Archetypes and Politics
If you’re new to this blog you may want to skip back to my site to try and work out what archetypes may be. If you’re one of the dear faithful people who reads here fairly regularly, then you’ll have no problem following any of this.
As we face our presidential campaigns (and whether we like them or not we will have to face them…) it may seem at times to be very hard to assess the candidates in a meaningful way. So often it comes down to indefinable preference or sometimes to ingrained prejudices - and I don’t exempt myself from prejudices. But there may be another way. Ask yourself which archetypal stage each candidate seems to be living. A candidate can be charismatic, charming, convincing, magnetic - and still turn out to be a dangerous egomaniac. Often it’s a good idea to look past the mannerisms and assess what a candidate might be trying to get us to feel. Bush, as president, was constantly trying to get us all to feel afraid, and he did a really good job of it. We did feel afraid and some of us still do so, and we handed over many things to him so he could protect us.
We became Orphans, putty in his hands.
Perhaps we should look for a candidate who makes us feel we have some say in things, that our voices really do matter, that our president can’t refuse to obey the laws of the nation merely by producing ridiculous ’signing statements’. Listen to all the candidates and ask yourself - does this one ask me to think, to be better than I presently am? Or does this candidate want me to respond to stock stimuli about how wicked certain nations are?
The Monarchs of this world ask, nay, demand that we take our part in running our country. Monarchs want dialogue, and seek to work with others including other nations. The Orphans tend to ask us to pay for an army so others can ‘defend’ our country and we can ‘honor’ them when they get blown to pieces by the ‘enemy’, and that it’s all happening this way because of what ‘others’ do to ‘us’. In fact it’s not our fault at all that others want to hurt us.
How will you choose?
