I notice when libertarians write about libertarianism they usually defend it on the economic, policial and philosophical level. All good. But what about the psychological level?
Do people avoid it because it’s somewhat mysterious and subjective?
Personally I’m a big “fan” of Carl Jung’s work and his approach to psychology and I’ve recently discovered that his political views are common with those of individualist libertarians (I shouldn’t be suprised).
How would you argue for liberalism (in the original sense, I like the word better then the word libertarianism) on a psychological level?
Since I can’t quote his books here (weill I gues I could) I’ll post what wikipedia says
“Giving laws, wanting improvements, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way, the way leads to mutual love in community. Men will come to see and feel the similarity and communality of their ways.” – Carl Jung in ‘The Red Book’
Jung stressed the importance of individual rights in a person’s relation to the state and society. He saw that the state was treated as “a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected” but that this personality was “only camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it”, and referred to the state as a form of slavery. He also thought that the state “swallowed up [people’s] religious forces”, and therefore that the state had “taken the place of God”—making it comparable to a religion in which “state slavery is a form of worship”. Jung observed that “stage acts of [the] state” are comparable to religious displays: “Brass bands, flags, banners, parades and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades and fire to scare off demons”. From Jung’s perspective, this replacement of God with the state in a mass society led to the dislocation of the religious drive and resulted in the same fanaticism of the church-states of the Dark Ages—wherein the more the state is ‘worshiped’, the more freedom and morality are suppressed; this ultimately leaves the individual psychically undeveloped with extreme feelings of marginalization.
(I’m new here so please be nice)