Kevin McGeary

    LAST month, the 50th anniversary of the death of psychologist Carl Gustav Jung was commemorated. The Swiss founder of analytical psychology is best known for his theory of the collective unconscious, writing about dreams, and the invention of the terms “introvert” and “extrovert.” Below, I will look at three things he said and try to relate them to Shenzhen.

    The first is “who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakens.” There was a time, argued English novelist J.G. Ballard, that the real world meant the external world of offices, factories and shops. But now, the external world is full of unreality. From computer games that offer escape to advertisements that create unrealistic expectations.

    On May 30, middle-school student Lee Chou wrote to Shenzhen Daily detailing how the computer game Angry Birds had been eating away his time. Jung himself argued that any addiction is bad, but this game is a particularly mindless pastime.

    Journalist John Pomfret fears for China’s youth. He claims that his generation, born in the 1950s and 60s, although starved of education, gained great wisdom through toil. Today’s cluttered external world does not give children time to look inside, and therefore, no chance to imagine, reflect and become rounded individuals.

    The creation of rounded individuals leads me to the second quote: “to fail to understand the natural world, such as that cabbages thrive in dung, is to be neurotic.”

    Every Friday, our Travel page describes an unspoiled part of China. Recently, the page invited readers to sample the variety of avian life. Taking holidays in such places is a start, but not enough to bring us closer to nature.

    In the Shenzhen CBD, the closest most of us come to nature is running across the street in the rain to get to Starbucks. But recent floods and droughts have shown us that we are part of the ecological system, not its masters. Jung would hasten to remind us that a person with a healthy psyche is aware of this. He anticipated the environmental movement by arguing: “Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose.”

    Jung believed that many of his patients were not mentally ill, but their lives lacked meaning because they were detached from the earth. Jung criticized industrial civilization for this, which brings me to my third quote: “the least of things with a meaning is worth more than the greatest things without it.”

    Stories of greed ruining lives are common in Shenzhen. Recent examples include the industrial espionage at Foxconn leading to jail time for the perpetrators. When I asked a sample of college students what they most wanted from life, 83 percent simply said “money,” with no detail about how they intend to get it, or how they will use it.

    One of the best-known quotes from Chinese television over recent years was when a girl sneered at a less than wealthy suitor: “It’s better to cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle.” Sharing a romantic bike ride may be the least of things, but it can have meaning. I fail to see how merely sitting in the latest BMW can make anybody happy.

    This materialism is known to have had a negative effect on society. Beijing has banned outdoor advertisements using words such as “luxury,” “royal,” “supreme” and “high-class.” A decline in business ethics and a resentful poor are symptoms of this materialism that Jung would have recognized in his patients in 20th-century Europe.

    From filmmaker Federico Fellini, to novelist Herman Hesse, to rock band The Police, Jungian thought has influenced a variety of people. If the people of Shenzhen discovered his work, they would be in august company.

    (The author is a Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)