Introduction:
The concept of “Unus Mundus” is one of the most important psychological, political, philosophical and cultural imperatives in the current transitional stage that humanity is facing. More and more people are beginning to understand, feel responsible and have the need to move from a passive position and react to different issues associated with the current existential crisis. Global climate demonstrations are an example. The current crisis is characterized by a profound individualist and denialist attitude towards the problems facing humanity. We increasingly see separation, tension, projection and rejection.
In recent centuries, the hyper-exploitation of the planet is leading to the collapse of several biomes and among those that have suffered in this context we have the Amazon, its rivers, forests and people. We will use as an example to describe this aspect of reality the effect of the construction of the Hydroelectric Power Plants on the Madeira River, completed in 2011, in the city of Porto Velho in the Brazilian Amazon. This is the riverside community of Vila do Teotônio, which was located on the banks of the Madeira River, next to a powerful rapid called Cachoeira do Teotônio. The village had its beginnings as a settlement in 1759, establishing various forms of occupation by different populations and after 1945, it stood out as one of the occupations of the Amazon riverside resulting from the collapse of the second cycle of exploitation of Amazonian latex, when a large contingent of workers who had settled in the region from the Madeira River basin to work on rubber extraction. It is important to highlight that many of these workers were in conditions similar to slave labor. With the end of the exploitation of Amazonian rubber by the international market, these workers remained in the region and continued their history there autonomously and were finding a way to exist using the forest's resources without destroying it. These people also occupied Vila de Teotônio, making the place their home. There they established families, neighborhoods, affections, a collective and identity relationship linked to the forest and the river, where artisanal fishing was their main form of livelihood.
The construction of the Santo Antônio Hydroelectric Plant led to the flooding of Vila de Teotônio, flooding with it all the stories, ways of existing and affections that were created in that place, violating thousands of riverside dwellers, forcing them to seek new ways of existing and living, including expelling them from the forest. . The process that occurs with the riverside population is not isolated, it is connected to a global chain, a psychological dynamic that led to the violence suffered by the various traditional peoples of the Amazon.
Jung saw nature and the environment that surrounds each of us as a living matrix of potentially synchronous meaning, capable of illuminating the human sphere. The current crisis is the pathological shadow of "Unus Mundus". É oparadoxo que nos confronta com a nossa desconexão, desconsideração e faltade compreensão sobre a interconectividade de toda a vida.
What prevents us from looking at the planet as a living entity resulting from individual and collective processes? What is the dynamic of this collective shadow that is currently conditioning the collective psyche towards the destruction of the planet?
When we think about the collective shadow and destruction, we cannot help but remember an important, traumatic and striking historical example: that of German Nazism at the beginning of the 20th century. This experience shows how it was possible, in an extremely critical economic and social context, for the effect of the defeat in the first world war and the consequent feeling of humiliation of the German people to awaken the archetype of Wotan, like a dormant volcano (Jung, 2001, par. 373). In paragraph 386 of Civilization in Transition, Jung (2001) says that Wotan expressed himself in the context of Nazism in Germany through a possession mechanism. There was a phenomenon of disconnection, dissociation, regression, possession and renunciation of any individual initiative and subjection to a great father. A surrender to a single and absolute leader. A complete loss of intimacy and individuality. The people were unconsciously possessed and led to acts of destruction.
Nancy Fraser (2022) comments that Uroburo, an alchemical symbol of power that consumes and regenerates, may well represent contemporary capitalism. Fraser elaborates the hypothesis that the current version of contemporary capitalism has the capacity to grow out of any proportion through the autophagic practice of the very elements that serve its survival. It acts as a predator in the face of nature's riches, above all, without foreseeing its reintegration and carries out a work of exploitation and expropriation to the detriment of economically disadvantaged people. Despite this continuous destructive activity, capitalism manages to progress and regenerate itself, defying all logic.
For Fraser, capitalism is the system to which we owe the current global crisis. What we face is not just a crisis of rampant inequality and low-paid precarious work. It is not simply an ecological crisis in which a warming planet produces lethal pests, nor just a political crisis. It's something worse. It is a general crisis of the entire social order in which all these calamities converge, mutually exacerbating each other and threatening to swallow us whole. We are possessed again, as Jung exemplifies, by the archetype of destruction as in the Nazi period, but in another time, dimension and context. We are under the effect of a massive marketing campaign, directed by large corporations, which make and unmake governments, an expression of predatory capitalism, which takes us away from the real world of which we are part and leads us towards the abyss.
When we look at the functioning of large corporations, which represent the heart of the capitalist system, we clearly see how employees and customers, directly and indirectly, completely lose their identity and the ability to evaluate and decide. The individuals who constellate large corporations end up possessed by the leaders' narrative. The objectives of individuals who serve the system become functional at the same time, in a clear process of submission and loss of identity, authenticity and initiative. We also find in the structure and functioning of large corporations, rituals in which the narrative used is transmitted, generating a new version of possession that devours, like Saturn with his own children. Individuals end up disconnecting themselves from the collective expression of the capitalist system, losing their own identity and experiencing a regressive process that leads to a narcissistic state and unconditional surrender to the leaders who articulate and guide large corporations.
The increase in clinical pathologies of individuals directly or indirectly related to large corporations is significant. But mainly there is a spiritual emptiness, a lack of meaning and perspective.
Regarding the crisis of contemporary society, Barcelos (2019) comments that what is happening is not simple human occupation that leads to the ecological tragedy we are facing, but rather the dominance of capitalism as a form of production that advances in terrestrial ecological systems, devastating them. . Because of this, we are facing a moment in the world that we can call the Capitalocene. The changes caused by the cannibalistic diet of capitalism are tremendous to the point that we can see their dimension in the geological period of the planet.
If we consider capitalism as the mechanism that leads us towards chaos and destruction and represents today the archetype of disorder; where do the seeds that can bring order to fruition reside? And what could be the foundations of a new order? What would be the dynamics of reorganization, necessary and urgent? And what could favor the connection with nature and the cosmos? Uroburo symbolizes the end, but also the beginning. Is resistance to the neoliberal capitalist system an experience of individuation in the current contemporary social and economic context? This would be the way to stop Saturn's cannibalism and release the Olympic deities and create a new collective order.
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