But one thing is absolutely essential to the notion of archetypes: their emotional possessive effect, their bedazzlement of consciousness so that it becomes blind to its own stance.
– James Hillman
Meaning is about recognizing and making patterns out of what we see and experience and an archetype is, in a sense, a nugget of condensed patterns that appears in commonly recognized images, symbols or personas. For example, James Hillman describes how the archetype of the Hero captures patterns of strength, decisive action, exploration of the world, and reacting to threats to protect others. In Western culture, this was embodied by mythical and religious figures like Achilles or King David and more recently in "superheroes" like Ironman, Black Panther and Wonder Woman.
Each era of a culture presents certain dominant archetypes. Sometimes these archetypes are stable for hundreds or even thousands of years, for example the archetype of the Scholar in China. At other times, archetypes can change within a generation, as they have during rapid economic development in the West.
Archetypes like the Hero may shift over time to emphasize different aspects that become more relevant. In white American culture, the hero archetype was originally exemplified by pioneers like Davy Crockett, but once the frontier was “settled” (through the genocide of Native Americans) our heroes, like Superman, tended to be about protecting “the American Way.”
An archetype may become dominant in a culture because that culture values the behaviors and the mindset of the archetypal persona. In turn, the dominant archetype reinforces culture norms. As Hillman alludes to in the opening quotation, these archetypes would not persist if they did not have deep emotional impact and, as they persist, they often fade into the background where we don’t realize their effects on our meaning making.
I suggest that we currently have four dominant archetypes in the West, which also impact and influence much of the rest of the world: The Engineer, Entrepreneur, Entertainer and the Extremist. I’m not talking about individual engineers, entrepreneurs and entertainers, a number of whom I know and love, but rather the unbalanced domination of these archetypes in our culture.
The Engineer: Embodies the dominant analytical, problem-solving and technological worldview. The engineer takes the quantitative, intellectual knowledge of science and applies it to material world challenges. How do we get a bridge to carry the weight of a semi-truck? How could we minimize the recovery time for surgery? Obviously engineers have created many of the blessings of modern life, including plumbing, modern medicine and cell phones.
The Entrepreneur: Embodies the visionary, ambitious, financial results-focused worldview. Today’s entrepreneur often takes the discoveries and inventions of engineers and finds ways to monetize and spread these. Sometimes the vision of the entrepreneur leads to new technological breakthroughs via engineering.
Both the Engineer and the Entrepreneur are outcomes of seismic shifts in Western culture brought about by the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. As rationalistic, measurement-obsessed ways of thinking in Western institutions, other ways of thinking and viewing the world were repressed as “non-rational” or “superstitious.” In many ways this has been good for humanity, and especially women (the most secular societies are the safest for women), but there has also been a deep cost.
The Engineer and the Entrepreneur archetypes are great at solving technical problems, but not at creating emotionally significant meaning. In fact, quite the opposite. The reductionist scientific materialist worldview of the Engineer and financially-focused, results-orientation of the Entrepreneur are, in my view, the two most powerful anti-meaning forces that humans have ever devised. This is why so much of the meaning in modern societies is so unfulfilling. And into this void of meaning steps… The Entertainer.
The Entertainer: Embodies quick, easily digestible forms of distraction that provide temporary relief from the complexities and challenges of life. Entertainment becomes a way to escape from deeper existential questions and the search for meaningful purpose, and instead of serving as a source of genuine joy or artistic expression, our films, video games, and “reality” TV series often become a way to numb ourselves from our loneliness and lack of meaning.
Because our dominant Engineer and Entrepreneur archetypes are so imbalanced in their focus on the outer world at the expense of rich inner lives and emotional meaning, and because the Entertainer provides more distraction than fulfillment, I believe that this drives many people to be attracted to our fourth dominant archetype: The Extremist.
The Extremist: Embodies the ideologically-driven, irrational and confrontational worldview. The extremist is alienated, angry and hungry to punish the perceived causes of the emptiness they feel inside. In rare instances, the target of extremist anger is the Engineer, as when anti-vax extremists attack the engineers who developed the Covid vaccinations. And there are surface attacks on some corporations, as when they take a stand on LGBTQ+ rights and the “woke” agenda. But Extremists tend to focus their attacks most directly on highly vulnerable groups within society, especially ones that make extremists feel uncomfortable.
In Elon Musk we can perhaps see an embodiment of three of our dominant archetypes: He is the Engineer-minded Entrepreneur who assembled teams of top engineers to create some of the most valuable companies on earth and to become the richest person in history. During this time, we began to see hints of his irrationality and Extremism emerge in his social media posts. Then he bought Twitter and amped that up even further, especially in promoting posts from white nationalists and other extreme groups.
Donald Trump is the Entertainer who has applied his self-interested, carnival barker Entrepreneurship to the task of making politics – and Extremism – into a consumable reality show. Popcorn authoritarianism. Distracted dictatorship.
The quality that all of these “4E” archetypes have in common is that they are fully invested in manipulating the outer world while neglecting our inner psychological/emotional world. Neither Trump nor Musk seem remotely interested in introspection. To paraphrase Hillman, extremism is the result of avoiding self-discovery.
In my next post, I will propose some possible alternative archetypes that we might want to nurture to balance out the dominance of the Engineer, Entrepreneur, Entertainer and Extremist.