misplaced instinct

One of the problems with nationalism (among many) is that for rationalists and secular humanists, nationalism often replaces religion, or "spirituality" as most prefer to call it nowadays.

Once the state begins to acquire attributes previously possessed only by deities, it takes on many of those same characteristics in the minds of devotees -- infallibility, immutability, and so forth, when actually modern nations are among the most fallible and mercurial human-made entities.

We all know somebody like this, and for many of us it's someone close to us who thinks of himself or herself as a superior type who has this "religion thing" all figured out. After all, it's "just superstition," etc. Such a person is likely to declare that "There is no God" and feel smug in the knowledge that he (or she) has evolved beyond such a backward and primitive mode of relating to the universe.

Silly people! You don't even know yourselves, and the joke, unfortunately, is on you. Dr. Jung* knew you better than you ever knew yourselves, and he wrote the book on the mind's deep, instinctive religious impulse, which can only be satisfied by genuine spirituality. Jung knew as well that if someone denies himself the usual objects of veneration demanded by this powerful instinct, the mind will automatically transfer those feelings to another object, and this is, sadly, where misplaced and fanatical love of country rears its ugly head in our degenerated time.

How can anyone explain to such a person that the U.S. has become a criminal enterprise? It's like telling a devout Catholic that the Pope is a hypocritical and incestuous monster who has fathered a bushel of bastards with his niece. Whether the accusation is true or not is never a question for the confirmed devotee, for whom all such accusations are impossibilities and the work of the devil, true or not.

Such was the situation I found myself in 40 years since, when the U;S. turned a fateful corner and started off in an ominous and disastrous direction, hurrying toward its destruction in Vietnam and, ultimately, slouching toward Bethlehem to be re-born.

*See Dr. Karl Gustav Jung, "The Undiscovered Self," (Princeton U. Press, Princeton, N.J., 1990).