Archetypes to Troubleshoot Difficult Situations
The idea of “archetypes” has come up several times in the past week. Once by me when trying to troubleshoot a problem, and a few times by other people who were trying to troubleshoot a problem.
There seems to be some trickiness to it. On the one hand, people “reaching to be something as inspiration for what to be” seems to be important as a vector for people to transcend being who they are in the moment. It is a way to go past their amygdala in the moment, which would normally restrain their action space by showing up as feelings in the moment that their reality is being filtered through. If you only run on your amygdala, you end up staying the same most of the time, and even if you wanted to show up differently to people or have new capacities, or find new artistic wavelengths inside of yourself, how would you do the different thing?
Archetypes are helpful because having a different thing you are filtering *yourself* through would mean that then you are filtering the world through some different way, and expose yourself to having more feedback loops with the world. There is a funny thing here where, is it really you? And is it really you who are having the feedback loops?
Or is it wearing another kind of mask, and the mask has some feedback loops, while you are staying exactly the same?
There is a way in which this is straightforward enough in a shallow way, and a way this is quite hard in a deeper way. I think that the “shallow thing” versus the “deeper thing” is important enough to flesh out for at least my own thinking, though there may be much better ways of thinking about it.
The shallow version is like putting on a costume. There can be many reasons to put on a costume. One is to fit into your environment. If you are going to a business meeting you may want to wear something suitable to what everyone is wearing. If you have a new job, you may want an “archetype” for a while to feel most like yourself but also be a version of yourself that knows how to exist in that kind of environment.
One way to start doing this is literally to see what everyone else is wearing, and then seeing what looks good in that vibe in your styles and colors, such that you are still “your version of you” but now in the style of that workplace.
If you are not changing jobs, an equivalent may be going to a goth club, or trying something new on for Halloween.
John Encaustum writes here about Halloween costumes he has worn over the years, and the motivation and feelings behind them, in what I find to be an extraordinary piece. The best thing about this specific article is almost certainly that link.
What’s remarkable about the piece is its commitment to honesty about the archetypes he has had over the course of his life, and the reasons for them, and the unflinching look at choices in his childhood and teenage years, reflected on by a much more mature eye. It is the kind of work that is seldomly written or written well, and it stands apart as its own work of artistry and intelligence that is in a league of its own.
He also really neatly writes in the middle ground between “the archetype” and “the real experienced feeling” that shows well the polarity of each, and then showcasing the middle ground that most people have to contend to live in most of the time.
Below I have written on a napkin a kind of scaffold. The archetypes you can reach for, the immediate feelings, and then ways to “activate participation beyond your feelings, and enact physically the archetypes” in the middle.
This is a work in progress and I welcome comments!
