Dark Religion and Conspiracy Theories

ABSTRACT

Conspiracy theories have infiltrated increasingly larger areas of cultural and political life. Conspiracism seems to replace or supplement fundamentalist religious beliefs while also supplying material that is, in turn, used for endorsing political and ideological agendas. Similarities between conspiratorial thinking and fundamentalist creed can be explained by examining the dynamics of inferiority of consciousness and the subsequent inflation of the ego by the “contents” of the unconscious. Inadequate and noncredible representations of numinous energies in consciousness unwittingly contribute to the creation of structures with notable mythological parallels. Jung referred to this phenomenon as an “axiom of psychology,” which can explain both the archetypal nature of conspiracism and its resistance to rational correction. Thinking is free from the unconscious influence of the Self only to the extent that it is able to recognize and to relate to numinous contents, on one hand, and to withdraw projections from the object, on the other. A symbolic perspective offers a nondismissive understanding of the reasons for strong adherence to conspiracy theories. Exploring conspiracy theories as symbols rather than rational constructs offers more fruitful solutions to our current social problems.

KEY WORDS:

• axiom of psychology
• conspiracism
• conspiracy theories
• dark religion
• fundamentalism
• inflation
• manipulation
• propaganda

Note

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Notes

^1. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “conspiracy theory.”

^2. Merriam-Webster online, s.v. “theory.”

^3. Jolley and Douglas conducted research with funding from the British Academy; the Economic and Social Research Council, the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats; and the Australian Research Council in 2017.

^4. Chemtrails theory, also known as the Secret Large-scale Atmospheric Program (SLAP), alleges that water condensation trails (aka contrails) from airplanes contain chemicals or biological agents that are deliberately spread by secret government agencies.

^5. According to a 2018 YouGovPoll, available at https://today.yougov.com/topics/philosophy/articles-reports/2018/04/02/most-flat-earthers-consider-themselves-religious.

^6. In Latin, “Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix” (Horace 20 BCE, Epistle 1.10.12–14).

^7. All quotes from the Bible are from the International Standard Version online, available at http://isv.scripturetext.com.

^8. “Concrete thinking has no detached independence but clings to material phenomena. It rises at most to the level of analogy. Primitive feeling is equally bound to material phenomena. Both of them depend on sensation and are only slightly differentiated from it. Concretism, therefore, is an archaism. The magical influence of the fetish is not experienced as a subjective state of feeling, but sensed as a magical effect. That is concretistic feeling. The primitive does not experience the idea of the divinity as a subjective content . . . In civilized man, concretistic thinking consists in the inability to conceive of anything except immediately obvious facts transmitted by the senses, or in the inability to discriminate between subjective feeling and the sensed object” (Jung 1921/1971, CW 6, ¶¶697–699).

^9. The paradigm of understanding reality via omnipotent deity has governed humankind since the times of the cognitive revolution of homo sapiens, roughly dated to 70,000 years ago (Harari 2014).

^10. “When one is identified with an archetypal image the perceived world gains archetypal dimensions. Archaism attaches primarily to the fantasies of the unconscious, i.e., to the products of unconscious fantasy activity which reach consciousness. An image has an archaic quality when it possesses unmistakable mythological parallels. Archaic, too, are the associations-by-analogy of unconscious fantasy, and so is their symbolism” (Jung 1921/1971, CW 6, ¶684).

^11. “But since the development of consciousness requires the withdrawal of all projections we can lay our hands on, it is not possible to maintain any non-psychological doctrine about the gods. If the historical process of world despiritualization continues as hitherto, then everything of a divine or daemonic character outside us must return to the psyche, to the inside of the unknown man, whence it apparently originated” (Jung 1940/1969, CW 11, ¶141).

^12. “This man’s absolute control of the world politically, economically, and religiously will give him power such as no man has ever had in human history. His brilliance as a leader will be superhuman, for he will be dominated and directed by Satan himself” (Barkun 2003, 42).

^13. “The likelihood of supporting conspiracy theories is strongly predicted by a willingness to believe in other unseen, intentional forces and an attraction to Manichean narratives” (Oliver and Wood 2014, 1).

^14. In our book Dark Religion: Fundamentalism from the Perspective of Jungian Psychology, we have delineated “dark religion” as a creed that is based on inflationary dynamics between the ego and the Self (Šolc and Didier 2018). The ego in this case “hides” behind the God (Theocalypsis). We have identified numerous characteristics pertaining to “dark religion”: hubris, ethical infantilism, unconscious identity (participation mystique), lack of aidos, relinquishment of will, inadequate relationship to paradox, concretism and naive literalism, historicism and externalism, selective rationality, inconsistency and intellectual rigidity, quasi-intellectualism, absolutism and inerrancy, millennialism and messianism, dogmatism, asymbolism, one-sided orientation of consciousness, inadequate regulation of numinous energy, externalization of numinous energy, dissociative selectivity, moral superiority and moral Manichaeism, reactivity, fear of change, and fear of the new.

^15. See also Almond, Appleby, and Sivan (2003).

^16. “The archetype behind a religious idea has, like every instinctive force, its specific energy, which it does not lose even if the conscious mind ignores it. Just as it can be assumed with the greatest probability that every man possesses all the average human functions and qualities, so we may expect the presence of normal religious factors, the archetypes, and this expectation does not prove fallacious” (Jung 1954/1968, CW 9i, ¶129).

^17. The ability of human mind to form organization based on uniform ideas and images probably stands behind the formation of civilization (Harari 2015). At the same time, this ability is contrary to individuation because it carries within itself the desire to seek the state of unity by identification.

^18. Damasio continues: “In everyday language we often use the terms interchangeably. This shows how closely connected emotions are with feelings. But for neuroscience, emotions are more or less the complex reactions the body has to certain stimuli. When we are afraid of something, our hearts begin to race, our mouths become dry, our skin turns pale and our muscles contract. This emotional reaction occurs automatically and unconsciously. Feelings occur after we become aware in our brain of such physical changes; only then do we experience the feeling of fear.”

^19. “A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps” (Jung 1950/1968, CW 9i, ¶222).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vladislav Šolc

VLADISLAV (VLADO) ŠOLC (pronounced “Schultz”) is a professional psychotherapist and Jungian analyst practicing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Vlado received training from the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago and Charles University in Prague. He lives in constant awe of the miracle of existence. He is also the author of four depth-psychology-oriented books: Psyche, Matrix, Reality; The Father Archetype; In the Name of God—Fanaticism from the Perspective of Depth Psychology; and Dark Religion: Fundamentalism from the Perspective of Jungian Psychology (with George Didier). Correspondence: [email protected].