Archetypes For Activism

Artists feel a need to be involved as activists as a duty, but it doesn't work for all artists: They have to have a particular archetype and has to be done with pure intentions. Political art is difficult to pull off.

Caroline Myss has an interesting theory on archetypes in her book Sacred Contracts. The Activist is the Guide archetype. Artist is also an archetype, but not all artists can be Guides. 

"The Guide takes the role of Teacher to a spiritual level, teaching not only the beliefs and practices that make up established religions, but also the overárching principle of seeing the Divine in every aspect of life. Clearly you do not have to be a professional preacher or guru to have this archetype, as we can all learn to lead others spiritually by developing our own intuitive spiritual awareness and passing on whatever we have learned with genuine humility. To count this archetype as part of your support group, however, you will need to discern in your life a continuing pattern of devoting yourself to teaching others from your own spiritual experiences. This presupposes that you have gained wisdom through some combination of self-disciplined practice and study and perhaps spontaneous spiritual experiences. Wisdom also comes with age, and so the Crone or Wise Woman represents the ripening of natural insight and the acceptance of what is, allowing one to pass that wisdom on to others. The shadow aspect of the Guide is visible in many modern televangelists and gurus of various traditions who are more interested in financial gain and controlling their followers than in imparting genuine spiritual insight."

A while back I had been watching some interviews with Sting from the late 80s and early 90s around the Nothing Like the Sun and Soul Cages albums. What struck me was the idea we had back then that music could be a catalyst for social change. Climate change (then called "global warming") was in the news, but it was below the fold, or there might have been some featured articles and documentaries about it. There is a heightened awareness now on social media but it's still very much a "pull" phenomenon. Greta Thunberg was trending a few years ago, but I've heard nothing recently. It's not that the news isn't there--it just isn't trending, or I'm not always tuning in. Back in the 80s news was a "push" phenomenon and you'd see the stories somewhere in the flow of reading the paper, and they you'd connect it with other things, like musicians engaging in political and environmental activism. It's nice that people want to be Guides, but the Guide archetype is chosen for you. Certainly, Greta Thunberg is effectively using her archetype.


A Sting song I liked at the time, and still like, is They Dance Alone. But I was thinking at the time I was watching the interview was that it was 15 years too late. The Pinochet coup in Chile was in September of 1973 (9/11) and the Nothing Like the Sun album came out in 1988. If we knew then what we know now about attempted coups, the song would have been more didactic. It could happen in the US, which would have been unthinkable in the 80s.

What should happen is that an artist might turn fans on to some issue and they take it from there. In retrospect, Sting might have raised my awareness of environmental issues, and so I'd watch documentaries and read books on it. But music isn't going to stop a coup d'etat.

One can't choose their archetypes, but people will continue to do so. We have so many self-appointed Advocates, Judges, Kings, Avengers, and Warriors these days.

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Earlier in the evening I was watching a documentary about Sister Amy, an early 20th century Pentecostal preacher. Early in her career she and her husband went to China on an Evangelist mission. It never worked: they were so struck by the differences between the two cultures. She couldn't get used to the cuisine and he generally didn't like being there and probably left with the idea that such missions are ineffective in forcing paradigm shifts. It might not work in music either. It just turns out to be plain old music. It takes an archetype.

5/6/2021 (Edited)

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[10/24/2024: Art can be the most powerful after the fact, when you can entertain regrets, and it becomes unsettling when you hear about what had happened. A documentary that comes to mind is Patricio Guzmán’s Cordillera of Dreams about the aftermath of the military coup. When I saw it in 2020 it was galvanizing because I saw how it could happen in the US, in many of the same ways: kidnappings, torture, the disappeared. Why would anyone in their right mind entertain the notion that it’s what is needed in the US? I think it is partly because of the disaster movie, which so far has been kept behind the fourth wall. America is every kind of movie, but that it is “only a movie” is no longer true: we are all in the movie as some type of archetype, which stands to reason given our obsession with celebrity,}