Now this might seem like an odd post from me, considering that I have talked about BTS on this blog and in positive terms, and I’ve even been to a concert. I very much enjoy their music and parts of their message and still do! But note parts of their message. Not all of it. This is because I’m Catholic, and certain ideas expressed in some of their recent comebacks and the literary works these comebacks reference are antithetical to my beliefs.

By TenAsia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76464187

Specifically, Herman Hesse’s Demian and Carl Jung’s ideas.

I had only ever encountered a few Herman Hesse quotes (which I quite liked) before BTS came out with Wings and “Blood, Sweat & Tears” (herefrom BST). Once the teasers came out, everyone kept going on about Herman Hesse’s Demian, and so I decided to read it. I found it on Project Gutenberg or whatever, printed it, and read most of it (some pages got mixed up so I couldn’t finish all of it). And I came away with the conclusion that Demian is dangerous.

Why? Because it creates poisonous half-truths. Demian’s protagonist is extremely relatable, wherein lies the book’s greatest danger. Emil begins with a black and white view of the world: one half is bright and happy and good, and the other is shady and dark and evil. Any fall to the dark side is a complete and total, irreversible moral failure – until he confesses to his crime and all is well again. Until he falls again and the cycle restarts.

I know this cycle very well – it’s the cycle of scrupulosity and it makes you focus on rules and toeing the line and on your actions, how much you can control, and causes you to ignore God and His mercy. This focus often comes from a well-meaning place, but it’s extremely misguided, and Emil (and probably Hesse’s) upbringing seems strict enough to have encouraged this behavior. But no one in their right mind wants to live this way! It’s so fearful!

Which is what makes Emil so susceptible to Max Demian’s bosh about Cain not being evil and there being a god of the dark, evil side of life (including murder and puzzlingly sex), and how both the good God and the “evil” god Abraxas are necessary. An absolutely trippy, sad tale of debauchery, dissolution, and isolation ensues, in which Emil ends up intoxicated and/or high from various substances at various times; and in which he falls in love with the idea of a girl, whom he then somehow sublimates into Demian’s mother whom he had met when he was younger, and the way in which he speaks about it rarefies his infatuation with both women into some spiritual enlightenment experience.

Honestly I felt a sense of unease that grew greater and greater as I read this novel (novella?), which was topped only by my absolute exasperation at Emil’s descent into madness because of its ridiculousness. Because really, that’s what happened. The book got trippier as it went along and just became weird and uncomfortable. And let me tell you, I’m not dumb – I’ve been reading all my life and follow stories very well. This one is certifiably nuts. To The Lighthouse, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and The Sound and the Fury are like straight-up fairytales compared to this.

Although I dislike BTS using this novel as an album/song/MV concept, I understand why. The idea of good and bad, dark and light both being essential forces in the universe, and a proper balance of them being necessary for harmony, are ideas woven deeply into Eastern culture in general – and Hesse studied Buddhism, learned about India and even went to India, so he would’ve been exposed to such kinds of ideas. It’s apparently standard reading material in Korean curricula (surprise, surprise).

Interestingly, Hesse and Jung actually knew each other, and Jung’s ideas are pretty much the same as what Hesse articulated in Demian – I believe Hesse even wrote Demian after having befriended Jung, so for all I know he could’ve gotten all his ideas from Jung! Ever since BTS’ Map of the Soul: Persona came out I’d heard Jung mentioned, and I only had the barest knowledge of Jung because of the MBTI craze that occurred while I was in college. Other than that, I hadn’t heard his name associated with anything good.

I decided to look into Jung a bit, and from what I’ve learned he focused on life being a quest for wholeness through self-actualization, which was accomplished by focusing inward on the unconscious and becoming aware of it. He delved into the occult and also apparently used Christian spiritual terminology to describe psychological ideas, mixing and melding the two in entirely problematic ways, setting up one’s own self and psyche as God. (He seems to have had a distinctly unscientific approach to a science.)

Like with Freud (who also knew Jung, and also had a distinctly unscientific approach to psychology in certain ways), not all of Jung’s ideas and observations are bad. Is it good to be aware of the ideas and behaviors we demonstrate and perform unconsciously? Yes! Because we want to live purposefully, and as we learn more about the human mind we learn how different events and phenomena can affect a man to his core with him none the wiser unless attention is brought to it.

Is he correct that we often present one or more faces to the public but that our innermost selves are often different? Yes, most definitely. Man has good reason for keeping parts of his life private, and also has the desire to conceal his flaws from others.

And is he right that humans struggle to come to terms with the sinful, flawed parts of themselves? That often they ignore it to their detriment? That they should learn to accept it? Certainly! Men always prefer to ignore their own faults, and would like to think they’re perfect. We have to accept that we are flawed and that we’re not perfect, and have to own our sins and faults as our own and not being imposed from the outside, and not belonging to someone else, and be ok with being imperfect. But along with accepting our imperfections and sinful natures – in fact, the only way we can do that – is in accepting God’s love and mercy (and accepting our need for it). And, of course, we cannot simply acknowledge our sins and flaws and then remain in them – we must strive to be good and perfect, while not letting ourselves be discouraged by our sins and faults.

And this is where, at least superficially, Jung goes badly wrong.  He divorces man’s identity from God by setting up man’s self and psyche as a god. But we are not self-determined – we find our identity only in God. Our goal in life is not simply wholeness, but rather right relationship with God, which makes us whole. We are the ones who broke ourselves, and we will never be whole until we do our part to mend that relationship.

So where BTS’ message reminds us that we should love ourselves and accept and acknowledge our imperfections (“Epiphany”) and not hold ourselves to impossible standards and pretend to be something we’re not just to please another human (“Fake Love”); that no matter how hard or dark life gets there is hope (“Tomorrow,” “Spring Day”); that life is more than a materialistic rat-race – a big issue in Korea – and should be lived in the present, not the future (“Paradise”); in essence, wherever BTS’ message acknowledges true human experience (however superficially), it’s good.

But where it draws from Demian and Jungian thought, where in the BST music video it drove the director or whoever to (however unintentionally) sacrilegiously have Our Lady’s portion of the Pieta crumble, and caused someone at BigHit Entertainment (BTS’s agency) to come up with the idea of a skit mocking the sacrament of Confession for one of BTS’ early “Run! BTS” episodes; wherein it encourages BigHit to sell a book of Jungian ideas on its website – where the message fails to encourage people to look to God and rather to look inward, self-ward, and navel gaze and pretend that is gazing at God: that is where it is dangerous.

Insofar as you can enjoy BTS music without delving further into Hesse and Jung, be my guest. But if you are tempted to pursue these ideas even by hearing mention of them, please, please give them a hard pass, no matter how much you may see them around these days. Ever since Wings and reading Demian I’ve been disturbed and saddened by that choice of concept because of just how influential k-pop groups, and thus BTS is, on their fans, and had hoped with the rest of the Love Yourself series that they had left it behind – but it seems just to have been an undercurrent and thread all throughout.

Again, I beg you, if you cannot in this instance separate the good from the bad then do not even embark on it. Find another group. Listen to DAY6 because they’re amazing. Stray Kids. GOT7. EXO. Infinite. Or no k-pop at all! There’s plenty of music out there besides BTS.