For my inquiry into the change of consciousness necessary to avert global eco-catastrophe, I want to focus on the theme that is currently emerging. For this purpose, I’m going back and forth between two resources that I’ve been digging into for months. They are Scott Preston’s blog The Chrysalis and Jordan Peterson’s YouTube videos of the two courses he teaches at the University of Ottawa. That’s Scott in the photo above.
————
[Caveat about Jordan Peterson – 2/14/18. I was very enthusiastic about Peterson before he became a combative public figure. I watched all the way through both his 2015 courses, ‘Maps of Meaning’ and ‘Personality and It’s Transformations’. I liked the way he combined a Jungian approach to mythology with evolutionary psychology and several other disciplines. I was entertaining Jung’s archetypes as a key to the depth we needed to access in our psyches to produce the New Story. But once he got into the public arena as an opponent of political correctness, his dogmatic tone and anti-left rants which had seemed an interesting part of the mix, tainted even the parts of his presentation I had enjoyed. This piece from the Guardian explains why I feel it necessary to disavow him.]
————
It seems to me that both Preston and Peterson are talking about the need to re-integrate what has been lost in the turn to, and dominance of, scientific rationalism that is de-valuing the accumulated wisdom of our species, and thereby destroying our life support system.
This time I want to share Preston’s blog posted today, entitled The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. In it he examines the difference between command and mastery. He says “This is the real issue that lies at the heart of almost all critiques of Late Modern society…expressed in Carl Jung’s observation that ‘we have grown rich in knowledge but poor in wisdom’. Having command is one thing; but mastery is another.”
The link to Goethe’s poem in Preston’s post has changed. There is a version here.
It is, as most everything he writes, pretty deep, with numerous references that only become clear with careful follow-up. But if you want to follow me down the rabbit hole, I recommend you give it a try. Maybe it will make perfect sense to you. Even if it doesn’t, we can start to unravel this incredible ball of yarn together.
Working toward a shared planetary consciousness that heals the Earth
