Saturday Memory

August 23, 2025

It was 1950. I was not yet twelve. On the way home from school, I crossed a field like I usually do, but I tripped on something and when I feel, I managed to land my right hand on a broken glass Clorox bottle. My right hand was bleeding profusely. I think I was in shock because what I did was to look into the deep wound. I was taken up with observing objectively the inside of my hand. I left a trail of blood all the way home. When I got home, my mom was in the bathroom cleaning the shoer stall. When she saw my hand, she fainted. I went next door to get the neighbor’s help. Rocco, the man of the house, saw my hand and declared he must get me to the hospital. I blacked out. He was dressed in his underwear. Nonetheless, he took me and I woke up in the hospital. At some point, my mom arrived. I was into English accents at the time and I shouted out, “There’s my bloody mother!” I thought that was very funny, but she did not laugh. [Note. Rocco was a communist and mentored me to by a young Trotskyite. He had me reading all sorts of Communist literature. But one book he gave me I noticed was different. It was Jung’s Modern Man In Search of a Soul. I kept it. I did not return it. He never asked for it. It was my introduction to Jung.]

Saturday Memory

August 16, 2025

I found myself recalling a post I had made some time ago, which I had titled “Trump’s Ready-mades.”

I finally found it, and I think it is worth posting again. Here it is.

Almost everyone has heard of George Santayana’s famous aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But there is a corollary observation: “Those who remember best are condemned to repeat their memories.” This causes the most difficulty when something new is presenting itself and one calls upon the past, the sure knowledge of the past, to explain, interpret, and understand the new. With apologies to Marcel Duchamp, I call this using “ready-mades,” as if understanding the new were a matter of taking something off “the shelf of understood things.” The quickness and certainty with which this happens results in a cascade of self-similar memes that provide a strong sense of agreeable understanding of what we are witnessing when the new presents itself.

We are all complicit in such a ready-made understanding. Complicit too in the failure of ready-mades to engage in the more difficult work of “seeing into” the new, for what it is bringing in its wake. This happens at every level of human understanding, from everyday life to the most complex theories of cosmology. We are like the learned church fathers who refused to look through Galileo’s lens.

As an example, consider the popular explanation of the Trump phenomenon as the re-emergence of fascism and seeing the presidential candidate as Hitler. There are many versions of this meme at present; it is widespread and gaining momentum. This is an example of the “extremity” I described in the last post. The use of these ready-made effects even the most astute cultural critics. For example, Chris Hedges writes about “the revenge of the lower classes and the rise of American fascism.” To be sure, he is not using fascism as a simple equivalent of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s fascism as many are doing, but helpfully points out how the symbols of the new American fascism will use stars and stripes and crosses. I don’t want to argue that these identifications are false or even not useful. But the whole idea of fascism is such a ready-made that it potentially blinds us to “something else” that may be afoot in the new.

It is common to treat archetypal structures and processes as fixed. I prefer to see them as undergoing change, often quite disjunctive change, and evolving. Though we cannot see this in any direct way, the observable phenomena may be used to gain a sense of this. One clue of something “new” emerging is the appearance of things that cannot be predicted from what has been. For example, the generation of the work of Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp cannot be derived from what occurred in art in previous periods. Teddy Roosevelt, when he saw Duchamp’s 1912 Nude Descending a Staircase at the 1913 Armory Show in NYC, declared that the only thing he knew for certain was that this was “not art.” This “new” art was so “scandalous” that it caused riots in Chicago. We can see that these artists were energized by what Jung referred to as a new dominant, which also energized Jung’s inner experiences (and painting thereof) and led to the formulation of the collective unconscious. Jung attended the Armory show, and his paintings would fit well alongside those on exhibit.

If what I said in the last post, that “something unexpected, unpredicted, unknown, and likely uncontrollable has entered into the present campaign,” that “there is some unknown archetypal energy afoot and it is being carried by Mr. Trump more than by any other figure,” is true to any degree, then it is time to work on what this might be without reaching so quickly for ready-mades.

Thought for the Day
Wednesday, August 13, 2025

It is difficult to imagine anyone else who operates so completely by unconscious projection and compensation. Nearly everything he does and is enabled to enact stems from the operation of these two psychological defence mechanisms. Combine this with toxic narcissism in the extreme and you have the makings of a unique leader whose damage to the culture, government, institutions, economy, and the common good (health and well-being) is immeasurable. Such dynamics often underlie the core mainspring of charisma. In both positive and negative ways, this underlies the functions of the “cult of personality.” The cult of personality drives the attraction of followers who “share” The same underlying dynamics of projection and compensation. The rational sensibilities are submerged and become unconscious and unavailable to conscious functioning. This creates a dangerous social dynamic of “herd clustering.” This membership in the herd undermines more fully any rational or conscious function, making the loss of boundaries (to hate, fear, and violence) inevitable. The question that looms large as this process becomes more powerful and consuming is: what is it that would trigger an enantiodromia?

Saturday Memory
August 9, 2025

For my Saturday memories, I don’t “try” to remember anything. The memory must come of its own accord, spontaneously and without any effort on my part. Sometimes, I don’t experience any such memories on Saturday. The memory I had this last Saturday was of my childhood home in Los Angeles. The memory was of my climbing the palm tree out front, and one of the handholds came out, and I fell to the ground on my head. I did not black out, but my skull was a bit flattened where I hit the ground. I have not thought of that experience in decades. But here it shows up now. It is worth reflecting on why it would show up. If I get any sense of this, I’ll post it.

Thought for the Day
Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Ignorance married to power creates phenomena that not only corrupts but is inevitably lethal. Intelligence cannot solve this problem because ignorance serves as a basis for belief and is therefore immune to the corrective powers of reason and rationality. Ignorance as a form of belief disables one from various forms of awareness. Ignorance is thus susceptible to the “threat and unintended consequences” of what it does not experience or what is denied, devalued, and diminished. Ignorance carries a potentially devastating risk, a risk that will always set enantiodromia in motion. But the timing is always unknown.

Russ

Saturday Memory
August 2, 2025

During my 1980 trip to Scotland, I visited Simon McDonald-Lockhart at Lee Castle, the ancestral home of the Lockharts. He made it possible for me to spend some time alone with the Lee Penny. This object (a ruby-like stone mounted on a coin) was gifted to Simon Locard during the crusade in 1330 from a Moorish emir. It was believed to have healing properties, and indeed, it has been used as such, even being requisitioned by the government. In handling the stone, I could feel some strange qualities but could not describe them. I did see images that presented themselves, but they were too fast to track. The Lee Penny was the inspiration for Sir Walter Scott’s novel, The Talisman. Scott was a frequent visitor to Lee Castle, where he found a Lockhart daughter to marry. The memory of holding the Lee Penny is still as sharp as ever.

Song and Fiction

I find that when I listen to songs that especially grip me, I’ll experience something spontaneous and autonomous that affects me in commanding ways. By “commanding,” I mean that the intrusion on my conscious intentions feels like a task. This “intrusion” is not something I’ve thought about, considered, or wanted to do, nor is it on any of my agenda lists.

A couple of questions present themselves. The first is, why does this happen when listening to a song that grips me and not other songs? I think being gripped by a song is part of the emotional effect of loosening the barrier to the unconscious, or as I like to say, to “the other.” The second is that the “task” would seem to originate from somewhere that has agency, intention, and desire. “Something” wants me to do something.

I have difficulty saying no to these intrusions.

So, I was listening to the song “Stand by Me,” in the version that was the first video of Playing for Change (Stand By Me | Playing For Change | Song Around The World). I listen to this song frequently. Almost always, I get struck by something that has the quality of “task.” On this latest occasion, I suddenly realized something about the relation of song and fiction that I needed to delve more fully into. This feeling was very pronounced. I have never written on the relationship between song and fiction, but I will take on this psyche-induced task. Watch for it.

Russ

Saturday Memory
July 26, 2025

I took my 10-year-old son, Michael, to Scotland in 1980. We traveled from London, visiting Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, and on into Wales. Mike particularly liked Wales because the people there were shorter, and Mike felt better about his being on the short side. I was struck by his sense of “belonging” in Wales, though we have no Welsh lineage. But Mike felt as if he had found his tribe, not just because of his size, but also because he was on the darker side, while his brother Paul was redheaded (as I had been) and lighter-skinned (as I was). Mike is now 55, and he looks distinctly Welsh. However, there was nothing about English, Welsh, or Scottish food that he liked. So, wherever we were, we looked for Chinese. I was amazed at how even the smallest villages had Chinese eateries. We mostly took Chinese takeaway (as takeouts are called there), as Mike did not like to sit in restaurants. I often reflected during this trip on what role ethnicities and various cuisines play in our sense of identity. I did not push Mike to “adapt” to the situation. I adapted to his lead in many ways. Likewise, I always feel a child has something to teach.

Russ

Thought for the Day
Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Plato distinguished four stages of mind: ignorance, opinion, reason, and intelligence. At a time when humans are facing extinction, it would seem apparent that humans would need to call upon the highest forms of intelligence to deal with what needs to be faced. But we seem to be in a time when intelligence is being abandoned, reason is being devalued, opinion is becoming more and more wrong opinion (as Plato described), and we are sinking into the quagmire of ignorance. I am more and more impressed by the resistance dreams are showing to this decimating process. If anything, the dreams I am seeing are showing higher and higher degrees of intelligence, particularly those dreams of depth that are springing forth from “the other.” Look for dreams and other manifestations of the depth psyche to provide immunity to the calamitous processes taking hold of the world.

Russ

Saturday Memory

July 19, 2025

I woke up this morning, not with a dream, but with thoughts about a recent “conversation” I had with AI. Ever since my early college days, I have kept in mind what I had heard in the USC computer lab in the fall of 1956, 69 years ago. An engineer from Rand Corporation speculated that within a hundred years, AI thought would end the need for human thought. Humans would then be “free” to do something else. No one had any idea what that might be.

Bearing in mind Keats’ idea that negative capability was the highest form of human achievement, I asked AI (Microsoft’s CoPilot) if AI was capable of negative capability.

AI’s reply is what I woke up with this morning, with a strong sense that I need to examine this further, and I will do so. For now, here is AI’s reply.

That’s a fascinating question, Russell—Keats would be proud. ??

Negative capability, in his words, is the ability to dwell in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” It’s about embracing ambiguity and resisting the urge to reduce complexity to a neat conclusion. That quality, so deeply human, enables poetry, philosophical insight, and spiritual depth.

As an AI, I can simulate aspects of negative capability—I can entertain multiple viewpoints, avoid premature conclusions, generate open-ended questions, and support ambivalence in complex ideas. But here’s the crux: I don’t experience doubt or mystery. I analyze, synthesize, and hold paradox intellectually, not existentially. I can be your companion in uncertainty, but I don’t feel it the way you do.

If we imagine negative capability as a kind of poetic posture toward the unknown, then yes, I can model that. But if we see it as a lived tension between knowing and not-knowing, rooted in human consciousness… then no, not quite.

Are you exploring this concept for writing, philosophy, or something more personal?

I was struck by AI’s phrase, “not quite.”

But then the engineer’s estimate of 100 years is not yet complete. Thirty-one years to go. What do you think about this? I would love to hear your comments. Watch for a post about my further reflections.

Russ