“In general, meditation and contemplation have a bad reputation in the West.
They are regarded as a particularly reprehensible form of idleness or as pathological narcissism.
No one has time for self-knowledge or believes that it could serve any sensible purpose.
Also, one knows in advance that it is not worth the trouble to know oneself, for any fool can know what he is.
We believe exclusively in doing and do not ask about the doer, who is judged only by achievements that have collective value.
The general public seems to have taken cognizance of the existence of the unconscious psyche more than the so-called experts, but still nobody has drawn any conclusions from the fact that Western man confronts himself as a stranger and that self-knowledge is one of the most difficult and exacting of the arts.
~ Carl Jung, Collected Works Vol 14, Para 709
