I'm in favor of destruction, aggression, hating things. Not bearing things anymore. We think the breakdown comes because our life is in bad shape. But maybe the ideas cause the disorder. Something tries to break through and causes the disorder.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that disorder and chaos in life may stem from conflicting ideas rather than external circumstances.
James Hillman's quote reflects on the nature of disorder in our lives, proposing that it may not simply be a consequence of our circumstances, but rather the result of ideas and internal conflicts striving to break through. He advocates for an embracing of destruction and aggressive feelings as a natural part of confronting and understanding the chaos within us, rather than merely accepting a bad state of life.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of human struggle.
Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.
Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies - the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding.
Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem
Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.
My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought that and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism).
Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
Half the world cries Half the world laughs Half the world tries To be the other half
Staying true to our goals, Question Bridge as a company and as a project is not singularly about black males. One of the things I'm so excited about Question Bridge is that my vision goes far beyond black males.
Great causes and little men go ill together.
Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
Sadly, we do a much better job of making people feel guilty than we do of delivering them from the guilt we create. We need to confess this and change our ways.
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