Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology. was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.
Jung was a pioneer in his field who established analytical psychology as a discipline. As a young man, he was seen as Freud’s intellectual heir, but their differences in approach soon became apparent and they went their separate ways
This page will contain regular updates about A Mundane Comedy, Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in 2025. Please see below an introductory extract.
---
To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they control it, wish to influence its direction - Theodore Zeldin, Intimate History of Humanity
This book is about what goes wrong in our lives, and about how we can try to make things better, even if temporarily and contingently. It’s not about imaginary progress, which John Gray in Straw Dogs punctured definitively.
I guess I've been aware of Walt Whitman as an American national icon since I was at university, and have long admired what I may be his most famous poem, I Sing the Body Electric.
It's probably been said many times before, and much more profoundly, and studied and dissected, but the poet's words do indeed seem to crackle with electricity, with vitality, with what Robert Pirsig called in Lila, "dynamic quality". This is a celebration of connecting, of being alive.
"Examine these limbs, red, black, or white—they are so cunning in tendon and nerve;
This is an evolving manifesto, more modest than great charters calling for widespread political change, or updated commandments for our time, or even simple poems for our time.
Instead, our small charter will be primarily a call for inner change, leading to outer change. We want to help people think more about how they can nurture key values.
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs - George Eliot, Middlemarch
Unexpected celebrities have in recent times included the likes of Captain Sully Sullenberger and Susan Boyle, whose years of patiently working on their own talents suddenly came good, shooting them instantly to international attention, and who then accepted the spotlight, perhaps reluctantly, but with quiet dignity nonetheless.
If the past is replayed too fast, life seems futile, and humanity resembles water flowing from a tap, straight down the drain. A film of history for today needs to be in slow motion, showing every person who ever lived as a star, though dimly visible in a night sky, a history still unexplored - Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity
A call to action. Time to explore these unexplored histories together.
This evolving paper starts to imagine and sketch out Personal Development Goals (PDGs) that could complement the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
We will also draw ideas and inspirations from the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) not for profit and open source initiative. (See also Can the Inner Development Goals help us create a more sustainable future? and Start working on your Inner Development Goals now.)
Introduction
I was first attracted by Camus, "prince of the absurd" when I was 16. Camus still fascinates me, now well beyond what would have been his 100th birthday, and more than 60 years after his premature death in a car crash in Burgundy (it's said that he was found with an unused train ticket in his pocket - he'd planned to go by rail to Paris to rejoin his wife and children, but had accepted at the last minute the offer of a lift from his publisher).
This is a work in progress. Please contact us to discuss further.
See also:
On an alternative world view
The sheer novelty of the ideas of such leaders not only addresses the issues at hand and but gives the world a new perspective to address issues of the future. The outmoded ways of leadership, of securing selfish interests and of exploiting public sentiments, should be relinquished. The new age leaders must look forward to lead the global thought rather than leading only a particular country or a section of society - Club of Amsterdam
This is for you and about you.
I have always been attracted by the veil, by seeing through a glass, darkly:
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between the two waves of the sea
- from Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now
"Sauin" is the name in Manx Gaelic of the festival marking the start of the year's dark half, celebrated from dusk on 31 October to dusk on 1 November. In Gaelic & Irish, "Samhain" is a liminal time, marked by fire, and the crossing of thresholds.
A beautiful seasonal quote from the inspiring Damh the Bard.
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone - Herman Hesse
As a member of The Woodland Trust, I regularly signed petitions to preserve ancient woodlands and unique trees. Does this make a difference? The battle is an ongoing one, but worth fighting, if necessary tree by tree.
Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" is an epic poem written in the early 14th century, divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
Inferno:
Purgatorio:
Please see below significant recent changes across the more than 150 elements of life that we monitor actively and please contact us for help in dealing with change.
Michel de Montaigne's Essais help us better frame and address the fundamental question: "how to live?"
"I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself", said Montaigne, describing his own poor memory, his ability to solve problems and mediate conflicts without truly getting emotionally involved, his disgust for man's pursuit of lasting fame, and his attempts to detach himself from worldly things to prepare for death.
Please see below "talking change" pages, containing a wide range of quotes - some famous, many unavailable anywhere else - covering each of the 150+ elements of life that Halcyon writes about.
This is a work-in-progress and many more talking change pages will be added in late 2024.
See also:
Now online, Paul Hillier et al's Proensa interpretations of the troubadours have long enchanted me - although perhaps not some of the dinner party guests on whom I inflicted the vinyl version at various times during my more earnest past.
Is it really as long ago as the mid 1980s that I specialised in Medieval Provençal and wrote my dissertation on the amour de loinh of Peire Vidal?
Rupert Gordon and I were the only students at Edinburgh to choose the option in many a year (perhaps since the 1950s, judging by the stamps in some of the books I borrowed!), and having been back in the George Square library many times since when two of my daughters were studying at Edinburgh, I've wondered whether anyone else has borrowed (m)any of these books since?
Four decades ago I left Aubagne, without any photos - which I sometimes regret, but I was young and stubborn and romantic and weird - but with images imprinted on my mind, and maybe my heart, forever.
Indeed, over the intervening years, these images have grown much stronger in relative terms, and moved closer and closer to the front and centre of the painting of my life, even as other, once seemingly permanent formative experiences have gradually faded....probably the reminiscence bump in action.
See also:
At least until the transhumanist dream becomes a reality, which according to one leading modern philosopher may be never, we will cling on to whatever we can that reminds us of our loved ones.
I share below (without comment...which is a personal act that belongs in the real, not the virtual world), an evolving, far from exhaustive, but from an emotional point-of-view, highly illustrative and authentic selection of my favourite poetry and lyrics...
-------------------------
And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal
- from Tom Traubert's Blues, by Tom Waits
------------------------
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift
- The Uses of Sorrow, by Mary Oliver