Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy

russell rules 2

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­sell saw the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion as being shaped by an unfor­tu­nate oscil­la­tion between two oppos­ing evils: tyran­ny and anar­chy, each of which con­tains the seed of the oth­er. The best course for steer­ing clear of either one, Rus­sell main­tained, is lib­er­al­ism.

“The doc­trine of lib­er­al­ism is an attempt to escape from this end­less oscil­la­tion,” writes Rus­sell in A His­to­ry of West­ern Phi­los­o­phy. “The essence of lib­er­al­ism is an attempt to secure a social order not based on irra­tional dog­ma [a fea­ture of tyran­ny], and insur­ing sta­bil­i­ty [which anar­chy under­mines] with­out involv­ing more restraints than are nec­es­sary for the preser­va­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty.”

In 1951 Rus­sell pub­lished an arti­cle in The New York Times Mag­a­zine, “The Best Answer to Fanaticism–Liberalism,” with the sub­ti­tle: “Its calm search for truth, viewed as dan­ger­ous in many places, remains the hope of human­i­ty.” In the arti­cle, Rus­sell writes that “Lib­er­al­ism is not so much a creed as a dis­po­si­tion. It is, indeed, opposed to creeds.” He con­tin­ues:

But the lib­er­al atti­tude does not say that you should oppose author­i­ty. It says only that you should be free to oppose author­i­ty, which is quite a dif­fer­ent thing. The essence of the lib­er­al out­look in the intel­lec­tu­al sphere is a belief that unbi­ased dis­cus­sion is a use­ful thing and that men should be free to ques­tion any­thing if they can sup­port their ques­tion­ing by sol­id argu­ments. The oppo­site view, which is main­tained by those who can­not be called lib­er­als, is that the truth is already known, and that to ques­tion it is nec­es­sar­i­ly sub­ver­sive.

Rus­sell crit­i­cizes the rad­i­cal who would advo­cate change at any cost. Echo­ing the philoso­pher John Locke, who had a pro­found influ­ence on the authors of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, Rus­sell writes:

The teacher who urges doc­trines sub­ver­sive to exist­ing author­i­ty does not, if he is a lib­er­al, advo­cate the estab­lish­ment of a new author­i­ty even more tyran­ni­cal than the old. He advo­cates cer­tain lim­its to the exer­cise of author­i­ty, and he wish­es these lim­its to be observed not only when the author­i­ty would sup­port a creed with which he dis­agrees but also when it would sup­port one with which he is in com­plete agree­ment. I am, for my part, a believ­er in democ­ra­cy, but I do not like a regime which makes belief in democ­ra­cy com­pul­so­ry.

Rus­sell con­cludes the New York Times piece by offer­ing a “new deca­logue” with advice on how to live one’s life in the spir­it of lib­er­al­ism. “The Ten Com­mand­ments that, as a teacher, I should wish to pro­mul­gate, might be set forth as fol­lows,” he says:

1: Do not feel absolute­ly cer­tain of any­thing.

2: Do not think it worth­while to pro­duce belief by con­ceal­ing evi­dence, for the evi­dence is sure to come to light.

3: Nev­er try to dis­cour­age think­ing, for you are sure to suc­ceed.

4: When you meet with oppo­si­tion, even if it should be from your hus­band or your chil­dren, endeav­or to over­come it by argu­ment and not by author­i­ty, for a vic­to­ry depen­dent upon author­i­ty is unre­al and illu­so­ry.

5: Have no respect for the author­i­ty of oth­ers, for there are always con­trary author­i­ties to be found.

6: Do not use pow­er to sup­press opin­ions you think per­ni­cious, for if you do the opin­ions will sup­press you.

7: Do not fear to be eccen­tric in opin­ion, for every opin­ion now accept­ed was once eccen­tric.

8: Find more plea­sure in intel­li­gent dis­sent than in pas­sive agree­ment, for, if you val­ue intel­li­gence as you should, the for­mer implies a deep­er agree­ment than the lat­ter.

9: Be scrupu­lous­ly truth­ful, even when truth is incon­ve­nient, for it is more incon­ve­nient when you try to con­ceal it.

10. Do not feel envi­ous of the hap­pi­ness of those who live in a fool’s par­adise, for only a fool will think that it is hap­pi­ness.

Wise words then. Wise words now.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March, 2013.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing 1,000 Years in the Future: “Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish”

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live and Learn More

Philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell Talks About the Time When His Grand­fa­ther Met Napoleon

Aldous Hux­ley Tells Mike Wal­lace What Will Destroy Democ­ra­cy: Over­pop­u­la­tion, Drugs & Insid­i­ous Tech­nol­o­gy (1958)

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Hear the Isolated Vocals of Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush in “Don’t Give Up”: The Power of Perseverance

Just by chance, could you use a song about per­se­ver­ance and over­com­ing adver­si­ty? Some­thing to give you a lit­tle encour­age­ment and reas­sur­ance? Then we sub­mit to you “Don’t Give Up,” fea­tur­ing the iso­lat­ed vocals of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

When he released the song on his 1986 album So, Gabriel told NME: “The cat­a­lyst for ‘Don’t Give Up’ was a pho­to­graph I saw by Dorothea Lange,… which showed the dust-bowl con­di­tions dur­ing the Great Depres­sion in Amer­i­ca. With­out a cli­mate of self-esteem it’s impos­si­ble to func­tion.” Else­where, on his web­site, Gabriel explained that the song was also “informed by the high lev­els of unem­ploy­ment under the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment of Mar­garet Thatch­er of the 1980s.” What­ev­er the chal­lenges they’ve faced, lis­ten­ers have sought solace in this song for the past 38 years. No doubt, for some, it will come in handy dur­ing the weeks and months ahead.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Dorothea Lange Dig­i­tal Archive: Explore 600+ Pho­tographs by the Influ­en­tial Pho­tog­ra­ph­er (Plus Neg­a­tives, Con­tact Sheets & More

Kate Bush Enjoys a (Long-Over­due) Revival, Sparked by Sea­son 4 of Stranger Things

Peter Gabriel Re-Records “Biko,” His Anti-Apartheid Protest Song, with Musi­cians Around the World

Watch a New­ly-Restored Peter Gabriel-Era Gen­e­sis Con­cert Film From 1973 in Stun­ning 4K Qual­i­ty

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

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The Isolated Bass Grooves of The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh (RIP)

This past Fri­day, the bassist of The Grate­ful Dead, Phil Lesh, passed away at age 84. Almost imme­di­ate­ly the trib­utes poured in, most rec­og­niz­ing that Lesh was­n’t your ordi­nary bassist. As Jon Par­e­les wrote in the New York Times, Phil Lesh held songs “aloft.” His “bass lines hopped and bub­bled and con­stant­ly con­versed with the gui­tars of Jer­ry Gar­cia and Bob Weir. His tone was round­ed and unassertive while he eased his way into the coun­ter­point, almost as if he were think­ing aloud. [His] play­ing was essen­tial to the Dead’s par­tic­u­lar grav­i­ty-defy­ing lilt, shar­ing a col­lec­tive mode of rock momen­tum that was teas­ing and prob­ing, nev­er blunt­ly coer­cive.”

My first encounter with the Grate­ful Dead came when I was 16 years old. I vivid­ly remem­ber the guy who played bon­gos on my friend’s head when we arrived at the show. I also remem­ber the spin­ners trip­ping on acid, danc­ing down the halls and short-cir­cuit­ing my lit­tle mind. But the con­cert itself remains only a hazy mem­o­ry. And cer­tain­ly the artistry of Lesh, Gar­cia, Weir, and the drum­mers was lost on me. Only years lat­er, did it all start to click. That’s when I dialed into the Bar­ton Hall con­cert at Cor­nell (May 8, 1977) and encoun­tered Lesh’s bass lines at the start of “Scar­let Bego­nias.” Once you hear them, they’re hard to shake. The video above zooms into that per­for­mance, explor­ing the devel­op­ment of Lesh’s bass play­ing through­out the spring of ’77. The next video down lets you hear the com­plete Bar­ton Hall per­for­mance of “Scar­let Bego­nias” in all of its glo­ry.

When oth­ers try to cap­ture what made Phil, Phil, they’ll fea­ture anoth­er beloved show–Vene­ta, OR (6/27/72). Below, you can hear iso­lat­ed tracks of Phil’s bass work on “Bertha” and “Chi­na Cat Sun­flower/I Know You Rid­er.” (Click the links in the pri­or sen­tence to hear Lesh and the band per­form­ing the songs together–so you can hear how the bass ties in.) Trained in free jazz and avant-garde clas­si­cal music, Lesh infused rock with the influ­ences of Coltrane, Min­gus, and Stravinsky–not to men­tion oth­ers. And, with that, the bass was nev­er the same.

For any­one want­i­ng to get fur­ther into the Phil Zone, read his excel­lent mem­oir Search­ing for the Sound: My Life with the Grate­ful Dead.

Bertha

Chi­na Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rid­er

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

The Grate­ful Dead Pays Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in a 1982 Con­cert: Hear “Raven Space”

When the Grate­ful Dead Played at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

 

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Peanuts Creator Charles Schulz Shares with a 10-Year-Old Kid the True Meaning of Good Citizenship

In 1970, when 10-year-old Joel Lin­ton asked Charles Schulz, the cre­ator of Peanuts, “What do you think makes a good cit­i­zen?” Schulz sent the young­ster a short but pithy reply:

Dear Joel:

I think it is more dif­fi­cult these days to define what makes a good cit­i­zen than it has ever been before. Cer­tain­ly all any of us can do is fol­low our own con­science and retain faith in our democ­ra­cy. Some­times it is the very peo­ple who cry out the loud­est in favor of get­ting back to what they call “Amer­i­can Virtues” who lack this faith in our coun­try. I believe that our great­est strength lies always in the pro­tec­tion of our small­est minori­ties.

Sin­cere­ly yours,

Charles M. Schulz

When this let­ter sur­faced in 2019, Schulz’s wid­ow com­ment­ed, “I con­tin­u­al­ly find com­ic strips that could have been writ­ten for today’s audi­ence.” “This says what needs to be said now.” Need­less to say, the same mes­sage bears repeat­ing in 2024.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent 

23 Min­utes of Charles Schulz Draw­ing Peanuts

Umber­to Eco Explains the Poet­ic Pow­er of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts

How Franklin Became Peanuts’ First Black Char­ac­ter, Thanks to a Car­ing School­teacher (1968)

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John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes

John Waters’ rol­lick­ing com­mence­ment speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some good one-lin­ers and a few pearls of wis­dom, though phrased, quite nat­u­ral­ly, in an irrev­er­ent way. Ready for some sage advice on what real­ly counts as wealth? And what career choic­es will make you tru­ly wealthy? Mr. Waters has this to say:

Uh, don’t hate all rich peo­ple. They’re not all awful. Believe me, I know some evil poor peo­ple, too. We need some rich peo­ple: Who else is going to back our movies or buy our art? I’m rich! I don’t mean mon­ey-wise. I mean that I have fig­ured out how to nev­er be around ass­holes at any time in my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life. That’s rich. And not being around ass­holes should be the goal of every grad­u­ate here today.

It’s OK to hate the poor, too, but only the poor of spir­it, not wealth. A poor per­son to me can have a big bank bal­ance but is stu­pid by choice – uncu­ri­ous, judg­men­tal, iso­lat­ed and unavail­able to change.

I’m also sor­ry to report there’s no such thing as kar­ma. So many of my tal­ent­ed great friends are dead and so many of the fools I’ve met and loathed are still alive. It’s not fair, and it nev­er will be.

Like I said, irrev­er­ent­ly phrased. But when stripped down to their basics, some very good prin­ci­ples to live by.

Watch the speech above; read the com­plete tran­script here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters Takes You on a Com­i­cal Tour of His Apart­ment (1986)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters’ Com­i­cal & Inspir­ing Com­mence­ment Speech: “You Too Can Fail Upwards” (2022)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship: He Treated Me Not as a Freak, But as a Person Dealing with Great Difficulties

Some­times it can seem as though the more we think we know a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, the less we actu­al­ly do. Helen Keller? We’ve all seen (or think we’ve seen) some ver­sion of The Mir­a­cle Work­er, right?—even if we haven’t actu­al­ly read Keller’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy. And Mark Twain? He can seem like an old fam­i­ly friend. But I find peo­ple are often sur­prised to learn that Keller was a rad­i­cal social­ist fire­brand, in sym­pa­thy with work­ers’ move­ments world­wide. In a short arti­cle in praise of Lenin, for exam­ple, Keller once wrote, “I cry out against peo­ple who uphold the empire of gold…. I am per­fect­ly sure that love will bring every­thing right in the end, but I can­not help sym­pa­thiz­ing with the oppressed who feel dri­ven to use force to gain the rights that belong to them.”

Twain took a more pes­simistic, iron­ic approach, yet he thor­ough­ly opposed reli­gious dog­ma, slav­ery, and impe­ri­al­ism. “I am always on the side of the rev­o­lu­tion­ists,” he wrote, “because there nev­er was a rev­o­lu­tion unless there were some oppres­sive and intol­er­a­ble con­di­tions against which to rev­o­lute.” While a great many peo­ple grow more con­ser­v­a­tive with age, Twain and Keller both grew more rad­i­cal, which in part accounts for anoth­er lit­tle-known fact about these two nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can celebri­ties: they formed a very close and last­ing friend­ship that, at least in Keller’s case, may have been one of the most impor­tant rela­tion­ships in either figure’s lives.

10-hk-twain

Twain’s impor­tance to Keller, and hers to him, begins in 1895, when the two met at a lunch held for Keller in New York. Accord­ing to the Mark Twain Library’s exten­sive doc­u­men­tary exhib­it, Keller “seemed to feel more at ease with Twain than with any of the oth­er guests.” She would lat­er write, “He treat­ed me not as a freak, but as a hand­i­capped woman seek­ing a way to cir­cum­vent extra­or­di­nary dif­fi­cul­ties.” Twain was tak­en as well, sur­prised by “her quick­ness and intel­li­gence.” After the meet­ing, he wrote to his bene­fac­tor Hen­ry H. Rogers, ask­ing Rogers to fund Keller’s edu­ca­tion. Rogers, the Mark Twain Library tells us, “per­son­al­ly took charge of Helen Keller’s for­tunes, and out of his own means made it pos­si­ble for her to con­tin­ue her edu­ca­tion and to achieve for her­self the endur­ing fame which Mark Twain had fore­seen.”

Twain wrote to his wealthy friend, “It won’t do for Amer­i­ca to allow this mar­velous child to retire from her stud­ies because of pover­ty. If she can go on with them she will make a fame that will endure in his­to­ry for cen­turies.” There­after, the two would main­tain a “spe­cial friend­ship,” sus­tained not only by their polit­i­cal sen­ti­ments, but also by a love of ani­mals, trav­el, and oth­er per­son­al sim­i­lar­i­ties. Both writ­ers came to live in Fair­field Coun­ty, Con­necti­cut at the end of their lives, and she vis­it­ed him at his Red­ding home, Storm­field, in 1909, the year before his death (see them there at the top of the post, and more pho­tos here). Twain was espe­cial­ly impressed by Keller’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, writ­ing to her, “I am charmed with your book—enchanted.” (See his endorse­ment in a 1903 adver­tise­ment, below.)

HelenKellerAd2

Twain also came to Keller’s defense, ten years lat­er, after read­ing in her book about a pla­gia­rism scan­dal that occurred in 1892 when, at only twelve years old, she was accused of lift­ing her short sto­ry “The Frost King” from Mar­garet Canby’s “Frost Fairies.” Though a tri­bunal acquit­ted Keller of the charges, the inci­dent still piqued Twain, who called it “unspeak­ably fun­ny and owlish­ly idi­ot­ic and grotesque” in a 1903 let­ter in which he also declared: “The ker­nel, the soul—let us go fur­ther and say the sub­stance, the bulk, the actu­al and valu­able mate­r­i­al of all human utterance—is pla­gia­rism.” What dif­fers from work to work, he con­tends is “the phras­ing of a sto­ry”; Keller’s accusers, he writes pro­tec­tive­ly, were “solemn don­keys break­ing a lit­tle child’s heart.”

twain-welcomes-keller-4

We also have Twain—not play­wright William Gib­son—to thank for the “mir­a­cle work­er” title giv­en to Keller’s teacher, Anne Sul­li­van. (See Keller, Sul­li­van, Twain, and Sullivan’s hus­band John Macy above at Twain’s home). As a trib­ute to Sul­li­van for her tire­less work with Keller, he pre­sent­ed her with a post­card that read, “To Mrs. John Sul­li­van Macy with warm regard & with lim­it­less admi­ra­tion of the won­ders she has per­formed as a ‘mir­a­cle-work­er.’” In his 1903 let­ter to Keller, he called Sul­li­van “your oth­er half… for it took the pair of you to make com­plete and per­fect whole.”

Twain praised Sul­li­van effu­sive­ly for “her bril­lian­cy, pen­e­tra­tion, orig­i­nal­i­ty, wis­dom, char­ac­ter, and the fine lit­er­ary com­pe­ten­cies of her pen.” But he reserved his high­est praise for Keller her­self. “You are a won­der­ful crea­ture,” he wrote, “The most won­der­ful in the world.” Keller’s praise of her friend Twain was no less lofty. “I have been in Eden three days and I saw a King,” she wrote in his guest­book dur­ing her vis­it to Storm­field, “I knew he was a King the minute I touched him though I had nev­er touched a King before.” The last words in Twain’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, the first vol­ume anyway—which he only allowed to be pub­lished in 2010—are Keller’s; “You once told me you were a pes­simist, Mr. Clemons,” he quotes her as say­ing, “but great men are usu­al­ly mis­tak­en about them­selves. You are an opti­mist.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Writes a Let­ter to Nazi Stu­dents Before They Burn Her Book: “His­to­ry Has Taught You Noth­ing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

Read the Uplift­ing Let­ter That Albert Ein­stein Sent to Marie Curie Dur­ing a Time of Per­son­al Cri­sis (1911)

Helen Keller Had Impec­ca­ble Hand­writ­ing: See a Col­lec­tion of Her Child­hood Let­ters

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Helen Keller & Annie Sul­li­van Appear Togeth­er in Mov­ing 1930 News­reel

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous

There may be as many doors into Alco­holics Anony­mous in the 21st cen­tu­ry as there are peo­ple who walk through them—from every world reli­gion to no reli­gion. The “inter­na­tion­al mutu­al-aid fel­low­ship” has had “a sig­nif­i­cant and long-term effect on the cul­ture of the Unit­ed States,” writes Worces­ter State Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy Charles Fox at Aeon. Indeed, its influ­ence is glob­al. From its incep­tion in 1935, A.A. has rep­re­sent­ed an “enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar ther­a­py, and a tes­ta­ment to the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary nature of health and well­ness.”

A.A. has also rep­re­sent­ed, at least cul­tur­al­ly, a remark­able syn­the­sis of behav­ioral sci­ence and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty that trans­lates into scores of dif­fer­ent lan­guages, beliefs, and prac­tices. Or at least that’s the way it can appear from brows­ing the scores of books on A.A.’s 12-Steps and Bud­dhism, Yoga, Catholi­cism, Judaism, Indige­nous faith tra­di­tions, shaman­ist prac­tices, Sto­icism, sec­u­lar human­ism, and, of course, psy­chol­o­gy.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, and often in prac­tice, how­ev­er, the (non)organization of world­wide fel­low­ships has rep­re­sent­ed a much nar­row­er tra­di­tion, inher­it­ed from the evan­gel­i­cal (small “e”) Chris­t­ian Oxford Group, or as A.A. founder Bill Wil­son called them, “the ‘O.G.’” Wil­son cred­its the Oxford Group for the method­ol­o­gy of A.A.: “their large empha­sis upon the prin­ci­ples of self-sur­vey, con­fes­sion, resti­tu­tion, and the giv­ing of one­self in ser­vice to oth­ers.”

The Oxford Group’s the­ol­o­gy, though qual­i­fied and tem­pered, also made its way into many of A.A.’s basic prin­ci­ples. But for the recov­ery group’s gen­e­sis, Wil­son cites a more sec­u­lar author­i­ty, Carl Jung. The famous Swiss psy­chi­a­trist took a keen inter­est in alco­holism in the 1920s. Wil­son wrote to Jung in 1961 to express his “great appre­ci­a­tion” for his efforts. “A cer­tain con­ver­sa­tion you once had with one of your patients, a Mr. Row­land H. back in the ear­ly 1930’s,” Wil­son explains, “did play a crit­i­cal role in the found­ing of our Fel­low­ship.”

Jung may not have known his influ­ence on the recov­ery move­ment, Wil­son says, although alco­holics had account­ed for “about 13 per­cent of all admis­sions” in his prac­tice, notes Fox. One of his patients, Row­land H.—or Row­land Haz­ard, “invest­ment banker and for­mer state sen­a­tor from Rhode Island”—came to Jung in des­per­a­tion, saw him dai­ly for a peri­od of sev­er­al months, stopped drink­ing, then relapsed. Brought back to Jung by his cousin, Haz­ard was told that his case was hope­less short of a reli­gious con­ver­sion. As Wil­son puts it in his let­ter:

[Y]ou frankly told him of his hope­less­ness, so far as any fur­ther med­ical or psy­chi­atric treat­ment might be con­cerned. This can­did and hum­ble state­ment of yours was beyond doubt the first foun­da­tion stone upon which our Soci­ety has since been built.

Jung also told Haz­ard that con­ver­sion expe­ri­ences were incred­i­bly rare and rec­om­mend­ed that he “place him­self in a reli­gious atmos­phere and hope for the best,” as Wil­son remem­bers. But he did not spec­i­fy any par­tic­u­lar reli­gion. Haz­ard dis­cov­ered the Oxford Group. He might, as far as Jung was con­cerned, have met God as he under­stood it any­where. “His crav­ing for alco­hol was the equiv­a­lent,” wrote the psy­chi­a­trist in a reply to Wil­son, “on a low lev­el, of the spir­i­tu­al thirst of our being for whole­ness, expressed in medieval lan­guage: the union with God.”

In his reply let­ter to Wil­son, Jung uses reli­gious lan­guage alle­gor­i­cal­ly. AA took the idea of con­ver­sion more lit­er­al­ly. Though it wres­tled with the plight of the agnos­tic, the Big Book con­clud­ed that such peo­ple must even­tu­al­ly see the light. Jung, on the oth­er hand, seems very care­ful to avoid a strict­ly reli­gious inter­pre­ta­tion of his advice to Haz­ard, who start­ed the first small group that would con­vert Wil­son to sobri­ety and to Oxford Group meth­ods.

“How could one for­mu­late such an insight that is not mis­un­der­stood in our days?” Jung asks. “The only right and legit­i­mate way to such an expe­ri­ence is that it hap­pens to you in real­i­ty and it can only hap­pen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to a high­er under­stand­ing.” Sobri­ety could be achieved through “a high­er edu­ca­tion of the mind beyond the con­fines of mere rationalism”—through an enlight­en­ment or con­ver­sion expe­ri­ence, that is. It might also occur through “an act of grace or through a per­son­al and hon­est con­tact with friends.”

Though most found­ing mem­bers of AA fought for the stricter inter­pre­ta­tion of Jung’s pre­scrip­tion, Wil­son always enter­tained the idea that mul­ti­ple paths might bring alco­holics to the same goal, even includ­ing mod­ern med­i­cine. He drew on the med­ical opin­ions of Dr. William D. Silk­worth, who the­o­rized that alco­holism was in part a phys­i­cal dis­ease, “a sort of metab­o­lism dif­fi­cul­ty which he then called an aller­gy.” Even after his own con­ver­sion expe­ri­ence, which Silk­worth, like Jung, rec­om­mend­ed he pur­sue, Wil­son exper­i­ment­ed with vit­a­min ther­a­pies, through the influ­ence of Aldous Hux­ley.

His search to under­stand his mys­ti­cal “white light” moment in a New York detox room also led Wil­son to William James’ Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence. The book “gave me the real­iza­tion,” he wrote to Jung, “that most con­ver­sion expe­ri­ences, what­ev­er their vari­ety, do have a com­mon denom­i­na­tor of ego col­lapse at depth.” He even thought that LSD could act as such a “tem­po­rary ego-reduc­er” after he took the drug under super­vi­sion of British psy­chi­a­trist Humphrey Osmond. (Jung like­ly would have opposed what he called “short cuts” like psy­che­del­ic drugs.)

In the let­ters between Wil­son and Jung, as Ian McCabe argues in Carl Jung and Alco­holics Anony­mous, we see mutu­al admi­ra­tion between the two, as well as mutu­al influ­ence. “Bill Wil­son,” writes McCabe’s pub­lish­er, “was encour­aged by Jung’s writ­ings to pro­mote the spir­i­tu­al aspect of recov­ery,” an aspect that took on a par­tic­u­lar­ly reli­gious char­ac­ter in Alco­holics Anony­mous. For his part, Jung, “influ­enced by A.A.’s suc­cess… gave ‘com­plete and detailed instruc­tions’ on how the A.A. group for­mat could be devel­oped fur­ther and used by ‘gen­er­al neu­rotics.’” And so it has, though more on the Oxford Group mod­el than the more mys­ti­cal Jun­gian. It might well have been oth­er­wise.

Read more about Jung’s influ­ence on AA over at Aeon.

Note: Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Jung Offers an Intro­duc­tion to His Psy­cho­log­i­cal Thought in a 3‑Hour Inter­view (1957)

Take Carl Jung’s Word Asso­ci­a­tion Test, a Quick Route Into the Sub­con­scious (1910)

Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Man­u­script The Red Book

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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This 392-Year-Old Bonsai Tree Survived the Hiroshima Atomic Blast & Still Flourishes Today: The Power of Resilience

Image by Sage Ross, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The beau­ti­ful bon­sai tree pic­tured above–let’s call it the Yama­ki Pine Bonsai–began its jour­ney through the world back in 1625. That’s when the Yama­ki fam­i­ly first began to train the tree, work­ing patient­ly, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion, to prune the tree into the majes­tic thing it is today.

No doubt, over the cen­turies, the ancient bon­sai wit­nessed many good and bad days in Japan–some highs and some lows. But noth­ing as low as what hap­pened on August 6, 1945, when the Unit­ed States dropped an atom­ic bomb on Hiroshi­ma, dev­as­tat­ing the city and leav­ing 140,000 civil­ians dead. The bomb explod­ed less than two miles from the Yamak­i’s home. But defy­ing the odds, the Yama­ki Pine sur­vived the blast. (It was pro­tect­ed by a wall sur­round­ing the Yamak­i’s bon­sai nurs­ery.) The fam­i­ly sur­vived the blast too, suf­fer­ing only minor cuts from fly­ing glass.

Three decades lat­er, in a rather remark­able act of for­give­ness, the Yama­ki fam­i­ly gift­ed the pine (along with 52 oth­er cher­ished trees) to the Unit­ed States, dur­ing the bicen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion of 1976. Nev­er did they say any­thing, how­ev­er, about the trau­mas the tree sur­vived. Only in 2001, when a younger gen­er­a­tion of Yamakis vis­it­ed Wash­ing­ton, did the care­tak­ers at the Unit­ed States Nation­al Arbore­tum learn the full sto­ry about the tree’s resilience. The tree sur­vived the worst mankind could throw at it. And kept its beau­ty intact. Sure­ly you can do the same when life sends less­er chal­lenges your way.

You can get a clos­er look at the Yama­ki pine in the video below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Shad­ow” of a Hiroshi­ma Vic­tim, Etched into Stone, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atom­ic Blast

Watch Chill­ing Footage of the Hiroshi­ma & Nagasa­ki Bomb­ings in Restored Col­or

The Art of Cre­at­ing a Bon­sai: One Year Con­densed Con­densed Into 22 Mes­mer­iz­ing Min­utes

The Art & Phi­los­o­phy of Bon­sai

 

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