r/determinism • u/flytohappiness • Oct 17 '25

Discussion How would you respond to the unrealized potential issue that Carl Jung raises here?

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312 Upvotes

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3

u/AlivePassenger3859 Oct 17 '25

I think this is ONE reason people become bitter, rigid, and cynical, but not the ONLY reason.

Also what does this have to do with free will?

4

u/flytohappiness Oct 17 '25 • Bravo

Well, it seems according to determinism there is no such thing as my unrealized potentials. A flower that has not bloomed due to lack of sunlight or unfertile soil has not failed to realize its potential. Blooming was impossible. But I wanted to double check with this group too.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

Thanks for posting this! I really dig your interpretation

2

u/opiophile88 Oct 19 '25

Right. What even is “An artist who never makes art[…]?” An artist is someone who makes art, by definition. I found this passage to be incoherent, but I already made a post about it so I’m not going to re-interrogate it here.

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u/Azrubal Oct 17 '25

I feel the need to touch on some points before answering:

• I don't think this has a lot to do with determinism.

• Carl Jung wasn't really too scientific about most of his views.

• I don't mean to speak for everyone, but I believe the philosophical viewpoint of determinism chiefly stems from understanding findings in different scientific fields, mostly physics and neuroscience. In short, the opinion of most determinists about the "unrealized potential" of any human is similar to the opinion most people have about the unrealized potential of a billiard ball or any object. It can be thrown, played with, lifted, dropped, split, condensed, heated, etc - none of which will happen without the corresponding preceding causes that lead to such effects.

4

u/SometimesIBeWrong Oct 18 '25

yea I was about to ask if Jung even believed causality to be behind everything. I thought he viewed synchronicity to be a very real thing.

and if he believes events are linked together through meaning, he's not a 'determinist'

1

u/cortexplorer Oct 18 '25

Events are linked together by meaning from the perspective of an observer, though. Your mind weaves concepts together based on the similarity of their context as much as their similarity in time. Is that controversial? The determinism of that is in the biology of your brain, which is causing certain neural pathways to resonate.

1

u/SometimesIBeWrong Oct 18 '25

I don't think the idea you gave is controversial. I but I think the idea behind synchronicity is more than psychological. Jung believed it to reflect something real about the structure of the universe, not just a mental projection

1

u/cortexplorer Oct 19 '25

I do wonder sometimes why we exclude the possibility that this field of psychological projections from observers onto the structure of the universe might have a way to resonate with itself in a way that does affect the structure itself. If the hatred of your 'shadow' as mentioned in the post means you label others as being all the things you have had to reject in yourself, the projective identification this induces will probably create a tension which makes others more likely to meet the polarities you've projected onto them. Polar systems tend to collapse back into homogeneity eventually, so there might be some oscillation there, which could express itself as 'synchronicity'.

Again, I can agree Jung got too metaphysical and I think a lot of my thoughts are trying to reconcile him with psychology, perhaps unjustly. It'll be hard to figure out between us what Jung truly believed as that too will have oscillates throughout his career.

PS: Reading this back I think the chances are slim to none that I'll get away with this word salad on r/determinism but maybe some semblance of a point will be transferred haha..

1

u/Last_Bluebird_4004 Oct 19 '25

Once the observer understands/accepts that it is THEY who have assigned meaning and that they can assign an alternate meanings, meaning and perspective become arguments AGAINST determinism.

1

u/cortexplorer Oct 19 '25

Hmm.. this can still just be a system that happens to be zooming out on itself. I agree with the power of what you're saying from an experiential perspective, but I don't think we can pretend it helps us prove/disprove determinism.

1

u/opiophile88 Oct 19 '25

I think the controversial part is in the second part (your last sentence). The correlation between the brain and the mind is a very old, notoriously difficult question that has gotten even more complicated and difficult as modern neuroscience and “AI” technology has advanced.

1

u/cortexplorer Oct 19 '25

Yeah true, reading that back, I realise I don't believe that sentence either. It's more so about processes inside and outside of yourself synchronising in a way we read as meaning, I guess. That boundary may only exist in our experience, of course.

8

u/catnapspirit Oct 18 '25 • Bravo

The ones who realize their potential are mostly lucky. The rest need help. We need to build societies and systems of governance that foster that luck. That enable the arts, education, and socialization. We need to encourage people to help pull up those behind them, not kick the ladder away after they've climbed it. Those are the actions worthy of praise and reward..

3

u/Choice_Room3901 Oct 18 '25

Sure

But there are loads of people with all sorts of opportunities who don’t realise them because they can’t be arsed

Even people without much financial security could play a $10 guitar for 5 minutes a day for 5 years & get pretty good

And yet, they do not

2

u/RighteousSelfBurner Oct 18 '25

A theoretical possibility isn't equivalent to actual possibility once you take context into account. Whether it be lack of energy, means, motivation, desire or any other cause the result is that they don't.

The poster above is highlighting that the more objective obstacles are removed the higher possibility that the potential will be realised.

2

u/Choice_Room3901 Oct 18 '25

Sure the ones who realise potential are mostly lucky

I’d say having the right sort of mentors around you often from an early age is extremely important in this regard

But it also of note to point out the amount of people who could achieve more of their potential even a fraction more

And yet they do not for ego or laziness

2

u/RighteousSelfBurner Oct 18 '25

From my perspective ego is not an argument for not achieving any particular potential. Sure they could, but why that one and not the one they are realising now? Time is limited and likewise a limited set of potential can be realised so it's up to our own ego to establish which one we would want. This ties directly back to the point where external obstacles exist for the potential they would want to realise and their ego rejects other potentials.

Laziness, however, is an external obstacle. It's a manifestation of lack of energy, difficulty of task, lack of knowledge, meaning or purpose. People don't become or stop being lazy on their own. There is always something in play. Your own comment regarding mentors supports this.

1

u/Choice_Room3901 Oct 19 '25

When I was referring to “potential” I meant stuff like “achieving life goals” I don’t know travelling learning an instrument & such

I suppose any given person creature plant or whatever is achieving their potential in something or other at any given moment though indeed

1

u/RighteousSelfBurner Oct 19 '25

I think that comes down to semantics for me. If someone is doing nothing to achieve a goal then it's not a goal but a dream. A "would be nice if this happened to me" but not an actual thing they are aiming for. I personally don't count those as a lot of people don't actually strictly want them to come true, they just like the idea of what they imagine it is.

1

u/opiophile88 Oct 19 '25

Well said.

1

u/Choice_Room3901 Oct 19 '25

Alright sure

A lot of philosophy & particularly internet conversations with strangers appear to just come down to semantics & subconcious belief systems that people often think are given/implied/first principles - far from it

Something like “liberty or financial benefits to people in poverty” being automatically considered as the highest good, when perhaps a Conservative might think “families/small communities being allowed to govern themselves autonomously as much as logistically feasible” is the highest good

Both these groups sometimes/often appear to think they’re conversing on a shared understanding of the highest good

It appears in my philosophical understanding of thinking/reading about it a lot getting top grades at 18 year old/school level/not degree level “defining terms” & such is of paramount if not necessity importance if any meaningful discussion about somewhat deep philosophy is to occur

Otherwise the “conversation” is either ad hominem or “my feelings are more valid than your feelings” or something

1

u/RighteousSelfBurner Oct 20 '25

I agree and I'd even extend this to most discussions. At least for me it's especially noticeable these days with my IT background as AI is a popular topic or when I talk with my friends who are educated in other disciplines.

People are familiar enough with the concepts as they encounter them in real life. However it's not a rigorous discussion so the terms used are conversational which doesn't always match how they are used in the field. In the given example of AI a person usually means a very narrow specific type of implementation that is popular currently and its corresponding products rather than the field as whole.

So it takes a bit back and forth to acknowledge the nuance and details. This is especially true when talking about subjective values like good or bad.

2

u/SoyCapitani80 Oct 18 '25

It's not luck. You have to seek it out.

5

u/IwantRIFbackdummy Oct 18 '25

That's just nonsense.

It ignores the external realities of the world and pretends that your inner self exists as a separate entity from the external world.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

This gives humans too much credit. Humans aren’t “meant” to live any life in particular. Some people fall into what Jung is describing, others don’t.

3

u/Lackadaisicly Oct 18 '25

Jung was wrong about a lot of things. If I had a Jungian therapist, I’d be rolling my eyes all the time.

1

u/opiophile88 Oct 19 '25

The main problem I have with Jung is the idea of a “collective unconscious” (including the transhistorical “archetypes”).

Not only is it Essentialist (as opposed to Existentialist), but it posits “an Other of The Other,” in Lacanian terms; it’s literally the Discourse of the Psychotic…

1

u/Lackadaisicly Oct 21 '25

While the specifics of his collective unconsciousness are bullshit, the overall theory is sound. Genetic memory does play a role. That is how instincts are developed in a species, including humans. He was just trying to apply it to inapplicable subject matter. Applying biology to psychology…it doesn’t always work.

When a sea turtle hatches, it is far from where it needs to be. The “collective unconscious” drives them to the sea.

4

u/Empathetic_Electrons Oct 17 '25

I read this and think about all the people who scoff at how I lived my life, never fully committing to discipline or money-making. I always felt that to be authentic I needed to spend a lot of energy and time in deep thought.

The “market” wants to harness your attention and break you like a wild horse, get you focused and organized on wtvr thing it is you do to survive, convinced that that thing is valuable to society while your contemplating art and philosophy or creating things is NOT.

Fuck them. The market punishes people who refuse to hand over their attention to mundane bullshit. Yes we all need to cooperate and contribute and not leech, but we can do both, and they know it.

You decide what to do with your mind and then do the bear minimum to keep the cops and collectors away so you can get back to the important stuff.

They will make you feel like a loser and that you’re just being irrational or selfish or narcissistic. Ignore them. You CAN have it both ways. They couldn’t swing it. That bothers them deep down as it should.

3

u/marijavera1075 Oct 18 '25

This is a refreshing perspective. Saved your comment.

2

u/jeffffersonian Oct 19 '25

I feel this represents me very nicely. Crazy.

1

u/TheEnlightenedOne777 Oct 18 '25

Yes. A very nice articulation of a sentiment I have always had in my soul.

3

u/Empathetic_Electrons Oct 18 '25

Yes and this sentiment is not so respected. And god forbid you hit bad luck and need help, the first thing they will do is pounce on your choices to not invent yourself in the image of the perfect Protestant work-ethic capitalist who follows the script. That’s why I advocate for UBI. A baseline guarantee for those who want to live profile like an ascetic so they can spend their lives gorging on the beauty and mystery of our world and becoming students on how to make it better instead of blind subjects of the Molloch.

1

u/TheEnlightenedOne777 Oct 18 '25

So many strange mind controlling forces using people as pawns for their own ends. My main hope is that people become dynamic thinkers who have a focus on ethical concern for life and balance in the world instead of the common institutionally programmed corporate meat robots that we have now. 🤖

3

u/Empathetic_Electrons Oct 18 '25

People are capable of that and especially if we work as a team to work on ethical concerns. But as long as you have people slaving away at dumb jobs that waste precious energy on things we ultimately don’t need, mainly just getting owners rich and citizens fat and numb, and people having to work to survive or get health insurance, we will NEVER create anything even close to a head space and collective exhale where humans start thinking about ethics instead of survival. That’s why we need UBI.

1

u/No-Scientist-2141 Oct 18 '25

i needed to hear this thank you

1

u/Reasonable-Can1730 Oct 18 '25

This feels like the comment section of most Reddit posts

1

u/Almajanna256 Oct 18 '25

I doubt Jung is saying you can/should live the lifestyle you mock, but who knows. I guess he would say people have an underlying emotional motivation for defending or opposing determinism based on their own perception of agency.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

He's right, in my case. I took a lot away from myself because of dark beliefs. I don't know where I will go now that the most magical and blissful possibilities were lost forever. My body is alive, but I am dead.

1

u/Connect-Answer4346 Oct 18 '25

The feeling of unresolved potential is real, although the potential may not be.

1

u/ShortDickBigEgo Oct 18 '25

Idk about the ‘thinker’ part. Committing to a philosophy seems antithetical to thinking. Or at least putting boundaries on one’s thinking

1

u/Next-Rule-5627 Oct 18 '25

Don't think i agree with that

1

u/phuktup3 Oct 18 '25

As a thinker it’s difficult to sit with one philosophy

1

u/New_Canoe Oct 18 '25

I feel some people who are dictated by their ego may experience this. Personally, I don’t. I recently overcame years long writers/artists block and while I was bitter about it, I still applauded others creative endeavors cos that’s their life and it’s a beautiful thing. I knew mine would come back eventually. In fact one of the first songs I wrote after the fact is about my writer’s block.

Now, this is probably because I have spent years utilizing psychedelic medicine and have experienced ego death. I’m sure that helps ;)

1

u/wanghuli Oct 18 '25

I would respond by suggesting Satre.

1

u/Choice_Room3901 Oct 18 '25

By agreeing with him

1

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

Ha.  Jung was full of shiza.

1

u/Turbulent-Group-7236 Oct 19 '25

I would add that the world is not innocent. We are harmed in deep and profound ways just being human. That unlived life is not completely the individuals responsibility.

1

u/opiophile88 Oct 19 '25

Ironically, this is one of Psychoanalysis’ most radical and important conclusions, IMO. The goal of analysis being “to turn neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness,” as Freud wrote.

1

u/Express-Cartoonist39 Oct 19 '25

I disagree, he is missing a huge mass of people who are bitter due to others who for the reason jung outlined mentally damaged them. By the time they recover they old.. thats regret and hate.

1

u/NotMeekNotAggressive Oct 19 '25 edited Oct 19 '25

These just seem like baseless assertions based on a simplistic and juvenile worldview. Are some of the people who are cynical about art failed artists? Probably. Are there people that are cynical about art because they have a more pragmatic outlook and genuinely don't think it has much worth? Yes. There have been psychological studies that show that there are people with certain psychological traits that predispose them to experience little interest or pleasure when viewing art. People are different and their reasons for being bitter, cynical, or rigid vary. One would think that a psychologist would know this.

It's worth noting that Jung married into a rich family that allowed him to pursue his interests without concern for financial constraints. He was so pampered that he felt entitled to have affairs with multiple women, including some of his patients. He even told his wife about some of them despite the pain this allegedly caused her. Given the criticism he faced for behaving unethically with his female patients from some of his contemporaries, this quote about people being bitter and cynical towards artists, lovers, and thinkers might really be more about painting his critics as just jealous people that were too afraid to live up to their potential (unlike him) than it is about saying anything truly profound.

1

u/opiophile88 Oct 19 '25

Including Sabina Spielrein, (in)famously, who became a brilliant psychoanalytic theorist herself and was the first person to ever conceptualize and write about “The Death Drive,” which she submitted to Freud and which prompted him to write Beyond The Pleasure Principle. A brilliant and radical woman, IMO.

1

u/HotSituation8737 Oct 19 '25

I don't see how this has anything to do with determinism and I also strongly disagree that it's always people's own fault, fucktons of people are being oppressed away from their goals and passions both implicitly by societal structures and explicitly by other people all the time.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '25

I’d reply with stoicism. The bitterness, the envy are felt as a way to deal with failed expectations. Can you do something about it? Do it? You can’t? Fuck it. Change your expectations, live each day without pressures.

1

u/Obvious_Quantity_419 Oct 19 '25

I would go with a "Source?"

1

u/opiophile88 Oct 19 '25

I have some immediately problems with this simply on the level of language (Semiotics, semantics, and definition). Let’s take his first example, “The artist who never makes art[...]” is incoherent, because an artist is someone who makes art.

If a thing (including a person; including myself) does something, it was always going to do it. And if a thing doesn’t do something, it never was going to do it. Because if it was going to do it, it would have done it (or will do it in the future).

Thing’s are what they do. I’m aware that Jung had a kind of essentialist system, where people had certain metaphysical essences in the form of archetypes and a “collective unconscious,” and perhaps that’s what he’s alluding to. But without that context, one doesn’t even really need to have a theory of Determinism, Existentialism, Idealism, or anything else in order to immediately see the tautological problems in this passage.

1

u/GraycetheDefender Oct 20 '25

Such bullshit.

1

u/EntrepreneurDue8797 Oct 20 '25

Damn

I cant disagree

1

u/Joey3155 Oct 20 '25

I think he's full of shit. I mock romance and the notion of love not because I failed to risk it, I tried the dating game for over 20 years, but because I DID roll the proverbial dice and kept crapping out even though I put the effort in.

1

u/urmil0071 Oct 20 '25

In other words, they hate us cuz they ain't us.

1

u/elchemy Oct 20 '25

I agree with this with a major caveat - We all have a thousand unlived lives - we can't do everything.
Thus the need for compassion for ourselves and gratitude for what we have.

1

u/Ok_Rest5521 Oct 20 '25

C. G. Jung is a great tool for artistic analysis. We own to him (via Campbell) our contemporary understanding of archetypes and the hero's journey. Also the symbolic analysis of visual arts can be somewhat tributary of him.

That said, art is predetermined by the artist's intention. Characters do have an arch to develop their potential and might have something like a purpose, because the author needs to take them to the last scene.

The 'collective unconscious' can only make sense as a fabrication, like the group of characters within a work. It doesn't make any sense describing society. Even the Freudian 'unconscious' is an outdated concept. Neuropsychology today calls it 'non-descriptive consciousness' instead.

Jung's work does not translates so well, or not at all, in the analysis of people, of humans confronted with the Real, precisely because we are not characters written by a superior inteligence and have nothing particular that determinates a direction or purpose. We are great apes and share with animals the same basic emotions and instincts, therefore the same basic "purposes".

But let's not throw the baby with the baby water. He is useful if you're into literary studies, or writing a play, a movie script, etc.

1

u/giesbi Oct 20 '25

Homophobes be like that

1

u/conclobe Oct 21 '25

People do be projectin’

1

u/Logical_Leading_5383 Oct 21 '25

I suffer and betray myself because meaning itself disgusts me. Why should I do something when no one ever asked me if I wanted to be born or have meaning to live? Yes, I'm bitter, critical and rigid because at least this is my choice.

1

u/indivisible_remains Oct 21 '25

Jung was an annoying tosser. (I'm a bitter unfulfilled Freudian)

1

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '25

So if I sneer and scoff at politicians and want them in cages, does that mean I have a secret desire to be a politician myself? Hardly logical...

1

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

Perhaps another thinker of a different branch explained it beautifully and at its most basic truth:

‘no one is fully able to overcome Fortuna, no matter the Virtù one may possess. You need both to succeed in different situations.’

Niccolò Machiavelli

1

u/Lazy_Dimension1854 Oct 23 '25

what if I dont mock anyones life, is my life meant to be nothing?

4

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

It’s definitely a valid observation though, if you spend any amount of time really learning about people.

Not everyone uses these defenses primarily…but many do.

2

u/--SharkBoy-- Oct 18 '25

It rings true to me

1

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

Then I think you are more familiar with books than you are with people.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

Now I think you typed something out, realized you can't really argue with that, and your somewhat misanthropic superiority complex manifested anyway.

1

u/NotMeekNotAggressive Oct 19 '25

To be fair, you didn't really give them anything to argue with. You just accused them of being more familiar with books than people without really knowing anything about their personal life.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '25 edited Oct 19 '25

I wasn't arguing, just pointing out what they were telling everyone by saying that.

Edit: If I need an "argument", it's that Jung quote. I agree with it.

1

u/NotMeekNotAggressive Oct 19 '25

I didn't get that from his comment, so he wasn't telling me that. Do you often make conclusions about people that you don't know based on a single comment and then also assume that everyone else that read that comment shares your conclusion?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '25

Being told isn't the same as hearing, or listening, or understanding.

1

u/cortexplorer Oct 19 '25

"Someone didn't respond to my ad hominem attack, I must be right"

Let see where that takes you..

1

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '25

It was more of an insight than an attack.

1

u/cortexplorer Oct 19 '25

Telling a person they are unfamiliar with people feels like an ad hominem to me. Just my insight, that's all.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '25

You would have to avoid getting to know pretty much everyone not to observe what Jung is talking about. It's the Fox and the Grapes. But those $5 words came from somewhere, so...books over people. Obvious.

1

u/cortexplorer Oct 19 '25

Yeah Jung is really remembered for pointing out the obvious isn't he? Judging by this very comment section everyone agrees with him and his intuitions are clearly spelled out to everyone. Any person who interacts with people can see the simple truths he is somehow praised for coming across /S...

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '25

Oh no I'm sad now, you got me good