05-25-2019, 02:32 PM
(05-25-2019, 10:50 AM)Louisabell Wrote: Looking at archetypes in literature can be interesting, but they are fundamentally abstractions in the pure sense and so are like vapour, as easily as they are created, they can be disintegrated. It can be said that the feminine's propensity of co-operation and maintaining social cohesion has a stabilizing and ordering affect on society, while the masculine's propensity to be territorial and out compete his peers has a chaotic effect on society. And so, it is not difficult to find counter examples to Jordan's theories, and yet he seems so very attached to his mental creations, as though they are the key to unlock some never discovered truths in psychology and sociology. I just don't see the value beyond entertainment.
I agree with this analysis. If you approach archetypes with the goal of "cracking the code" you're inevitably going to run yourself into the ditch of reductive representationalism that Peterson exemplifies. He seems to reach for the platonic abstractions and then, just when it's getting interesting, he reifies everything and blows it. If you're just going to map the feminine archetype to females, for example, I mean, what are you doing. Why are you either bothering. The entire point is that we contain all the archetypes. As those of Ra say, they do not explicate; they haunt.
(05-25-2019, 10:50 AM)Louisabell Wrote: I just love this quote from the article you posted, I think it also has spiritual significance.
Quote:People can have such angry arguments about Peterson, seeing him as everything from a fascist apologist to an Enlightenment liberal, because his vacuous words are a kind of Rorschach test onto which countless interpretations can be projected.
Right, which is why it's such a betrayal of the Jungian perspective. It's like saying the Law of One is liberal (or conservative); to reduce such a pure and noumenal subject to a magic eight ball for politics shows you don't even understand the gold you're squandering. I think that's why Peterson angers me: to me, it's clear he knows better than to be so reductive, but he'd never have a powerful message if he stayed in the clouds and didn't try to craft a marketable message he can sell.