Holte's corner

The power of story telling, the hero as "figurative embodying myth."

Archetypes are something that religious thinkers talk about a lot. Joseph Campbell for example compared the arcthetypes of different religions and devoted entire Books to comparing and contrasting them. Thinkers and writers use these images to convey information intended to guide their followers. If one looks at religion, any religion, they all use these models and stories in a similar fashion. The hero is a "figurative embodying myth" used to convey the message desired by those teaching a person as a hero.

This is a well known reality, and the reality of religious thinking is exploited systematically by people who know this reality, so it is important that we understand what they are doing and why they do it, and then use these realities well.

Wikipedia defines an archetype as:

An archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned or emulated. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality or behaviour. This article is about personality archetypes, as described in literature analysis and the study of the psyche.

Archetypes present moral teachers with a means to present difficult subjects in easy to understand forms. For example, to teach dependent origination one can draw stories from India, China or Japan, or one can draw similar stories from the culture of one's audiences, such as the Nasrudin stories.

They also present a way that teachers traditionally have "buried" heretical but true ideas within religious traditions by putting them into stories. The fanatics are usually to obtuse to pick up on the hidden message -- seeing what they want to see or even ignoring the discrepancies -- while ordinary folks pick up on the message unconsciously. This blog talks about this subject: http://www.anulios.org/index.php/page/6/. Anyone who has lived in or dealt with people from a country where there has been an authoritarian regime will know that this is also the way modern writers explore the truth.

In the analysis of personality, the term archetype is often broadly used to refer to:

a stereotype—personality type observed multiple times, especially an oversimplification of such a type; or

an epitome—personality type exemplifed, especially the "greatest" such example.

So when Wikipedia refers to archetypes as "merely" something, there is nothing "mere" about the power of story telling

In a strict linguistic sense, however, an archetype is merely a defining example of a personality type. The accepted use of archetype is to refer to a generic version of a personality type. In this sense "mother figure" can be considered an archetype and instances can be found in various female characters with distinct (non-generic) personalities.

Archetypes are critical for our own spiritual (human) development. They actually contribute to defining personality. For example anyone familiar with the old Superman archetype (from the 50's series) will understand a lot about my own self image. When I was a child I thought if I believed enough I might even be able to fly. [I tried, I flew, I fell].

Wikipedia says:

Archetypes have been present in mythology and literature for at least hundreds of years. The use of archetypes to analyse personality was advanced by Carl Jung early in the 20th century. The value in using archetypal characters in fiction derives from the fact that a large group of people are able to unconsciously recognise the archetype, and thus the motivations, behind the character's behavior.

Mastering Narrative, is not something that indicates complete enlightenment. Devadatta had mastered the power of religious language, imagery and skillful words. He came out of learning this to thinking that he could manipulate people and develop wealth and power. In our own day and age Marketers, Fascists, Leftists, and even the Republican Party, have mastered the power of narrative, and used the power of archetypes and imaging to manipulate people. We have government by focus group, and it is evil government because it has no moral compass.

The point is that we have to move from beyond a surface view of these things as mere methods for manipulating people, to recognizing that archetypes and myth represent an inward reality that is as important to us as it is to others. That is important to master, not to use and misuse, but to help people master their lives and society become peaceful. We need our inward myths to define our own motives, proper behavior, paths, and the bounds of what is right and wrong behavior.

We need to go from the power of authority based orthodoxy to the power of law based on correct views (true orthodoxy); and to take this authority out of the hands of selfish and authoritarian persons.

Posted by cholte at September 18, 2006 09:39 PM