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Thread: Jung's Religious Instinct

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    Default Jung's Religious Instinct

    Do you think that human beings have an innate, religious drive?

    Jung thought that human beings have instincts that guide them toward religious mythos and traditions. He theorized that the collective unconscious, or subconscious factors that are universal to all individuals, included various archetypes. Such unconscious archetypes could be expressed or recognized through religious mythology.

    Moreover, he thought that if an individual rejected the human impulse toward a higher power, they would deem other things as higher powers. For example, atheists might place their faith and reverence in science, the state, or their communities.

    Second question: if Carl Jung's premises are true, then can the religious drive be expressed through typology or typology communities?

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    I award you a Nobel Prize for the most creative way of asking whether or not 16t is a cult. Well, I don't think humans have an innate religious drive. I think people want grand overarching stories but I don't think they're all religious in nature at all. 16t doesn't even provide people with stories. It provides people with labels that lets them relate to other people's stories, but it doesn't provide stories. And no, I don't think anyone needs to provide stories either. I think there are enough of them floating in the ether without anyone having to deliberately do anything.

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    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    I award you a Nobel Prize for the most creative way of asking whether or not 16t is a cult.
    I accept your award and will get back to this post later.

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    I think its telling that things like astrology, healing crystals, and tarot have become more popular and socially acceptable with younger generations less likely to believe in organized religion.

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    People need some kind of connection to the Higher Power behind reality (Allah), which gives their life meaning.

    Neglecting this need, or seeking to substitute it with material/low things, can have very bad side effects.

    link related for a similar thought put in plain language instead of Jungian jargon

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    Quote Originally Posted by A Moderator View Post
    Do you think that human beings have an innate, religious drive? Jung thought that human beings have instincts that guide them toward religious mythos and traditions. He theorized that the collective unconscious, or subconscious factors that are universal to all individuals, included various archetypes. Such unconscious archetypes could be expressed or recognized through religious mythology.
    Yes, I do. Most ancient cultures had religious and spiritual beliefs. I think most ppl have some kind of belief in spiritual stuff. Then, I see that atheists often have as you said, faith or hope or trust in different things...it can be the man, humanity, community, money, achievements, science, ego or concepts as love, good, etc.

    I'd have to look more in detail into the Jung archetypes since I'm not sure if they fit in most religious or spiritual beliefs.
    For what I can say, most religious beliefs from the majority of cultures had ideas in common such as moral good and wrong, life after death and spirits or entities aside human beings. Most cultures were polytheistic, which means that they had a bunch of gods and goddesses that were in charge or represented almost everything (sun, starts, light, life, death, love, hate, war, elements, poverty, wealth etc). There are some mythical creatures or gods that seem to appear repeatedly in most cultures around the globe (asia, europe, america) for example dragons.



    Second question: if Carl Jung's premises are true, then can the religious drive be expressed through typology or typology communities?
    lol
    Since the pov of Jung I dont know.

    Since my pov, idk, I think religious feelings can be expressed in many ways and in almost anything (similar to the group of gods from ancient cultures), so probably it can be expressed in socionics somehow, for getting success or good fortune, the usual case is love or romance, I guess.

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    I think science is just a continuation of Christianity so the religious instinct is alive and well. even in non scientific or christian types there's the whole unitarian pantheon not to mention "spiritual" people or communists, or worshippers of money. in essence you could say I do find the religious instinct everywhere I look

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    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    I award you a Nobel Prize for the most creative way of asking whether or not 16t is a cult. Well, I don't think humans have an innate religious drive. I think people want grand overarching stories but I don't think they're all religious in nature at all. 16t doesn't even provide people with stories. It provides people with labels that lets them relate to other people's stories, but it doesn't provide stories. And no, I don't think anyone needs to provide stories either. I think there are enough of them floating in the ether without anyone having to deliberately do anything.
    To be clear, I'm not arguing that the inception of the website had anything to do with a cult or the intention to start a cult.

    But you provide evidence here that supports the theory that 16t acts as a kind of surrogate for religious impulses. The website server does, as you say, contain many stories created by its user-base. And its users derive meaning from these stories in absolutely no uncertain terms from a rather archetypical perspective. While the functions, dichotomies, and concepts discussed don't often explicitly reflect Jung's archetypes, they can usually be interpreted to a similar effect. For example, if I'm an ILE, then my Fe and Si are unconscious, so reflecting on these concepts and their respective psychological contents could very well involve my anima. Similar dynamics with others, as it relates to their individual psyches.

    You say you don't think it's a cult. To meet the criteria for a cult, it would have to essentially be a small religion. Religions are groups of individuals who follow a leader with a guiding philosophy, usually supernatural in nature.

    So, we would have to loosen the definition a bit to have 16t meet the criteria for a cult. There is no distinct, centralized leadership here. However, Jung saw himself as a kind of spiritual guru, and today we discuss his abstract theories and beliefs and take them to heart. Socionics, in particular, includes theories about intertype dynamics, which frequently serve as guidelines for the user base. Therefore, not only does Socionics consist of an abstract framework, it also provides a basis for making decisions as do the ethical frameworks of most religions. I'd recommend checking out Jung's The Red Book for a first-hand look at how Jung viewed himself at his most vulnerable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bertrand View Post
    I think science is just a continuation of Christianity so the religious instinct is alive and well. even in non scientific or christian types there's the whole unitarian pantheon not to mention "spiritual" people or communists, or worshippers of money. in essence you could say I do find the religious instinct everywhere I look
    If science is a continuation of Christianity, and science includes technological innovation, then this is also a continuation of Christianity...


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    Quote Originally Posted by ashlesha View Post
    I think its telling that things like astrology, healing crystals, and tarot have become more popular and socially acceptable with younger generations less likely to believe in organized religion.
    Jung delved into the occult and astrology, as I'm sure you know.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aki View Post
    I'd have to look more in detail into the Jung archetypes since I'm not sure if they fit in most religious or spiritual beliefs.
    They fit into most, if not all. I'd recommend Joseph Campbell for more compelling perspectives (he explains the symbolism of the dragon):





    lol
    Since the pov of Jung I dont know.

    Since my pov, idk, I think religious feelings can be expressed in many ways and in almost anything (similar to the group of gods from ancient cultures), so probably it can be expressed in socionics somehow, for getting success or good fortune, the usual case is love or romance, I guess.
    Bow chika bow wow.

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    It follows from Ego development and consciousness. Humans have stepped out of animal wholeness with the psyche, so now the "lost" unconscious gets projected in myths/ideologies. Religion is built into human beings. A consequence of being human. Jung talks about religion as a psychological phenomenon, not as later developed dogmas.
    Last edited by Tallmo; 10-04-2018 at 10:42 AM.
    The decisive thing is not the reality of the object, but the reality of the subjective factor, i.e. the primordial images, which in their totality represent a psychic mirror-world. It is a mirror, however, with the peculiar capacity of representing the present contents of consciousness not in their known and customary form but in a certain sense sub specie aeternitatis, somewhat as a million-year old consciousness might see them.

    (Jung on Si)

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    Quote Originally Posted by A Moderator View Post
    If science is a continuation of Christianity, and science includes technological innovation, then this is also a continuation of Christianity...
    ha ha !


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    I honestly don't think people know what being religious means. It's like being a slave to the "collective consciousness" and giving it a life of its own. Some see it for what it is, others are lost in it.

    I can't look at any religion seriously after reading A History of God.

    It's even worse when the religion is a few thousand years old. You are a salve to the collective consciousness of people who have been dead for millennia.

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    What you are saying in essence: any set of shared beliefs is a religion, and that is dumb as fuck.

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    Guys, please take Jung with a grain of salt. I don't think people treating their communities like God is even his idea but I've never seen that. "Praise my community, from which all blessings flow / Praise it all creatures here below..." Nope. In order for some things to be religion, some things have to not be religion. You can also make anything religion, but that's just human creativity and not Jung.

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    In regard to types and personality: I do think each person is unique in a way, whether people can be grouped and categorised effectively remains to be seen. You don't have to believe in something in order to experiment and play with the system. People who get attached to their ideas very rarely make any progress.

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    To simplify understanding and their lives, humans seem to turn to a belief system - hence, religion or something equivalent. As a corollary, people who have difficulty understanding or are too lazy to seek out facts tend to believe in what others say - hence, defer to higher authorities. As another corollary, leaders tend to use the previous two statements to their advantage; when dictators take over, the first thing they do is try to negate or eliminate the ones smarter than them. Typology won't explain belief systems but it can point toward how beliefs would likely be expressed.......

    a.k.a. I/O

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    We can ask ourselves, what is it that I spontaneously feel is bigger than myself? Is it nature, society, the nation, history, the universe, art, science, technology, internet, life...

    And then trying to focus on the actual projection, discovering it, not just saying that this is not projection because it is real. These archetypes are all around us, but we are so incredible used to them that we fail to see the projection we make.

    I think a lot of people can somehow relate to good old fashioned nationalism, at least with the help of a little imagination. The feeling of destiny of the country, it's people, connectedness, it's higher goals, history, political life & power, it's nature, my home village were I was born, "in this country I will live and die" etc, "serving my country" etc.

    That's the religious functioning of the psyche right there.
    Last edited by Tallmo; 10-05-2018 at 08:21 AM.
    The decisive thing is not the reality of the object, but the reality of the subjective factor, i.e. the primordial images, which in their totality represent a psychic mirror-world. It is a mirror, however, with the peculiar capacity of representing the present contents of consciousness not in their known and customary form but in a certain sense sub specie aeternitatis, somewhat as a million-year old consciousness might see them.

    (Jung on Si)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tallmo View Post
    We can ask ourselves, what is it that I spontaneously feel is bigger than myself? Is it nature, society, the nation, history, the universe, art, science, technology, internet, life...

    And then trying to focus on the actual projection, discovering it, not just saying that this is not projection because it is real. It's like these archetypes are all around us, but we are so incredible used to them that we fail to see the projection we make.

    I think a lot of people can somehow relate to good old fashioned nationalism, at least with the help of a little imagination. The feeling of destiny of the country, it's people, connectedness, it's higher goals, history, political life & power, it's nature, my home village were I was born, "in this country I will live and die" etc, "serving my country" etc.

    That's the religious functioning of the psyche right there.
    Exactly.

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    Quote Originally Posted by thehotelambush View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Subteigh View Post
    He was basically god to me, in a good way.
    Everybody worships
    (Replying to this from another thread).

    My view of worship in a pure sense is equivalent to my view of faith. Putting any level of confidence in something that is unobservable and thus has no effect on reality and so is always going to be infinitely disproportionate to the amount of energy I should dedicate to such things.

    I must say that even when I rejected the common idea of God for being absurd I still considered myself a "spiritual" person. Now that I have rejected all gods and all religions, I only recognize that feeling as being a manifestation of being human - having a consciousness, being in awe of nature, having emotions, recognizing that I am part of a whole etc.

    I think it must be true that every single person has faith, and worships things disproportionate to what is observable (which is my understanding of what is meant by the act of worshiping), simply because we are subjective beings and cannot know things to be true except that which is knowable without experience.

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    The instinct is to understand the universe. When we dont have the means to know a substitute in the form of religion can bring a comfortable lie

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