The Trickster 'Archetype' is destroying Western Culture

Today’s show hosted by Steve and Pauline Richards, & James P Dowling.

Jung To Live By, presented by the Institute for Psycho-Systems Analysis™, is creating videos and podcasts on Jungian Depth Psychology for personal development and study.

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Music used:
"Little Red Riding Hood" by Brandon & Derek Fiechter

"Path to Darkness" by Adrian von Ziegler

[KristenA]

Does the trickster function play out in biological systems in an analogous way? Does this self regulatory function apply to biological systems that are unconscious?

[lordgrimm]

To quote bender from futurama: "the whole world must learn of our peaceful ways!, By force"

[iHomer]

The trickster has been quite active in my life recently.
I am only able to recognise it now, thanks to this channel. Not only that, but also navigate through the experience constructively, even with my limited knowledge and experience.
Thank you for bringing Carl Jungs work within the reach of ordinary people.
It has turned my life around.

[leonadrian]

"[The origins, liveliness, and durability of culture require that there be space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on."
————Lewis Hyde

[Ancestrally-Guided]

This is so rich in fundamental insight, and James is a fantasic narrator!

[TheSierrazulu]

My long time cynicism towards government and politicians has been thoroughly validated 🤣

[optinoptimist]

I love the content on this channel, great job!! I've been trying to start making youtube videos myself. I'm focusing more on easy to understand videos about practical philosophy/psychology. I think the discussion about ideas, and our perception of/interaction with our ideas, and the ideas of others, is the most important discussion to preface all other discussions. Videos like this help open the doors to rational conversations about the world around us. Thank you!!

[Mawht]

This is scary and depressing, but really interesting

[TurtlePower]

Great content as always. Keep it up! 💫

[leakywaves]

Hi guys, I was wondering about the relation between the alter-ego and this trickster function.
If I quote correctly the alter-ego is the nuclear complex of the unconscious and its aims for homeostasis within the triad ego alter ego and moral complex. On the other hand, this trickster function seems to aim for homeostasis too, maybe at the bio psycho social scale. It's a deep structure carve in the genome (I understand it as an instinct).
Are those two psychological concept the same thing ? or maybe the alter ego is a tool in toolkit of the trickster fonction.
Thx you guys for sharing your knowledge,
Don't worry if you can't respond it's ok, i 'll join the discord one day.
A new fellow‐Laborers in The Vineyard of the Human Soul.

[XxxTheCoolKidxxX]

This channel is a godsend. I tried to purchase the Myth guide through the provided link, but I couldn't purchase it. I found it on Amazon. All of the information on this channel has literally done wonders for me. I know that I am inflated - I still have a connection to the transpersonal, I space out into fantasy land alot, and Ispiral into negative thought (neurosis?). I believe that the personal myth guide will help me resolve my insuffiencies.

[tuwheratiaihaka]

Last night I had a dream about the culture in the context of my life. Well, tbh, I’ve been thinking and dreaming about the culture and how corrupted it is for a long time. For a while I thought I was just labeled as a ‘conspiracy theorist’, but after a few lockdowns and mandates here in Australia I’ve fallen into a bit of nihilistic realisation that the government, education system, health system, and political systems have been nothing more than instincts trying to satisfy itself through power, and a Jungian inflation through virtue signalling. Effectively coming to realise that most of my life had been lied to by others. With the sort of person I am, I was always against the tide of the culture, but with that came with backlash. One of the worst things I’ve ever done was to comply with others, and second-guess my instincts in which in my heart I knew to be true. Trying to find my own homeostasis in this mess is hard to maintain. Though, I’m reading Oxford Blues, and I’m seeing how Steve had to adapt to the culture in his times, it’s given me a perspective to have a look at this situation as a novel situation. A situation in which I’ll be able to create my own book about sometime in the future. Great video guys, appreciate it 🙏

[shxmana]

I love embracing the trickster and the chaos that it brings

[TrinityForceOne]

I'm wondering if I'm noticing a correlation between the trickster field phenomenon and certain observations. Like there usually seems to be a burning electronics or ozone smell together with electronic devices becoming buggy and seemingly temperamental. As is happening right now...

[scottygarner]

This is weirdly synchronous yet again. I was just thinking about dictatorship last night as well and it’s been a topic on my mind since the trickster series begun.

[amarilismelendez]

I'm going off a tangent here. The video was very good and it got me thinking

Believe I'm noticing a collective experience of a cultural heritage who has experienced dictatorship first-hand usually regret it or do their best to avoid it in the long run. Its like, us as a species are trying to find a much more convenient way to survive (edited out). I think adaptive in the end overrides the previous system (edited). Like how Monarchies, Papacies, Emperors ran thing and then kinda walk bent after it served it usefulness(edited out). Usually collapses, dissolves or fragments itself due to the reality that nature changes from time and time again. I am baffled and awed at it, because there's things that I didn't notice before. But at the same time staring at it is very frightening. Look at the blue ring octopus, knowing that one touch might mean death is actually very terrifying, so yeah. Those are my thoughts. Thank you for this.

Edit: Ah, Now I notice. It IS our mode of adapting. Had to sit with what I wrote to see if it held substance.

[NilSatis]

There’s something beyond the individual here I struggle with; ideologies come out of other pre-existing ideologies either in support of or in opposition to them, communism in opposition to capitalism, fascism in opposition to globalised capitalism, capitalism in opposition to feudalism these are played out socio-historically. Dictators are only playing out the interests of a prevailing or emerging ideology which has an evolutionary (or revolutionary) socio-economic basis.

Robespierre lead the French bourgeois revolution, but he never instigated the forces that ignited in that revolt, that ignition was going to happen anyway because those forces were already condensing in the decades even before he was born.

The Soviet Union fell because it was out competed by Western Liberalism, both in production and trade but also in organisation. That would’ve happened if it was Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Stalin or whoever.

Reducing all politics to the will to power of individual politicians seems an unlikely one, the very characteristic of a particular form of a “will to power” will be determined by the cultural context and prevailing ideology of a given epoch. Ideologies aren’t “adopted” they emerge organically out of other forms in reaction to the contradictions with those other form.

And that’s why I don’t think you’re making that reduction but it often sounds as though you are.

The union (dialectic) between sociology and psychology is of great interest to me.

Edit: for instance the immaterial yet objective “Market”, ideologically, plays more of a starring role over and against any individual player, whose will to power is often sought in exploiting or controlling “The Market”…….. market ideology as a separate self regulating and self feeding psychological phenomenon

[newcures]

Could entire religious practices like Buddhism be somewhat “trickster” in nature since some SEEM (to me at least) to be so disconnected from instinct and SEEM to wish to “extinguish” instinct? I could be wayyyy off base here. Maybe they point to a deeper instinct or actually connect us to instinct. This may not be a question that can be easily addressed in a YouTube comment. Thank you all for all you do.

[nathanwilliams-prince]

After watching this video, I felt I wanted to understand how 'the trickster' has been represented in popular and historical culture. After a little research, I found that 'shape-shifting' and 'concealing' are common themes of the trickster. Within these ideas of shape-shifting and concealing, there is implicit the ideas of reverting to an original shape and revealing. I feel this is linked to how 'Adler conceals Freud', and that the trickster functions to both conceal and reveal the relationship between cultural / political currents, and the instincts underlying them.
It's a very dynamic and wide-reaching concept to grasp, so I hope my understanding is correct here. Thanks JTLB again for such an interesting video!

[cryptzzz]

On multiple ocasions you've talked about issues that young men of today face in their development. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you haven't talked that much about young women issues eg. body acceptance issues. Have you though about covering that subject in one of the future videos? I think it could be a topic of interest for many