The Collected Works cover

I’ve started digging into Jung for a couple of reasons: I’m working on a project called the Hyper Sutra that deals with opposites and transcendence, and there’s just no way of tackling any of that without coming face to face with the force that is Carl Jung. But I also want to get a better handle on Jordan B. Peterson—the intellectual rockstar who’s been flooding the interwebs lately with his own mashup of Jungian psychology.

If you want to understand an artist, you have to dig into the art that inspired them. It took me years to figure this out with Marshall McLuhan—if you want to understand ’The medium is the message’, go read Harold Innis and Eric Havelock. If you want to hear the Beatles, listen to Elvis and Chuck Berry. If you want to understand what Kanye was trying to do to hip hop, go back and listen to Portishead. Heavy Metal is largely a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t take this advice. Back in the 80’s, kids who had never heard of Muddy Waters tried to imitate Led Zeppelin, and we ended up with grown men in crotchless glitter pants screaming about pussy and Dungeons and Dragons.

All of Jung's writing has been translated into English as an encyclopedia sized stack of books called The Collected Works. Each volume contains a handful of essays, letters, and lectures. As I finish each one, I'll add them to the wiki for anyone who wants to follow along. I’ve also added a page for Maps of Meaning … which I'm realizing was essentially a young Jordan B. Peterson riffing on Jung.

More stuff on my shelf