False Speech & Shadow Projection

From a Buddhist–Jungian perspective, the crisis described in The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, and in the works of other observers, is not merely political or economic; it is fundamentally psychological and spiritual. At its core lies the degeneration of right speech and the collective descent into illusion. In Buddhism, lying is not simply immoral—it is ontologically corrosive. False speech fabricates a substitute reality that entangles both speaker and listener in delusion (avijjā), blocking insight into things as they are. Carl Jung diagnosed a parallel danger: when consciousness loses contact with truth, the repressed contents of the psyche accumulate in the Shadow and return in distorted, destructive forms. When these two frameworks are combined, the phenomenon of mass political lying emerges as a civilizational pathology.

Buddhism treats lying as a “great unwholesome action” precisely because it attacks the epistemic foundations of awakening. The Buddha’s metaphor of lies as “dung” and truth as “flowers” is not moralistic but diagnostic: false speech pollutes the perceptual field. Jung would agree. For him, truth is not merely factual accuracy but psychic integration. Persistent lying—especially shameless, repetitive lying—fractures the psyche, forcing individuals and societies to invest increasing energy in maintaining a fabricated world. This is what Jung called enantiodromia: the more forcefully reality is denied, the more violently it returns.

Donald Trump’s unprecedented relationship to falsehood illustrates this dynamic at scale. Whether described as lying or Frankfurtian “bullshit,” the key feature is indifference to truth as such. From a Buddhist perspective, this represents the collapse of hiri and ottappa—the moral emotions of shame and conscience that restrain destructive action. Jung would identify the same phenomenon as ego inflation: the ego, no longer corrected by reality, identifies itself with power and will. Such a figure becomes a vessel for collective projection.

Here Spengler’s “Caesarism” converges with Jung’s mass psychology. As democratic forms hollow out under plutocratic pressure—Spengler’s “reign of money”—the populace becomes psychologically regressive. Buddhism describes this as a turn toward moha (delusion); Jung called it participation mystique. Individuals, overwhelmed by complexity and loss of meaning, surrender responsibility to a strongman who promises certainty. The leader’s lies are not a defect but a feature: they function as mythic speech, unconstrained by facts, capable of organizing group identity through repetition and emotional charge.

Repetition is crucial. The illusory truth effect mirrors what Buddhism warns against as papañca, conceptual proliferation. Repeated falsehoods thicken mental formations until they feel self-evident. Jung noted that when rational discourse collapses, archaic images dominate. The mob boss or mafioso archetype associated with Trump is not incidental; it resonates with the primitive image of the tribal chieftain who protects “his people” while sanctioning violence against outsiders. This archetype bypasses ethical reflection and activates herd instincts.

Spengler’s “monied thugs” are thus not merely economic actors but psychological operators. They feed hatred to the masses because hatred is adhesive: it binds fragmented selves into a pseudo-community. Buddhism would say this is craving (taṇhā) redirected into anger (dosa). Jung would say that hatred is the Shadow made visible. What a society cannot admit about itself—greed, cruelty, fear—it projects onto enemies. Lies enable this projection by dissolving the boundary between inner fantasy and outer fact.

The likely outcome, in terms of U.S. mass psychology, is therefore not sudden collapse but progressive normalization of unreality. As Spengler predicted, the population drifts toward the “Fellah” state: politically apathetic yet emotionally volatile, cynical about truth yet intensely loyal to symbols. Herd mentality deepens as institutions lose credibility and individuals seek belonging through identity and resentment rather than shared reality. Buddhism would describe this as collective karmic momentum: once false speech becomes habitual, it conditions further delusion. Jung would call it psychic inflation followed by exhaustion.

Forecasting forward, the United States is likely to experience intensified polarization, further erosion of shared truth, and periodic eruptions of authoritarian enthusiasm alternating with burnout and cynicism. Caesarist figures will come and go, but the deeper pattern—rule by money, mythic leadership, and mass delusion—will persist. The final danger is not tyranny alone, but the quiet acceptance of lying as normal. In Buddhist terms, this is the triumph of ignorance; in Jungian terms, the possession of consciousness by the Shadow. When a civilization reaches this stage, it does not fall dramatically—it sleeps, convinced it is awake.

As advanced automation and artificial intelligence eliminate entire categories of human labor, a new social order is likely to emerge that resembles feudalism more than industrial capitalism. Economic power concentrates into the hands of those who own platforms, data, algorithms, and infrastructure, while vast segments of the population are pushed out of meaningful employment altogether. Work is no longer the basis of citizenship or dignity; it becomes a privilege granted to a shrinking technical and managerial elite. For the rest, precarity becomes permanent.

In this system, social control replaces social mobility as the central political concern. States increasingly outsource coercive functions to private actors: corporate security forces, data brokers, and militarized contractors. Border enforcement agencies, predictive policing systems, autonomous drones, and robotic “security” units are deployed not primarily against external enemies but to manage internal surplus populations—the unemployed, the unhoused, and the politically disruptive. Governance shifts from law and deliberation to risk management, threat modeling, and behavioral nudging.

Traditional welfare systems erode or are replaced by minimal, conditional subsistence designed to prevent unrest rather than restore autonomy. Mass surveillance and algorithmic scoring determine access to housing, healthcare, mobility, and even visibility in digital spaces. Those at the bottom experience a form of soft containment: constant monitoring, limited movement, and the implicit threat of force, while being excluded from economic participation.

The result is a stratified society in which a small class lives in fortified, technologically augmented enclaves, largely insulated from democratic accountability, while the majority exists in a managed condition of dependency. Political legitimacy no longer rests on representation or shared prosperity, but on the promise of order. Stability is achieved not by inclusion, but by automation, intimidation, and the normalization of permanent inequality.

In the deepening shadows of fabricated realities, mass projections of inner discord, and an emerging order of automated control and stratified dependency, safeguard your inner equilibrium by witnessing thoughts and emotions as transient appearances in boundless awareness—neither identifying with them nor rejecting them. This detached observation dissolves illusions of separation, revealing the seamless wholeness beneath apparent chaos and division.

Confront and assimilate concealed fears, aggressions, and unmet longings through unflinching introspection—perhaps via reflective writing or solitary contemplation—to prevent their explosive outward manifestation as blame or blind allegiance to domineering figures. Speak only what aligns with direct perception, preserving the clarity of mind against polluting falsehoods that erode trust and autonomy.

For bodily liberty amid surveillance and precarity, reduce entanglement in consumptive cycles: cultivate self-sufficiency in essentials, forge genuine local bonds rooted in mutual presence and care, and adapt fluidly to shifting conditions without clinging. Recognize all structures as impermanent; this equanimity frees you from despair, sustaining resilient freedom in both psyche and action.

While civilizational decline may be structurally inevitable, psychological outcomes are not uniform. The herd does not awaken; it stabilizes itself through myth, authority, and repetition. Individuation remains possible, however, even in dark ages—for the individual, liberation is available regardless of historical conditions.