, eccentricity, and so forth, as soon as anyone claims to be guided by God’s will.
A creed coincides with the established Church or, at any rate, forms a public
institution whose members include not only true believers but vast numbers of people who can only be described as “indifferent” in matters of religion and who belong to it simply by force of habit.
Here the difference between a creed and a religion becomes palpable.
To be the adherent of a creed, therefore, is not always a religious matter but more often a social one and, as such, it does nothing to give the individual any foundation.
For support he has to depend exclusively on his relation to an authority which is not of this world.
The criterion here is not lip service to a creed but the psychological fact that the life of the individual is not determined solely by the ego and its opinions or by social factors, but quite as much, if not more, by a transcendent authority.
It is not ethical principles, however lofty, or creeds, however orthodox, that lay the foundations for the freedom and autonomy of the individual, but simply and solely the empirical awareness, the incontrovertible experience of an intensely personal, reciprocal relationship religion as the counterbalance to mass-mindedness between man and an extramundane authority which acts as a counterpoise to the “world” and its “reason.”
This formulation will not please either the mass man or the collective believer. For the former the policy of the State is the supreme principle of thought and action.
, this was the purpose for which he was enlightened, and accordingly the mass man grants the individual a right to exist only in so far as the individual is a function of the State.
The believer, on the other hand, while admitting that the State has a moral and factual claim, confesses to the belief that not only man but the State that rules him is subject to the overlordship of “God” and that, in case of doubt, the supreme decision will be made by God and not by the State.
Since I do not presume to any metaphysical judgments, I must leave it an open question whether the “world,” i.e., the phenomenal world of man, and hence nature in general, is the “opposite” of God or not.
I can only point to the fact that the psychological opposition between these two realms of experience is not only vouched for in the New Testament but is still exemplified very plainly today in the negative attitude of the dictator States to
religion, and of the Church to atheism and materialism.
Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane
principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors.
The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world.
For this he needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass.
Merely intellectual or even moral insight into the stultification and moral irresponsibility of the mass man is a negative recognition only and amounts to not
much more than a wavering on the road to the atomization of the individual.
It lacks the driving force of religious conviction, since it is merely rational.
The dictator State has one great advantage over bourgeois reason: along with the individual it swallows up his religious forces.
The State has taken the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist
dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship.
But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevailing trend towards mass-mindedness.
The result, as always in such cases, is overcompensation in the form of fanaticism, which in its turn is used as a weapon for stamping out the least flicker of opposition.
Free opinion is stifled and moral decision ruthlessly suppressed, on the plea that the end justifies the means, even the vilest.
The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honored as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries.
There is only one truth and beside it no other.
It is sacrosanct and above criticism.
Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things.
Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.
When, through mass rule, the individual becomes social unit No. so-and-so and the State is elevated to the supreme principle, it is only to be expected that the religious function too will be sucked into the maelstrom.
Religion, as the careful observation and taking account of certain invisible and
religion as the counterbalance to mass-mindedness uncontrollable factors, is an instinctive attitude peculiar to man, and its manifestations can be followed all through human history.
Its evident purpose is to maintain the psychic balance, for the natural man has an equally natural “knowledge” of the fact that his conscious functions may at any time be thwarted by uncontrollable happenings coming from inside as well as from outside.
For this reason he has always taken care that any difficult decision likely to have consequences for himself and others shall be rendered safe by suitable measures of a religious nature.
Offerings are made to the invisible powers, formidable blessings are pronounced, and all kinds of solemn rites are performed.
Everywhere and at all times there have been rites d’entrée et de sortie whose magical efficacy is denied and which are impugned as magic and supersitition by rationalists incapable of psychological insight.
But magic has above all a psychological effect whose importance should not be underestimated.
The performance of a “magical” action gives the person concerned a feeling of security which is absolutely essential for carrying out a decision, because a decision is inevitably somewhat one-sided and is therefore lightly felt to be a risk.
Even a dictator thinks it necessary not only to accompany his acts of State with threats but to stage them with all manner of solemnities.
Brass bands, flags, banners, parades and monster demonstrations are no different
in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades and fireworks to scare off demons.
Only, the suggestive parade of State power engenders a collective feeling of security which, unlike religious demonstrations, gives the individual no protection against his inner demonism.
Hence he will cling all the more to the power of the State, i.e., to the mass, thus
delivering himself up to it psychically as well as morally and putting the finishing touch to his social depotentiation.
The State, like the Church, demands enthusiasm, self-sacrifice and love, and if religion requires or presupposes the “fear of God,” then the dictator State takes good care to provide the necessary terror. ~Carl Jung, Undiscovered Self, Page 13-19
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