Purpose as Service to a Self-Led Future
This Jungian Life Podcast
Purpose, Necessity, and Privilege
Hosts consider how necessity galvanizes purpose and how ease can lead to purposelessness or nihilism.
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Modernity promotes endless techniques to optimize goal-setting and productivity. Yet most of us race from one task to the next, telling our friends how busy we are, secretly knowing we lack direction. This conversation defines Self-led purpose as an orientation to a future beyond our ego needs. This can align our tasks with Individuation even as we face seductive collective agendas. When we look outside for purpose institutions and communities are all too ready to supply meaning, but at what cost to our inner life.
You might ask yourself:
What distinguishes a vocation aligned with Psyche from a purpose imposed by status, ideology, or fear?
Why does the loss of futurity feel like nihilism, and when does purpose become a path to fanaticism?
What does Individuation require when collective belonging offers meaning at the price of autonomy?
You’ll learn:
- How repetitive commitments can still carry meaning.
- Why purpose as futurity is a defense against nihilism.
- When initiation and suffering act as engines of aliveness.
- The difference between Eros-driven devotion and power-driven crusades.
- Jung’s warning about mass movements and false gods.
Mentioned:
Divine Madness
The Deptford Trilogy
The Undiscovered Self
The Red Book
The Three Feathers
Forrest Gump
The Ceremony of the Weighing of the Heart
Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors
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