Seeing Similarities

There have been intellectual endeavours undertaken in contrast to the propaganda of differences. Carl Jung [1875 -1961], the Swiss psychiatrist, identified the archetypal patterns and images in every culture and in every time of human history. Their behaviour was similar in the context of the same laws in all cases. He postulated the concept of Universal Unconscious to account for this hypothesis. He interprets this as the fact that humans do not possess separate, personal unconscious minds, but share a single Universal Unconscious. He terms it as Collective Consciousness.

Another theoretician who had worked with the concept of the universal Unconscious is Northrop Frye. In his essay The Archetypes Of Literature, Frye expresses his objection to the biographical approach of criticism precisely because of the fact that “so many poets use so many of the same images”. Fry directs this thought toward Jung’s concepts that the literary work does not derive its significance solely from the personal life of the poet. The “archetypal symbol,” he asserts, can be identified as resonating in the work of more than one poet. Indeed, he points out, any “profound masterpiece seems to draw us to a point at which we can see an enormous number of converging patterns of significance” in a single work. In short, no literary work is explicable with reference solely to the author’s personal life.

Literary writers create not independent entities or islands of creative endeavour, but rather, regurgitate in complex ways in their individual works those simple pre-literary mythical narratives that are central to the cultural heritage of humanity. The human actions depicted therein are ultimately grounded in those personifications which humans have come to attach to natural events and phenomena in an effort to ‘culture’ an inherently intransigent and unintelligible natural world. Thus, a common thread can be identified with the human interactions in the cultural and social contexts. He also suggests however, that it is not for the most part a question of the writer consciously deciding to write a particular narrative corresponding to a specific genre. The choice of narrative form originates in the collective unconscious of humankind: when one wants to treat a particular aspect of human existence, particular forms suggest themselves automatically.

Although the specifics and the particularities may differ from culture to culture, any given story is ultimately reducible to its archetypal core, which is, from Frye’s viewpoint, the true location and signification of the work in question. All humans everywhere, from his point of view, have had to be contend with the same natural facts which they have attempted to render intelligible and to overcome in remarkably similar ways as part of their socio-cultural interactions.

This supplies a scientific and logical cause for the argument of acknowledging and asserting similarities in human social life, rather than asserting differences. The identification of similarity and assertion of it can influence the human psyche and the concept of annihilation of the unlike can be successfully suppressed. This, in turn, will reduce wars and conflicts resulting in the steady focus of the political systems on the matter of economic growth. Thus, the concept of similarities can be perceived as a crucial element that can delimit and hinder socio-political phenomena like wars in the human society.