Really one is spoiled for memoir titles. Take any navel-gaze ever written by a man for men, change one or two words and there you are. In this case that's not fair. So many of Jung's clients and students were women, and the attitude to women in the Jungian system is much less naive and blindly, blandly eroticized than in older systems of psychology.
I was thinking this morning about how the cultivation of children lately requires some larger-than-life hero - fair enough - it always has, right? I'm worried about what happens to us now, though, that our celebrity system has spread its tentacles from the fine arts, where it had become ubiquitous, into the wider bank of potential heroes. Especially into our wildly populist political systems (even in Canada - don't tell me there aren't an ocean of idiots who were successfully dissuaded from voting for Paul Martin's Liberals because he was uncharismatic and had been successfully nicknamed Mr. Dithers).
I wonder what that means in terms of useful role models when every ingloriousness of anybody we could aspire to be like is laid out before us - every achievement criticized in the light of anything comparable that came before it until novelty becomes a fetish - following hedonistic impulses more fêted than the realization of some goal or dream that goes beyond simple appetite satisfaction. Call me hormonally imbalanced, but this morning it's depressing me some. Maybe we should look more to private heroes, even if our education is to worship fame beyond all else. People have gone against their education before.
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Since when did children look up to politicians? I don't think much has changed for children. There are plenty of heroes in books of literature and movies. The problem arises when they get old enough to look for these people on the internet and find them in their underpants or less doing natural but compromising things. But kids at that age can still be controlled. The real problem comes with young adults and adults who know too much about those they aspire to emulate. On the otherhand, knowing that your hero makes mistakes can be empowering. Suddenly they are no longer on a pedestal - they are on a step that we can strive to climb to. I don't think this is a matter to be depressed about, Mistress.
Politicians? 40 years ago? They still do, in some places. What do you count as kids, anyways? In North American society I think you can say it until someone's 21.
The thing is, Sugarplum, the way I feel today, I think pedestals are a GOOD thing. I think unrealistic expectations of yourself and others - romance, in short - is great. And the less and less people expect of themselves and each other, well, you know.
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