Collective Unconscious

Wasn't sure where to post this, Mods please feel free to move it.

Supposing that Jung's theory of a Collective Unconscious is correct, could it be in certain agencies interests to try and manipulate it, by staging such events as UFO sightings, alien abductions, cattle mutilations etc, thus preparing the way for the implementation of some unknown manifesto?

Okay, let me expand this a little.

By introducing new archetypes into the collective unconscious, the breadth of human experience is expanded.

Perhaps deliberately staged UFO sightings are a necessary precursor to other events, such as publicly acknowleged alien contact.

Think of it as a softening up process, if nobody had ever seen a UFO and suddenly there were a fleet of them touching down around the globe, mass panic would surely ensue.

While there would probably still be some panic now, because the idea of UFOs, aliens etc is now rooted deep in the psyche of the human race, the situation would be accepted more readily.

So, is it possible that a lot of UFO sightings are deliberately faked by governments following the above agenda?

a lot of people believe that aliens are what ancient civilizations regarded as gods. Could this be the modern version of the same archtype? I believe it might.

I recently had a dream that dealt with this phenomenon but it was too long to post in text format. If i get the time to make an audio blog i will post it in this thread.

It's certainly an interesting thought.

But I would think, if jung was right and I do have to admit that I believe in a collective unconcious to a certain degree...it seems tricky.

But there may be some merit to the thought.

Now I'm not saying the following was intentional nor am I saying that it affected the collective unconcious but (IMO at least) it certainly influenced popular opinion/perspective.

If you look at supposed alien contact/abduction/experience from the 1950's and 60's what have you the size, shape, look of these aliens was as varied as the rainbow.

Little floating robot men, little green men with webbed feet, tall ones, short ones, brown ones, blue ones....you name it people saw it.

Rarely, very rarely were the typical "grey" aliens reported if at all.

Then Close Encounters comes out and from then on through the seventies, eighties, nineties and even now the big one people see are these "greys".

Yes some encounter the aryan blonde types and of course we all know about the lizard men and such.

And from time to rare time there is the report of an encounter with something all together different. But really since Close Encounters, it's been mainly the greys.

This isn't a theory of mine or anything and I'm certainly open to being wrong about it but I don't think anyone will deny what Close encounters did for puplic opinion of what flying saucers and aliens would and should look like.

Not the collective unconcious but perhaps a sign that it could be manipulated if it was truly understood.

IMO of course and as always.

Spiderj

edited because I'm just trying to do too many things at once...which I should know by now I'm incapable of.
[edit on 10/19/2007 by Spiderj]

[edit on 10/19/2007 by Spiderj]

Not sure if this relates to the topic, but just like in the brain, where you have connections made between neurons that fire together, and disconnections between neurons that no longer fire together, I believe the same can be applied to humans living here.

When you have friends that have similar interests as you, you find common ground and hang out. You're a group of 'neurons' that 'fire together'. As you move on through life, friends leave you as things are no longer shared between you, so then you disconnect from them, and find new friends with whatever your interests are in that moment (new neurons).

Using that analogy that every human is a neuron, you can see that our world becomes a brain. Now, if you make this 'brain' think that a certain situation is happening, can it be 'tricked' (like when using a placebo) to behave according to what it perceives is happening? yes! it's called Brainwashing

I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the "100th Monkey Syndrome" theory but it's a very interesting one that delves into the possiblity of the collective unconcious.

This should not be confused with that whole "if you put a thousand monkey's at a thousand type writers blablabla"

Here are a couple of links:

www.heartlandsangha.org...

www.educationworldonline.net...

a wiki that has both sides of the story:

en.wikipedia.org...

I for one would like to believe the theory in general as it's very cool, but of course somebody would have to actually perform the experiment with the proper safeguards in place to prevent possible contamination as mentioned in the wiki.

just an fyi.

spider

Very interesting, i wasn't aware of the 100th Monkey.

If it could be definitively shown that a new behaviour suddenly entered a geographically seperate society with no physical contact, that would indeed be a confirmation of the theory.

As you say, the variety of aliens we tend to see in entertainment these days has definitely narrowed. The question though, is this the result of a solidifying archetype?

I believe it is and that it has intentionally been introduced over the years.

If true, it should follow that future generations would become ever more accepting of alien life.

There's no way that UFO events could be used to affect the collective unconscious, simply by definition. The CU is not memory from experience, it is information is sort of "hard wired" into your brain genetically.

source

The collective unconscious is a part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that it does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes.

...

Jung cautions that, "One must, for the sake of accuracy, distinguish between 'archetype' and 'archetypal ideas.' The archetype as such is a hypothetical and irrepresentable model, something like the pattern of behavior in biology."

[edit on 10-20-2007 by Esoterica]

Exactly, so by staging UFO sightings for as long as they have been,might they not have introduced archetypal ideas into the CU?

Originally posted by made2fade
Exactly, so by staging UFO sightings for as long as they have been,might they not have introduced archetypal ideas into the CU?

wouldn't a staged event [take the 1952 fleet of UFOs in D.C.]
have it's effect on the actual witnesses and the 'pop culture' of the day,
as opposed to the collective-unconscious of all of humanty ?

sure, the unproven aliens & UFOs are deeply disturbing (to some)
but are (imho) just a revision of the demons and leprechans or any
number of non-human interlopers into our biosphere, told in many
cultures throughout recorded history....(that is the arch-type/collective unconscious element that all humanity shares)

i think your in the creating "false-memory" & "Psy-ops" area
rather than deep 'ingrams' placed in our collective Psyche'


deep subject

Originally posted by made2fade
Exactly, so by staging UFO sightings for as long as they have been,might they not have introduced archetypal ideas into the CU?

Um, how? Your memories don't affect your genes. Jung stated that we had archetypes because evolutionary pressure had meant those that were born with their minds a certain way were more successful. To Jung, archetypes were a bit like organs. Just as we are born with hearts and lungs to help regulate our bodies, we have archetypes to form a base with which to regulate our minds. You couldn't "add" the archetype of the UFO any more than you could add a new organ.


EDIT: Also, archetypes are not specific. They're not aliens from Zeta Reticuli. They would be interlopers, or kidnappers, or "alien" in the sense of some otherworldly, inhuman being. And as St. Udio pointed out, these ideas are present throughout history.

[edit on 10-21-2007 by Esoterica]

Okay, but it's safe to say that it is possible that these movies, reports, photos, etc are conditioning in order to manipulate our collective consciousness (notice I left out the "un"). That way it won't be such a big scary deal if or when it happens because it will be vaguely familiar. Fairy tales, movies and urban legends are all just cultural memes that effect our collective consciousness. It is pretty easy to manipulate people in this way.

[edit on 21/10/07 by kosmicjack]

[edit on 21/10/07 by kosmicjack]

Originally posted by kosmicjack
Okay, but it's safe to say that it is possible that these movies, reports, photos, etc are conditioning in order to manipulate our collective consciousness

Looking at it from the angle of Mass Conditioning could well be more productive.

Esoterica, is it your position that the CU is fixed and no new archetypes or archetypal ideas could now be added to it?

reply to post by Spiderj


ah Jung, devoured him for years... o sweet memories.
The 100th Monkey Syndrome is exactly what Rupert Sheldrake means when he talks about morphogenetic fields. There are several documented cases where this phenomenon is observed (with birds, primates etc even krystals!).
Linking back to the aliens, Jung actually wrote a book on UFOs in the 50ies "flying saucers", considering UFOs as a modern myth, taking it to a psycho-sociological point of view. I think i still have this book somewhere, need to dig deep...

anyway, very interesting topic
peace

reply to post by mister Jones


That's very interesting about jung I'm gonna hit the amazon later and see if I can't find that.

wasn't that jacque vallees approach to passport to magonia or am I misremembering my vallee.

On a side yet semi-related note, I think in this thread what we reallly keep touching on are memes, specifically viral memes.

Because if it's true; 100th monkey is really talking about memetic distribution, which aside from being incredibly fun to say...go ahead say it memetic distribution...yep still fun...could be seen as the delivery system to the collective unconcious.

If you want to affect the collective unconcious, it's a very passive way to do it, which may be the best way to do it.

If we follow jung (Psych and Symbol) all people have personal mythological symbolism but we also share basic symbols that can hold signifigant but still personal meanings to each indifvidual.

And while the interpretation of the basic symbol may change (sometimes slightly sometimes more so) from person to person the basic symbol evokes an emotion, usually a base emotion.

So in the end (just as an example) it doesn't matter that ufo's may represent something completely different to me than say my mother, brother, co-worker or friend. It's the fact that the basic symbol evokes a strong emotion, whatever that emotion may be.

It's one of the incredibly rare instances where the menu is in fact the meal.

Memes as distribution to the deep subconcious...perhaps even the collective unconcious could indeed be plausible.

Or I could be completely off my rocker on this one.

here are some handy dandy links on general memes and other meme type things.
wikiwiki:
en.wikipedia.org...

memes:
www.aleph.se...

more:
www.memecentral.com...

spiderj

Originally posted by made2fade
Esoterica, is it your position that the CU is fixed and no new archetypes or archetypal ideas could now be added to it?

I don't even know if I agree that a collective unconscious even exists. I'm just saying that if it does exist, it can only be manipulated through evolutionary pressure. Mass/cultural conditioning are more along the lines of what you're actually describing.

Spiderj, thanks for the links, very interesting reading.

So, there would appear to be processes that could be used to influence cultural development, if you knew which to use and how to manipulate them correctly.

Undoubtedly, you'd have to take a fairly long term view on this kind of project.

You'd have to find a way of making your engineered archetypes/memes/conditioning more powerful and preeminent that any naturally arising variations.

Plenty to ponder on.

Undoubtedly, you'd have to take a fairly long term view on this kind of project.

I would assume that yes, patience and an ability to perhaps map the possible fallout would be key...if it's truly possible.

spider