Via Negativa
Ironically, for a show that emblazons ‘The Truth is Out There’ across the screen at the beginning of each episode, Mulder and Scully – and, now, John Doggett, - only come close to the truth when they look inside themselves.
Of course, as I’ve maintained throughout this blog, all that the agents experience is a projection of the truths that lie deep within. It is necessary for this projection to occur that these truths be confronted and dealt with. For those of us, for whatever reason, who are unable to project our own stories, fiction serves as a substitute, allowing us to read ourselves into the stories told by others. Imagine that – TV performing that same task as Homer’s epics and Shakespeare’s tragedies!
Freud and Jung revealed for us the true power of the unconscious and even showed us how we might utilise TV in their work with dreams. Dreams are a much more personal story, the very ones we may not, outside therapy, want to tell – or face. But, as Jung showed, the archetypes are universal, ideas common to all people at all times, irrespective of time and place. Any story which taps into the zeitgeist – whether novel, song or TV series – must, on some level and to varying degrees, embody these archetypes.
‘Via Negativa’ confronts us with the modern thought that God is nothing but ourselves. As either the last episode of the old millennium or the last episode of the first year of the new one – depending on how you view this matter – ‘Via Negativa’ yet again shows how the X Files prefigures what is to come. Without doubt, there had been atheists before the 21st Century, they just had never held the public space to the same extent as the triumvirate of Dawkins, Dennett and Harris. And, just as Jung’s analytical psychology would lead us to expect (cf. Edward F. Edinger, Ego and Archetype’), as these three inflated their unbelief a natural reaction set in. The tradition of religion might be over, but that just left open the possibility of finding our own, more individual, expressions of the divine.
But ‘Via Negativa’ acts as a warning!
Though a subscriber to a more traditional form of religion, it is not my place to say that a person’s search for the divine is misguided. I have a healthy respect for many forms of more esoteric forms of belief, especially the Tarot. Nevertheless, one advantage of a more organized form of belief is the safety net it provides for the fall that will always come after we reach too far beyond ourselves. It is the very idea upon which Christianity is founded.
But what would we human beings be without our arrogance?
Is it not our desire to know God, to understand His workings so that we may replicate them that makes us who we are?
It is just unfortunate that who we are includes those who would, for whatever twisted reason – and there’s always a reason – pervert the word of God to their own ends. Even more unfortunate is the fact that our numbers include those who would listen to the Tipet’s of this world. Any crazy messiah is acceptable to those who lack the depth of their own stories.
Of course, as I’ve maintained throughout this blog, all that the agents experience is a projection of the truths that lie deep within. It is necessary for this projection to occur that these truths be confronted and dealt with. For those of us, for whatever reason, who are unable to project our own stories, fiction serves as a substitute, allowing us to read ourselves into the stories told by others. Imagine that – TV performing that same task as Homer’s epics and Shakespeare’s tragedies!
Freud and Jung revealed for us the true power of the unconscious and even showed us how we might utilise TV in their work with dreams. Dreams are a much more personal story, the very ones we may not, outside therapy, want to tell – or face. But, as Jung showed, the archetypes are universal, ideas common to all people at all times, irrespective of time and place. Any story which taps into the zeitgeist – whether novel, song or TV series – must, on some level and to varying degrees, embody these archetypes.
‘Via Negativa’ confronts us with the modern thought that God is nothing but ourselves. As either the last episode of the old millennium or the last episode of the first year of the new one – depending on how you view this matter – ‘Via Negativa’ yet again shows how the X Files prefigures what is to come. Without doubt, there had been atheists before the 21st Century, they just had never held the public space to the same extent as the triumvirate of Dawkins, Dennett and Harris. And, just as Jung’s analytical psychology would lead us to expect (cf. Edward F. Edinger, Ego and Archetype’), as these three inflated their unbelief a natural reaction set in. The tradition of religion might be over, but that just left open the possibility of finding our own, more individual, expressions of the divine.
But ‘Via Negativa’ acts as a warning!
Though a subscriber to a more traditional form of religion, it is not my place to say that a person’s search for the divine is misguided. I have a healthy respect for many forms of more esoteric forms of belief, especially the Tarot. Nevertheless, one advantage of a more organized form of belief is the safety net it provides for the fall that will always come after we reach too far beyond ourselves. It is the very idea upon which Christianity is founded.
But what would we human beings be without our arrogance?
Is it not our desire to know God, to understand His workings so that we may replicate them that makes us who we are?
It is just unfortunate that who we are includes those who would, for whatever twisted reason – and there’s always a reason – pervert the word of God to their own ends. Even more unfortunate is the fact that our numbers include those who would listen to the Tipet’s of this world. Any crazy messiah is acceptable to those who lack the depth of their own stories.
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