Apr 5, 2026,from Clarke Mackey:
Thanks so much for sending this fascinating essay. It makes me want to revisit Jung’s ideas and explore some of the other thinkers you mention.
In the ‘70s, when I was an undergraduate at U of T, my friends and I began reading Freud and Jung (along with R. D. Laing and his associates). I became obsessed with these ideas for several years. I think it was because it helped provide explanations for the confusing disjuncture between the intentions and actions in myself and those around me.
When my girlfriend and I made the budget grand tour of hostels through Europe in 1977, I dragged her to Zurich and Vienna so that I could stand where my heroes had lived. (At that time, Freud’s old apartment was a museum, but there was nothing commemorating Jung. Now his house is a museum as well.)
I knew there were important differences between Freud and Jung. At the time, I was attracted to Jung’s greater openness to non-western practices and beliefs, the para-normal, and other unpopular ideas. Acceptance of the mysteries of existence. Awareness of the limits of science.
In general, I find the idea of a God that is both good and evil intuitively correct, and the all-good Christ and Christianity as a serious flaw of the official church. I am sympathetic to the arguments you are putting forward. I’ve never read Hegel, but I suspect, given what I’ve heard, that he and his followers might find some agreement with you on the dialectical nature of God and the need to rethink faith in light of current conditions.
I’ll be curious to hear what your interlocutors have to say about this essay.
April 17, 2026, from David to Clarke:
I was glad to hear that you are in sympathy with Jung's basic idea. One of the great difficulties of discussing this question lies in the fact that God is often conceived, and spoken of, and to, as a person, and it then becomes hard to allow that God might be a bad person, whom we have some right to judge. This is a sound objection in certain ways, and to answer it requires a distinction between Jung's experiential language and more theological languages.
My friend Sajay intends to publish the essay in a special issue of Conspiratio - the little journal that so far many serves the community of Illich friends - https://thinkingwithivanillich.net/ - and I hope that will stimulate more discussion. So far, excepting yourself and a couple of others, I seem to have mainly faced hostility, incomprehension, or indifference.