“I am utterly restless, quickly hurrying life. I am never contented, never unperturbed. I pull everything down and hastily rebuild; I am ambition, greed for fame, lust for action; I am the fizz of new thoughts and action.” (Satan describing himself in Carl Jung’s Black Books)

The quote above is one of the most beautiful descriptions of the image (or concept) of Satan, as described by Jung in his private Black Books, writings that were published by his family long time after his physical death (at Jung’s request). The context of the quote is a discussion taking place inside Jung’s mind, between himself and this satanic concept, also referred throughout his writings as “the Spirit of Our Times” or, better say, what we believe we are (and how we act) in our historic time. The Spirit of Our Times is later contrasted with the Spirit of the Depths, a serene, ancient and wise aspect of the human mind. In our nowadays language, the Spirit of Our Times would likely be identified as being our Ego, and the Spirit of the Depths as being our Self. As we age and become more experienced (and understand a bit more about us and our life, following a process called individuation), our Ego tends to increasingly identify with our Self, as we become (or discover) who we truly are (or who we might have been if our personal history was less traumatic).

Vanity, the desire to show off, the ambition, the excessive advertising of a great social image, the pleasure resulting from the envy of others – all these – are aspects of our Ego. Some people are entirely lived by their Ego – they are one of their Ego – but sometimes this “satanic” tendency becomes a “national sport”, a trend to be followed. In the following paragraphs I will describe what happens in the town I live, using a different narrative style. It is called “être factuel” (to be factual). This means to describe what you see but to refrain from judging. Being factual is a great ability in life, either in various negotiations that risk to become clashes, or in the professional psychotherapeutic setting where the client does not need our judgmental interpretation of his thoughts or actions (as he/she has done the best he/she could and being critical immediately jeopardizes the shared emotional connection).

There are many expensive cars in my little Romanian town. On the streets full of potholes you can see long rows of cars blocking the traffic, even at 10 or 11 o’clock when most of the people in other countries are at work and the streets are generally empty. It is fairly frequent to encounter many Tesla cars and an unusual number of Mercedes and BMW cars, some of them new. There are also some occasional Maserati cars as well, and I heard that they are very expensive. All of them have Romanian number plates registered in our county, so they likely belong to people residing in the area.

We also know that in schools there is an ongoing contest between pupils: whose parent has the most expensive car? It is very humiliating to bring your kid to school in a dull car and the other children will automatically exclude him or her from their social circle if you do not have a “sufficiently expensive car”, at least a new Volkswagen for instance. Therefore, many parents must take loans from the banks so as to buy a posh car, so that their kids could be accepted at school by their colleagues (and have a social life with their fellow peers) and not be bullied for being poor (or sub-standard). Most average parents work insane hours at their workplace and live crowded with their families in 1 or 2-room apartments, while looking through the window at their expensive car parked nearby, and not knowing if they can afford the petrol or the gasoline to fuel that car for the coming month.

And then, there are also many good-looking cars from abroad, with French, German or Austrian number plates. We know that they belong to Romanians working abroad, who returned home during their vacation. But we also know that those cars are rented for a couple of days only, so that their owners pose that they own those expensive cars. Upon their return back to Austria or Germany, they give those nice cars back to the local car rental companies, and resume their hard work in constructions, hotels or elderly home care, using the public transportation system or their old, 20-something years old car they took with them from Romania.