It seems that one can identify numerous examples where artists, through their creations, seemed to predict future events. Almost as though these people are equipped with advanced knowledge of what is to come. What is it that allows them to see what so many others cannot?
Artists, to be good artists, must posses a very finely tuned sense of the present since they draw their inspirations from what is around them. Because of this they are able to more easily make cause and effect connections between unrelated happenings in the world. They are more likley to notice what events and traits in people are going to not work out so well.
If we look at music and literature we see these examples. Mary Shelley wrote of Frankenstein, the scientist who in his quest for knowledge creates an monster that threatens the world. About a century later scientists in the United States would create the atomic bomb.
The middle symphonies of Gustav Mahler seem to predict two events. The tragic nature of his sixth seems to allude to three disasters in his own life: his firing from the Vienna Opera due to his Jewish ethnicty, the death of his eldest daughter, and finally his own death to heart disease. On a broader scale these symphonies foreshadow the violence of the coming 21st century.
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In 1933 Carl Jung wrote in his book, Man in Search of His Soul:
ReplyDelete"The creative process has feminine quality, and the creative work arises from unconscious depths--we might say, from the realm of the mothers. Whenever the creative force predominates, human life is ruled and molded by the unconscious as against the active will, and the conscious ego is swept along on a subterranean current, being nothing more than a helpless observer of events. The work in process becomes the poet's fate and determines his psychic development. It is not Goethe who creates Faust, but Faust which creates Goethe....The archetypal image of the wise man, the saviour or redeemer, lies buried and dormant in man's unconscious since the dawn of culture; it is awakened whenever the times are out of joint and a human society is committed to a serious error. When people go astray they feel the need of a guide or teacher or even of the physician. These primordial images are numerous, but do not appear in the dreams of individuals or in works of art until they are called into being by the waywardness of the general outlook. When conscious life is characterized by one-sidedness and by a false attitude, then they are activated--one might say, 'instinctively'--and come to light in the dreams of individuals and the visions of artists and seers, thus restoring the psychic equilibrium of the epoch."
Perhaps we are in such a moment now. Jung thought that there were certain times when the society needed to be 'woken up' from darkness- surely he would be referring to the future (for him) WW2- the Holocoust. Personally, I feel we are living in a waking moment. I have so much faith in the present attitude of most people. I also have faith in our president, something quite unique for me. I have seen a positive change in the students I work with everyday. I believe in a collective dream and I believe our dreams dominate and guide our actions.