I read this piece of work by Jung a long while back
It was a meditation on the injunction to treat your neighbor as
As you would like to be treated
And what Jung pointed out which I really liked
Was that wasn′t an injunction to be nice to other people
It was an invitation to reciprocity
It was something like this, it's like
You should figure out how you would like to be treated
Like you were taking care of yourself, not how you would like people to respond to you
It′s more important than that
It's like imagine you had a child, that you really cared for
And someone said "Well, people will treat this child exactly like you want them to
But you have to figure out what that is"
And so then you'd have to sit down for like a month and you′d think
Okay well, how do you want your child to be treated?
You don′t want everyone to just be nice to him, you know?
You want people to challenge him
And you want people to discipline him
And you want people to tell him when he's wrong
It′s like you don't just want everyone to be nice
That′s-that's pathetic
It′s pathetic
There's-there's no challenge in that
There′s-there′s no challenge in that
Human beings are self-conscious
And we know about our limitations
And we know about our weaknesses
And so, we can have contempt for human beings in general
Because you know, we're just flawed and breakable and all of that
But we know ourselves better than we know everyone else
And so
You have a very acute sense of how you′re not up to scratch
And so that leads naturally to a sort of self-contentious attitude
People are more likely to give prescription medication to their pets than to take them themselves
Imagine someone that you treat well, that you love
And try to treat yourself that way
You go to detach from yourself there
You got to think, okay well
I'm a person among other people
And I deserve at least as much respect
As a person among other people
I should be trying to help myself across time
And instead of being self-contemptuous and self-destructive
I need to take care of myself
As if I′m potentially valuable
And to lay out my life that way
It's hard for people
They don′t take care of themselves as well as they should
Take care of your room
Take care of your things
It's like, have some respect for yourself as a miraculous being
Because that is actually what you are
There is a lot of potential within you
You're necessary more than you think to the unfolding of things
That′s the thing about being an individual
It′s the thing that western civilization has always recognized
That as an individual you have a light that you have to bring into the world
And that if you don't bring it into the world the world is a dimmer place
And that′s a bad thing because when the world is a dim place it can get very, very, very dark
