Is Our Collective Unconscious Seeking the Annihilation of Millions of People?
The next great human annihilation could be inevitable, with a terrible truth behind it.
Carl Jung prophesied the rivers of blood of World War II, but more than that, his psychology is one of the best ways to try to understand our nature of war and self-destruction.
Jung exposed a harsh truth:
There is something deeper that generates wars, which makes activism less than useless in preventing another massive annihilation of humans.
It was precisely on the shores of Lake Zurich and during the Seminar on Zarathustra in 1934 and 1939 that Jung predicted the bloodbath that would come in the following years.
Some of his words were:
"Our current collective unconscious seeks the destruction of millions. Why do they pile up ammunition and cannons? Surely not to play chess with them. Why do they invent poisonous gases? To kill, without a doubt. Why the hell does no one stop it? We could only explain this by appealing to the existence of a higher will that compels all minds (...)."
What happened next we already know. But the worst part is that we are still here, in a time of brutal wars and massacres—perhaps at a historical moment when armed conflicts are more rejected than ever. Yet, we have no immunity to another “annihilation.”
So,
What is this higher will behind wars, and what can we do about it?
The “higher will” Jung speaks of is a force that transcends individual will and drives humanity toward war and destruction. It is not just an instinct but something even darker:
In this case, the idea of “higher will” relates to enantiodromia, a Jungian principle that describes how any force that reaches its extreme inevitably transforms into its opposite.
If a civilization grows too much in one direction (for example, accumulating power, technology, and control), the very balance of the collective psyche demands a correction, which in this case would manifest as war and chaos.
Yes, it may be a terrible idea, but its danger comes from ignoring the fact that it is not political or economic decisions that produce bloodbaths, but deep psychic forces within all of humanity that make them inevitable.
Ignoring that something vast and dangerous is behind it is a greater danger than the thing itself.
“Why the hell does no one stop them?”
Since we are part of the rest of humanity that does nothing, both you and I are prey to that ‘higher will’ that has led humanity to annihilation countless times. It is not something external to our humanity but something that arises from within our own collective psyche.
We are responsible, even if we do not carry a weapon or vote for ultranationalist politicians. The truth is unsettling:
We do not stop them because we do not want to stop them, even if we are unaware of it. Because if we truly want something and do not pursue it, then we should question the meaning of the word “want.”
Do we truly want world peace?
Jung would say that we do not stop them because we are unconscious of our own darkness. We identify with the “good” and project evil onto others (enemies, opposing ideologies, rival countries), which reinforces the cycle of violence.
In this context, the only real way to “stop them” would be for each of us to develop greater awareness of our own psyche, integrating our Shadow instead of projecting it onto the enemy of the moment. This is the hardest thing to do because, speaking generally, we lack the proper spiritual foundations.
So in this work, there are no shortcuts, and inevitably, we must start with ourselves.
Remember: I’ve committed myself to deeply studying all of Jung’s work and also to freely sharing what I learn, so my content will always be free. But if you’d like to support my project, I’d gladly accept a coffee:
indeed. so much of our conflicts are projections of our own dark shadow onto “The Other”.
so many of my friends who identify themselves as “empathetic and compassionate” are cheerleading the destruction in Ukraine and Russia and support all efforts to escalate a World War with a nuclear power. in fact, the more a person paints themselves publicly as being kind and empathic, the more monstrous their hatred seems to be.
I’ve been saying this for a while. The answer for the collective is shadow work & self-healing on the individual level. The best thing we can do is find ways to support each other in those efforts, to make it communally supported, rather than barely accepted.