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Samstag, 16. Februar 2019

Waves of Social Change and its Systemic Ripple Effects




Asian scriptures have always influenced the West. Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist C.G. Jung analyzed the I Ching - Book of Change - (translated by befriended Richard Wilhelm into German), its hexagrams and Tai Chi Mandala for developing his archetypes.

Intellectuals e.g. G.W. Leibniz, J.W. Goethe, G.W.F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche studied Asian philosophical scriptures, influenced Western thought, but were shy of declaring their sources in Asian thought for scientific community's Western-centrism reasons.

Even today the repercussions on the West of the Chinese Empire's collapse in 1912 - after 2100 years of Imperial dynasties - are underestimated. But applying Jung's collective unconscious perspective on group dynamics and systems science an interesting dimension unfolds.

When in 1900 German Emperor Wilhelm II delegated a punitive expedition to China for killing the German ambassador in The Boxer War (Chinese Empire's effort to regain sovereignty from colonial powers), the Chinese Empire increasingly destabilized systemically leading to its 1912 collapse (after the Xinhai-Revolution) and a geopolitical chain reaction of social change in Europe.

In 1914 European aristocracies went to WWI, resulting in the Russian Empire crumbling in 1917 October Revolution (in Russian: "November Revolution"), and until 1918 also the German and the Austrian Empire had collapsed, parallel with China being in disorder, turmoil and entangled in revolutionary reorganization processes, resonating and partaking in the collective unconscious flux.

Since then in Germany and Austria democratic, socialist/communist movements have taken over, but haven't filled the power vacuum. So fascism took advantage of Europe's economic and political malaise in those days.

After in 1912 first President Sun Yat-sen had established the Republic of China, until the 1940s Mao Zedong - backed by Chinese society's disenfranchised segments - battled Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek and his conservatives with millions dead.

Parallelly in 1930s' Austria socialist Schutzbund skirmished with fascist Heimwehr, costing many lives.

Meanwhile in Germany, Adolf Hitler ascended and expanded his power from Munich to Berlin, taking over in 1933, via democratic elections. Hitler and the Nazis were obsessed by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) since Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (Nazi sympathizer, head of The Nietzsche Archive) rearranged her late brother's texts, applied Nietzsche's individualistic "Übermensch" (enlightened Buddha-like being) to all Germans collectively, made it proper for Nazi ideology and reinterpreted the German collective unconscious: German "Herrenmensch" (master race) by eugenics.

After two atomic bombs eradicating Japanese cities had stopped the Nazi ally Japan, the Japanese had to experience their Tennō (Emperor) publicly denouncing from being a living God, a concept alien to Western understanding. General Douglas MacArthur urged the Tennō to abdicate from being a direct descendant of Amaterasu (goddess of the sun) and to declare himself a human being as head of Japan's modern democratic society. This US-dictate forced on Japan is still lasting as heteronomy undermining Japan's spiritual self-esteem and religious identity, leaving Japanese deprived from their age-old spirituality subliminally replaced by Westernized technology and consumerism.

A stark difference between Eastern and Western thought is the mystical presence of leaders as living God (Tennō, Dalai Lama, Chinese Emperor), while Western leaders, functionally adored as Emperors, die as normal human beings, as sinners.

After Tennō Hirohito's death in 1989 - who had spent part of his life as living God - modern-day Japan is stagnating economically, as if the death of Japan's last Shinto God had disorganizational effects on Japanese spiritual identity, its cultural core. Hirohito's son Tennō Akihito accessing in 1989 cemented US-masterminds' definition for the Tennō as normal human being with representative function, never being Japan's living God-like spiritual center his father was.

Why wasn't China weakened by losing its emperor? Different from their belief in the Tennō's God-like unbroken power, the Japanese feared the Soviets to invade in 1945 treating the Tennō like the Czar in 1917, while in China internal forces pushed late 1911 Chinese Revolution overthrowing the Qing-Dynasty in early 1912, after colonial powers had compromised Chinese Emperors' spiritual authority and Chinese people had considered their Imperial family unable to protect the Chinese people against Western imperialists, given 19th Century's British East Indian Company and The Opium Wars. Considering religion as danger later Mao even erased all Confucianist-Daoist structures, replaced them by Communist ideology and personality cult for Communist leaders. Who didn't surrender "vanished".

While in China Mao's class warfare raged against Chinese Republic's conservative President Chiang Kai-shek - who emigrated with his supporters to Taiwan (which the People's Republic of China perpetually claims) - in Austria aristocracy was forbidden in 1919 according to First Wave of Anti-Elitism following Russia. In Germany the Second Wave of Anti-Elitism peaked in absorbing many aristocrats by Hitler's Nazi regime directed against the Jews, an age-old spiritual and educated elite persecuted by Christians Europe-wide over centuries and systematically murdered in the millions under the Nazis within 12 years. FYI: The term "pogrom" (organized massacre) derives from 1880s' Russian riots against Jews.

After Vladimir Lenin's 1917 Communist Revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, followed by civil war, educated people were considered dangerous for the revolution, spectacle wearers were killed immediately, not much intelligentsia able to administrate the Soviet Union survived, resulting in chaos, famines, and millions of deaths. Later Georgian communist Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, ruled the Soviet Union with iron fist and further terror.

In the 1950s a Third Wave of Anti-Elitism unfolded with Mao's urge to erase all old Confucianist traditions by killing seniors considered knowledge bearers. So already in its run-up the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) - starting in a Fire Horse year -  subliminally stimulated the Youth Culture in the Western culture, possible via collective unconscious impulse. Western 1967/68's Student/Social Revolution was pushed via strongly Chinese-influenced California (ever since an origin of change and trends subliminally driven by resonating with China), with repercussions on civil rights movement, which Mainland Chinese still are waiting for and British-influenced Hongkongers fight to preserve.

According to my narrative of cross-continental interdependence and unconscious flux, I even see a Fourth Wave of Anti-Elitism around Beijing's "Tiananmen Square Massacre" (Chinese authorities' crackdown on Democracy Movement - known among Mainlanders: 1989s "June Fourth Incident") peaking in the Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the Iron Curtain. Relevance for today? Eye-catchingly soon after China quakes, the world shakes.

Dr. Dr. Immanuel Fruhmann
Philosopher and Systemic Analyst

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