If we use the words “masculine” and “feminine” as C.G. Jung used them, as mythic archetypes, it would be fair to say that the masculine seeks to separate itself (the subject) from the world (the object). There is no fuzzy feelings of “I am you and you are me and we are the world” for the masculine. After separating itself from the world, it then seeks to understand and to and classify.
The feminine, on the other hand, seeks to dissolve the border between itself (the subject) from the world (the object). Similarly, it seeks to collapse the harsh distinctions and divisions that emerge with discriminative consciousness. If the masculine strives for clarity and distinctness, the feminine strives for a preconscious unity.
Naturally, some sort of unity of masculine and feminine visions of life is needed. But, as always, these two polarities of human consciousness are at war with each other. This war finds expression in the body politic. Many of the social and political issues of our day involve the effort of those advocates of a feminine vision of life seeking to challenge and undermine the masculine. For example, the effort of homosexual advocacy groups to destroy the traditional definition of marriage ultimately involves an effort to destroy the very distinction, or border, between male and female. Another example involves the effort, by certain animal rights activists, to abolish the border between the human kingdom and the animal kingdom. The advocates of the feminine vision of reality similarly seek the breakdown of the cultural borders between different nations. Indeed, they seek to destroy the vary notion of national identity and replace it with a Utopian internationalism, which finds expression in diversity, multiculturalism, and globalization. Socialism is also the product of this feminine way of seeing. For it seems to level the social and economic borders that exist between people.
The advocates of the borderless vision have been seeking to dissolve the border between the United States and Mexico. The lack of a secure national border has meant an increase in crime, much of which is committed by millions of illegal aliens. Furthermore, the influx of these illegals — many of whom have have little sense of identification with their new country, and little sense of loyalty — is threatening the very unity of the Unites States. Drugs, and an increase in drug-related violence is another consequence of open borders. The latest import is the swine flu.
Here, then, is an example of how the practical conflicts with ontological longings. An epidemiologist, with any common sense, would realize the importance of closing down the border between the United States and Mexico. And any president who realizes that it is his job to protect the health of the citizens of his nation would implement such a policy. But President Obama has not, as of yet, closed down the borders between the United States and Mexico. Nor had President GW Bush been eager to do so. There are certainly political reason for this failure: pandering to Hispanic voters. But, more essentially, securing the border would conflict with the zeitgeist, the feminine vision of life, which seeks to abolish borders of all sorts. Both men are children of the times.
What is plaguing America is not simply the swine flu. Ultimately, it is being destroyed from within by a worldview, which I am referring to as feminine and, therefore, borderphobic. Unless this wordlview is deracinated from the body politic, it will ultimately destroy everything.
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Copyright © 2018 Mark Dillof
