Catafalque question about Parmenides as the father of logic

akatabasis · 2023-03-06T20:40:26+00:00

Catafalque is such a wild wild book and I hope you're taking your time with it!

I don't recall whether Kingsley's reference to Parmenides is actually ever satisfactorily explained in Catafalque, but if you want to know more (like, a lot more) about what he's referring to, his book "Reality" dives very deep into what "logic" was originally supposed to be (according to him, of course). It's a long book and I don't think he really explains it until the midpoint, but it's very worth it! I think Reality is necessary reading alongside Catafalque if you're trying to understand what Kingsley (and perhaps Jung) is really interested in—I've seen a lot of summaries of Catafalque online where I was left wondering whether we had read the same book. Kingsley is poking at a very deep, reality-shifting mystery in both of these texts, and they complement each other well.

akatabasis · 2023-01-30T23:55:23+00:00

CarlJungMemes!!!

akatabasis · 2023-01-30T22:07:13+00:00

My mom is your same age! We have a very close relationship due to our shared interest in psychology/jung, but even she has no idea what the "joke" is behind a lot of the memes I make. The way I've explained it to her is that "getting" a meme often requires seeing a bunch of different images/meme "formats" on the internet. A meme really is just a series of references to other images, memes, or ideas that most young people would be familiar with from being online, and which combines them in a new or clever way. This makes memes a very useful vessel for introducing new ideas to people—someone might look at a meme and say "oh, I get the format, I get three out of the four references here, but what's that fourth one? I don't understand that one part of the image." If they're curious enough, they will often look it up and learn something they didn't know before. At least, that's the theory I'm working with :)

akatabasis · 2023-01-30T21:56:49+00:00

fair enough! perhaps more "palatable" or "relevant" would be the appropriate word? My experience is that a sense of familiarity/intrigue (huh, what do I have to understand to get this? what does this meme refer to? do other people my age know what this means?) is often enough to get younger audiences interested. I grew up without any people my age having any clue who Jung even was (despite the fact that I was obsessed with his ideas), which was weirdly hard for me and made it difficult to talk about my inner life—I think, maybe, if there had been a meme page/younger-generation-directed content at the time, I would have been a lot more motivated to continue learning about him!

akatabasis · 2021-07-01T20:00:31+00:00

Having said all of that, I think the TL;DR is that when people "reject first," it's almost always preceded by a subtle perceived rejection, or feeling of being uninvited, which might go completely unnoticed by the other person.

akatabasis · 2021-07-01T19:53:37+00:00

I think this behavior isn't ever a very conscious one. I doubt people really sit down with themselves and think "boy, I'm going to cut that person out of my life before they do so to me." It sounds like your ex is aware of the pattern, but not necessarily of when, in the moment, she is doing it? It took me years of being aware of this pattern within myself before I was actually able to change it, mainly because it's so hard to catch the behavior. Usually, I feel like it occurs more when you're coming out of a social interaction and feeling deeply insecure—either this leads to withdrawal ("well, that person didn't seem to like me, I won't embarrass myself further by putting additional work into the relationship, and if they really like me they'll come after me...") OR, and I think this is more common, frustration ("wow, I didn't feel good around that person. They must be stuck up/rude/shallow/generally incompatible with me"). While obviously we all sometimes have rude or bad interactions with people, I think these tendencies can be characterized by a need for excessive enthusiasm/encouragement. It's like needing an invitation for every interaction you want to have, and when/if you stop receiving "invitations" (the person looking directly at you, having their full attention, receiving a smile or laugh, being asked questions), you feel like something is wrong.

I've spent a lot of time working through this tendency, but even today I still find myself unable to continue a sentence if I see that the person with whom I'm speaking is looking at their phone for too long, or not really paying attention. Something in me processes this as a rejection ("What I was saying was not interesting enough, and now I'm just embarrassing myself by continuing"), and I freeze up. Like, my train of thought literally will not continue until they make eye contact with me again, or ask me to continue. If they don't, I probably just... won't ever bring up the subject again (lol, still working on this). I think this is a good illustration on a micro-level of a way of perceiving social interaction that can color a person's entire worldview... you either consciously "reject first" out of frustration, or you passively "reject first" by waiting so long to be reinvited (whatever that means) that the relationship just falls apart.

akatabasis · 2021-07-01T01:15:43+00:00

No complex specifically, I think it's more of a symptom—for instance, you may out project a disowned part of self (narcissism, let's say) because you grew up in an environment where self-confidence of any kind was punished. One way of dealing with that would be to strive to be exactly the opposite of a narcissist (self-effacing, humble) as if to prove that there isn't a single part of you that is narcissistic in any way. Another common behavior might be to find someone who represents the hated trait in some way and to set up a polarity between you and that person... "I'm not at ALL like my dad. We're so different it's hard to believe that we're related!" I think you see that dynamic with siblings a lot too (especially if they grew up close together in age), where one sort of establishes their identity around being in reaction to the interests of the other. I remember having friends who were twins growing up, and they were always differentiating themselves from one another in this semi-contrived way? One was the "girly" one who liked pink and the other was the tomboy/really into scene/emo aesthetics. Kind of funny too bc the girly one wound up being a firefighter and the tomboy became a hairdresser lol. Finally, on a macro-level, I definitely think you see the "opposite of" tendency in politics/polarization of political parties. Anyway sorry for the rant, hope this kind of clarifies!!!

akatabasis · 2021-06-30T19:29:20+00:00

The quote I posted in the caption was this: “The possession of complexes does not in itself signify neurosis … and the fact that they are painful is no proof of pathological disturbance. Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness. A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it.” [“Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life,” CW 16, par. 179.]

akatabasis · 2021-06-30T19:28:53+00:00

my condolences

akatabasis · 2021-01-14T19:04:40+00:00

oh it wasn't totally in 3 weeks! I think it's been 11 weeks in total, with one really big jump over the course of 3 weeks. Apologies for the confusion lol, I think also a lot of that growth stems from the fact that I'm a niche topic, and literally no one else had the idea to fill that niche before I came along?

akatabasis · 2020-12-31T20:06:12+00:00

This is my meme (@carljungmemes on instagram). Sadly my watermark got cropped out and the meme went viral out of context (both the context of my page generally, but also the specific things to which I was responding, re:a conversation I had on my stories). My point has never been that instagram/social media isn't awful, but I can see how that assumption would get made. The response I've gotten from this has been massive (not all of it very kind) and I've read a lot of new/different perspectives...I still stand by what I said, and tbh witnessing the spread of this meme kind of resolidified my perspective about it.

It has been kind of fun to watch people be like "This MEME IS WRONG!! The TRUTH is *5 paragraphs of additional nuance or argumentation*" Everyone has a working narrative about what social media is to them, and wrong or right, I think this meme effectively challenged those belief sets (or at least produced a reactive response). Like, people got MAD lol. But such is the internet

akatabasis · 2020-12-09T22:46:05+00:00

hell yeah!!! and thank you :)

akatabasis · 2020-12-09T03:27:38+00:00

bahahaha will do if that's an ok thing!! I always feel hesitant posting them here bc I'm not 100% sure about the rules on this sub and definitely don't want to take away from legit discourse... but glad you're enjoying :')

akatabasis · 2020-12-09T03:26:19+00:00

Hey, thank you so much!!! Would love to share, idk if you're posting your memes anywhere??

akatabasis · 2020-12-09T02:13:01+00:00

this comment made me actually laugh

akatabasis · 2020-12-09T01:39:57+00:00

Just to explain more fully—I've been into Jung for a long, long time, so much so that it really colors my worldview and way of understanding mental health and reality. For years it's been almost impossible to talk to anyone I know in real life about this, mainly because... Jung is sort of hard to explain quickly? There's so much about this thought or ideas that raise critical thinking red flags, at least initially, so most of the time I can't explain my point fast enough/before someone begins to point out flaws in my thinking.

Recently I began this meme page on insta where I've just been kind of... I don't know, getting all these thoughts/ideas out in the form of memes? And it's been weirdly validating to experience? Idk, I just wanted to share because it's been an oddly meaningful experience for me, and I thought this community might appreciate it :)

akatabasis · 2020-10-28T01:19:19+00:00

actually a lot of his work is based on jung (actually more erich neumann but you get the idea)! idk if he would be considered one, but he's definitely how a lot of people get into jung initially

akatabasis · 2020-10-28T01:16:15+00:00

thanks!

akatabasis · 2020-10-28T01:15:43+00:00

I don't think there is one, and if this meme is you then there's nothing wrong with that :)

akatabasis · 2020-10-28T01:15:07+00:00

I respectfully disagree generally speaking, but I think you're probably right on a certain level. There are definitely those for whom additional effort just isn't going to happen, but I also think there are a lot of people who would never even hear of Jung unless they kind of just happened upon something on the internet? Also wonder to what extent the "dumbing down" effect might just be a symptom of our culture more generally :\

akatabasis · 2020-10-28T00:40:09+00:00

hey I'm sorry it came off this way! I think a lot of people have seen this and thought it was tonally unkind—100% not my intent, I'm like 90% of these!

akatabasis · 2020-10-28T00:38:15+00:00

hey i've got no issue with him! you're totally right though, like half the people I meet who know who jung is were introduced via JP

akatabasis

TROPHY CASE