The average civilized person considers much that is human alien to him – precisely the opposite of Terence’s definition of being human. Once I was walking down a street in Manhattan with two (very smart) friends, and I started philosophizing about the pleasure of killing and eating one’s foes as a mode of revenge. I consider this self-evident human behavior – and no doubt, it was practiced quite widely – even if the closest we are likely to come to it is barbecuing that squirrel who kept breaking into the attic (and even that we Northerners would consider infra dig). Well, my friends looked at me as if I were really really crazy. I attempted to defuse the situation by describing Thoreau’s battle against the woodchuck who ate his beans – Thoreau gave up his vegetarianism to eat that one beastie – and then I quoted Homer with satisfaction:
“Would that my soul would allow me to cut your heart out and eat it, for the things you have done to me.”
– A saying of Achilles which is utterly human, even if most people do not know they are capable of such things. In fact, I would say knowing what you are capable of is wise, as it may prevent you from actually doing it.
Jung on this:
Most people confuse “self-knowledge” with knowledge of their conscious ego-personalities. Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too. Although he lives in it and with it, most of it is totally unknown to the layman, and special scientific knowledge is needed to acquaint consciousness with what is known of the body, not to speak of all that is not known, which also exists.
2 Comments