Hi Leaningkarst,
I take your point seriously and may that William Blake quote serve as a cautious reminder to everybody lest they fall into the hubristic trap of believing they have it all sussed out. The best we can do is orient ourselves towards improvement pending further discovery and with the acceptance that to err is human; trial and error is part of development akin to the evolutionary expediency born out of plenty of annihilation in the somewhat analogous process of natural selection. Whether or not one chooses to conceptualise our heuristic behaviours as a clownish Trickster, or to symbolically represent human ontogeny as archetypal phases blossoming in their potential—as a Jungian Jordan Peterson does—is besides the point. As long as these Jungian ideas promote, rather than destroy, our 'winged life', everything is hunky-dory; for this, a balance must be found just as a society should strive for moderation between conservatism and liberalism.
In the same vein, we must accept that, during the Cold War, a capitalist America was always going to make more money than a communist Russia, causing the productivity of the latter to stagnate and its economy to bleed out. Both social ideologies are simply different—confirmable by opposing manifestos. Does America have anything in common with, say, China? Of course! We've just seen billionaire Jack Ma re-emerging this year, after his mysterious disappearance, with out-of-character Chinese state-friendly messages of domestic reinvestment. It was a far cry from Donald Trump's rich and rebellious friend whose company Alibaba was arm-wrestled by the Chinese Communist Party—turning it into a financially regulated institution and fining it for its monopolistic conduct as it threatened to take away the government's control over what information the public receives. In America, an affluent Trump is practically banned from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter—whose CEOs pledge allegiance to the former president's rivalling Democratic Party.
In order to achieve a healthy and prosperous balance, we should avoid dogmatism and totalitarianism because the world is constantly changing and evolving; in the same breath, we should be able to affirm, with confidence, that axioms exist and they helps us to remain grounded to the cockpit of our proverbial spaceshuttle—if you want to reach space, the only way is up (or away from Earth if you will). If you don't learn from your experience—retaining some certainty that some affirmations are reasonable and others absurd, in the process—you will remain vulnerably open to extraordinary claims without evidence until your proverbial brain falls out. In life, the way to reap its benefits—regardless of whether it is defined as a truth with a capital 'T' or not—is to aspire to be the best version of yourself. This does not take away from what Blake stated; in fact, it reinforces his powerful message insofar as the wish to be virtuous remains extant. The way to mastery is up, so to speak. How productive you are in a society depends on how much effort you put in and to aim higher is to aspire to something that one understands to be at the top of a hierarchy—something better!
There are some established truths which have been empirically verified and tend to make up the bulk of scientific theories. These should avoid interpretations that go beyond epistemological confirmation. A hypothesis, on the other hand, is not confined to axioms and is thus vulnerable to multiple interpretations. Take the notion of shared dreaming, for example: I've had an experience with my wife which could easily be interpreted as such if we were to carelessly jump on that bandwagon. It's very strange but also hard to rule out coincidence on the basis that if you spend a lot of time with your partner, you will share many waking experiences and sooner or later are bound to have similar or identical dreams with the express illusion of sharing a metaphysical 'place'.
As a sceptic, you can never really rule out shared dreaming completely. You may say 'unlikely' until something like the occasional quantum entanglement of minds within a geomagnetic field is discovered—as Michael Persinger once hypothesised—and then the concept dream telepathy ceases to be far-fetched. And even when we simply take into account Plato's 'forms' and Descartes's 'eternal truths', we can't help but feel pressed to wonder about the problem of universals, which our minds can conceive regardless of what manifests physically. Some things, such as mathematical and moral concepts, will be unalterable and true for all time, and ostensibly fundamental to the point of lending credit to Platonic realism; the ancient philosopher would say that, for that reason, they are more real than a physical reality composed of mortals and delimited objects—as Heraclitus pointed out with his observations of perpetual change in nature.
I find these views quite profound because, if we are living in a proverbial cave where we only see the shadows of a larger reality, then perhaps there is a metaphysical reality that we may access with a 'dream interface' which we may experience lucidly. Qualia is puzzling enough let alone consciousness itself. I cannot reconcile with Daniel Dennett's eliminativism and find the hard problem of consciousness undeniable. The first-person ontology phenomenon cannot be an illusion but, at the same time, I am not denying possible explanations found in physicalism. I don't know enough about the nature of reality to say with conviction that the mysterious matter the cosmos is made of cannot possibly give rise to consciousness. Dennett's strongest and philosophically compelling argument is that 'only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events could explain consciousness at all: To explain is to explain away.' To be honest, I really don't know what to make of it. I've had instances of possible mutual dreaming, precognition and even telepathic OOBEs (where I apparently see what's on the minds of people I visit which they seem to confirm to their surprise)—unless, of course, they are making associations or connecting the dots to their hearts' content.
Having said all of this, and somewhat sympathising with Jordan Peterson's teleological views, I am averse to the idea of becoming religious just because it might be comforting. I care about what's true first and foremost, even if reality seems cold and harsh to a limited being such as myself. I despise sugarcoating and would rather face facts instead of pretending that a god, or gods, exist—an infantile and amoral move redolent of the ignominious, and morally repugnant, Pascal's wager. For starters, there is no theodicy in the world that can vindicate the existence of an omnibenevolent God in the face of evil—and for this reason, on the point of a personal god, I remain strictly Epicurean. Be good because that is your instinct and not because you fear hell or crave heavenly reward; this is my Hitchensian anti-theism talking.
We should keep in mind the context before considering what is possible and impossible. In a lab, a scientist should know that if he wishes to create interesting, complex structures, he's not going to get very far with just helium—which is nowhere near as covalent as carbon or silicon. Similarly, lucid dreamers should know that flying is a real possibility in Wonderland, but they should not jump out the window upon awakening (without performing a reality check). Since we are touching upon the subject of lucid dreaming, let me recapitulate what I understood from Carl Jung, in particular, what I take to be the psyche's most important archetype: the Self (I've already mentioned the Trickster) ...
The Self archetype is psychically central in regulating and representing the soul. It unifies the consciousness and unconsciousness of the individual and was often symbolically illustrated by Carl Jung as a circle, square or mandala—the container, as it were, of all its aspects. On the concept of the mandala, Jung said:
‘Their [mandalas’] basic motif is the premonition of a center of personality, a kind of central point within the psyche to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which itself is a source of energy. The energy of the central point is manifested in the almost irresistible compulsion and urge to*become what one is, just as every organism is driven to assume the form that is characteristic of its nature, no matter what the circumstances. This center is not felt or thought of as the ego but, if one may so express it, as the self. Although the center is represented by an innermost point, it is surrounded by a periphery containing everything that belongs to the self–the paired opposites that make up the total personality. This totality comprises consciousness first of all, then the personal unconscious, and finally an indefinitely large segment of the collective unconscious whose archetypes are common to all mankind. A certain number of these, however, are permanently or temporarily included within the scope of the personality and, through this contact, acquire an individual stamp as the shadow, anima and animus, to mention only the best-known figures. The self though on the one hand simple, is on the other hand, an extremely composite thing, a “conglomerate soul,” to use the Indian expression.’
The Self is created through the process of individuation where personality traits are integrated. Psychological problems can manifest if the conscious and unconscious minds are misaligned and the Jungian solution is to become aware of internal conflicts so that the therapeutic process of individuation can begin towards self-actualisation in its unified experience. The ego is a psychic dimension central to consciousness which is to be distinguished from the self as the centrality of the whole personality—which, itself, is composed of the conscious, the unconscious, and the ego. In other words, the Self is both central and total. A bruised ego can bring awareness to itself as only constituting a small part of the Self, bringing forth a realisation that it's not calling the shots, often leading the individual on a consultation journey with archetypes from the personal and collective unconscious in the process of returning to the Self (as the central ordering principle) for direction.
The Self is sometimes understood to consist of a range of sub-personalities emerging across time during its development or, if you will, the formation of internal working models. The archetype itself, however, was believed by Jung to represent inherited predispositions which had evolved as a response to certain types of earthly experience. Mythologically, it is personified by superior individuals; its oneiric forms can include contemplative characters or sometimes half-human half-animal figures as the symbolic unity of the primordial and the newly cultivated. Generally, it is expressed by opposites coming together, being both and neither, a mental structure analogous to the Yin and Yang dualism.
I think the books you've read are the right ones, Leaningkarst. There are people who only read one misleading one. Even if you had read disagreeable books, I'd still be saying the same. One can only know the extent to which one disagrees with a particular author by reading his books. It's always a pleasure to have the input of intelligent folk such as yourself.