1 . Back to the land: Environmental and agricultural archetypes and stereotypes - Katie Love^

My hometown of Monroe, Washington is nestled in a fertile, green valley at the foot of the Cascade Mountains. Founded in 1903, Monroe is known for its deep agricultural roots and small-town family values. In fact, my maternal grandparents, my mother, and I all graduated from the same high school. When my parents were married, they moved to Seattle, but after years of hustle and bustle they decided to move back to Monroe to raise my younger sister and me on a small farm. At the core of their decision was the desire to instill the same family values that they had grown up with. My younger sister raises pygmy goats, I have a small herd of beef cattle, and my parents grow blueberries and various vegetables. As I grew up, the family farm was a place where I developed work ethic and responsibility, along with a passion for raising my herd of Hereford cattle to be one of the premier herds in Western Washington. However, in the advent of urbanization, my place on the family farm became one of conflict as I became an active environmentalist. In America there exists a stereotype that all environmentalists are tree-hugging liberals and that all farmers and ranchers are land-exploiting conservatives. This archetype creates little cohesive ground between the two, and as a result, agriculturalists and environmentalists are plotted against each other in a constant struggle to decide the fate of one of America’s most valuable assets – her land.

Ironically, my passion for the environment developed as a result of seeing Monroe’s farmland developed into mass housing, industrial plants and strip malls. It concerned me that so little thought was given to not only Monroe’s farming heritage, but to the long-term benefits of agricultural land as Eric Cunningham Illustrationwell. After all, farmers weren’t choosing to sell – nearby urban encroachment has had a residual affect on local landholders in the form of taxes. With produce prices at a low due to large quantities of imported food, paying excessive taxes for agriculturalists in increasingly urban areas is simply not feasible. Therefore, it is financially advantageous for small family farms to sell to large developers, who misuse the land and employ practices that disrupt local ecosystems and communities. However, although the problem of encroachment on agricultural land is recognized in both the agricultural and the environmental communities as a real, threatening problem, a successful consensus has yet to be reached on how to deal with the issue.

Washington State voters recently rejected a ballot measure requiring the government to compensate landowners for damage or devaluation caused by regulation. Some believe that the rejection of this measure will keep billions of dollars in the treasury, which will in turn contribute to the state’s ability to continue funding domestic programs. Others feel that many families will be left without workable land. This will threaten their livelihood and marginalize their importance in society – both of which are of no benefit, either to the general contingency of Washington State voters or to private property owners.

Initiatives such as this one reflect radical ideologies that result from America’s political polarization. In labeling environmentalists as liberals and agriculturalists as conservatives, the two groups are separated instead of becoming unified to work cohesively toward common ground. As long as these emblems are in place, people will continue to choose one political alignment or another, which will result in increased division between the two parties.

My experience between the environmental and agricultural realms has been difficult, at best. When fellow cattlemen discover that I support issues such as wetland preservation and strict zoning laws, their opinion of me changes starkly. Suddenly, by caring about the well-being of the environment, I become anti-agriculture, ultra-liberal, and a threat to one of America’s most pivotal national building blocks. They equate my single-issue stance with radical liberalism, when in fact I simply seek to preserve clean drinking water for my community and safeguard natural treasures such as grassy meadows and forests for future generations. Furthermore, I have experienced similar reactions from liberals when it is known that I am an agriculturalist. Liberals assume that I am not only insensitive to environmental issues, but that I purposely disrupt the environment through irresponsible farming practices as well. These archetypes have resulted in sentiments of alienation from both agriculturalists and environmentalists, when I am in actuality a free and independent thinker. I feel that without these limiting archetypes, my beliefs concerning environmental and agricultural issues would be met with rational discourse instead of hostility and overtly political simplifications.

When archetypes such as “liberal” and “conservative” are applied to people according to their beliefs concerning particular subjects, generalizations oftentimes transpire concerning their comprehensive political view, which leads to estrangement. The political titles associated with environmentalism and agricultural issues only cause division, not the cohesiveness needed for actual progress. In fact, when it comes right down to it, both ideologies seek the same thing – the longevity and sustainability of the land. I am often asked how I incorporate my environmental views with managing my cattle near both a wetland and a stream. The answer is as simple as this; I employ realistic land management to combat the negative ecological effects that cattle have on the land. Not using the land at all is neither realistic nor productive. Farmers need to be able to use their land in order to provide sustenance for not only their families, but for the rest of the nation as well. In doing so, we will retain a degree of self-sufficiency, which decreases our reliance upon other nations and subsequently becomes a factor in America’s status as a world power. Therefore, I set up realistic buffers around the wetland and stream. Although I use fertilizer to increase the quality and quantity of our pasture, I fertilize the fields in rotation and keep the cattle off the land for a substantial amount of time. Furthermore, I understand the benefit of organically produced food and have begun feeding my cows some organically-farmed grains. However, the decision between “green” organic farming and traditional agriculture isn’t as easy as choosing black or white. Many issues, primarily finances and availability, factor into my decision to not feed all-organic products to my cattle. However, through independent thought, my family and I are able to be both environmentally-conscious and successful agriculturalists.

One doesn’t have to be liberal or conservative, a Democrat or a Republican to be conscientious about the need for agriculturalists and environmentalists to work in cooperation. Contemporary political polarization has led extremists to lose sight of what’s best for not only the individual and the land, but America, as well. The conservative agriculturalist and liberal environmentalist are archetypes that need to be shed in order to preserve not only our national heritage, but also the well being of future generations. In discarding these generalizing stereotypes, political polarization will be eliminated, leading to independent, thoughtful discourse with subsequent progress and tangible action. Suddenly, by caring about the well-being of the environment, I become anti-agriculture, ultra-liberal, and a threat to one of America’s most pivotal national building blocks.

2 . Gonzo is watching you: an exercise in the excesses of personality cult - Thuy-Dzuong Nguyen^

In any large-scale personality cult on historical record, there are traces of archetype. There are compelling forces and pressures that lead someone into the idolization of someone like Mao Zedong or Ho Chi Minh, some compelling forces that are common in all people and are unlocked by extreme circumstances. In all these cases, a leader is glorified and idolized often without good reason.

Milder compellances can be found in middle school fads and bidding wars, where there is a negative eschaton and loss of identity. These are cases when people feel compelled to do what they otherwise would not, to idolize and epitomize what they otherwise would not, temporarily and drastically changing their personal values.

Just like Mao or the subject of any other personality cult, Gonzo can be repurposed and grossly misportrayed. Neither Gonzo nor Mao can teach better farming technique, impart exemplary virtue without being physically present, or be anything remotely close to a helmsman to a large and diverse number of people.

To experimentally replace “Our Chairman Mao” with “Our dear leader Gonzo” may seem absurd, but the idolization of Mao or Lenin is then no more useful than the idolization of a muppet.

Thuy-Dzuong Nguyen Posters
Chris Dreyer Photograph

3 . Tricksters of cyberspace: The rise of a modern archetype Aaron Brown^

The word “archetype” often carries with it connotations of the ancient and unchanging. Archetypes are patterns that are recognizable and which greatly shape our conceptions of characters and of people. They are often perceptive and powerful because they have been in use so long that they’ve been worn right into the surface of our society. It bears mentioning, however, that not all archetypes are so venerable and, while some archetypes require updating to fit a modern mold, there are some that are even now being created by the pressures and actions of our evolving culture. One such character trope that has entered into the literary and cultural consciousness only recently is that of The Hacker.

The etymology of the term “hacker” entered into modern parlance via MIT, starting in the 1950s, where it was a slang term meaning “to tinker with hardware to improve performance or to create novel new uses for it.” Such alterations of equipment themselves became known as “hacks.” The term began to take on a more counter-cultural edge in the late ‘50s and through the ‘60s when it came to refer to pranks and to unauthorized exploration of buildings and the steam tunnels that ran under the MIT campus (“tunnel hacking”).

Another cogent meaning of the term grew out of the original “tinkering” sense of the word with the rise of computers and programming. Instead of “hacking” with phone and other physical gadgets, “hacking” came to indicate a similar sort of creative tinkering with the hardware and software of computer systems. This very similar to the modern definition which it still holds amongst programmers. To say that someone is, for example, a “Linux hacker” means that they write code targeted to the Linux operating system. The term has even come to carry connotations of reverence, and is often used as kind of honorific.

It was out of this culture of tinkering with computers and the code that runs on them that the first attacks against computer systems arose. And as computing became increasingly ubiquitous it was these hackers (known properly amongst the community as “crackers” or “black hat” hackers) that gained publicity and also the name of “hackers” in the popular media and in our imagination. This is largely due to the fact that their “hacks” are visible and noteworthy. Whereas a “hack” in the sense meant by most programmers is a solution to a problem or a new way of doing something, a “hack” in the sense commonly understood by most people is an intrusion into a system, often for nefarious purposes. The former is, at its best, invisible and entirely unnoteworthy; the latter is, whether executed well or poorly, often the target of media attention. It is likely that this disparity of visibility is how “hacks” came to mean specifically systemic intrusions in the public lexicon. As with every kind of activity, “hacking” (in the popular sense) and those who do it quickly gained a stereotyped view in the media and in the public imagination. In particular, “hackers” are almost always portrayed in one of two ways: villains or antiheroes.

Perhaps the best case-study in these two portrayals is the 1995 film Hackers. The film portrays the struggle of a group of young hacker antiheroes against a hacker villain who is attempting to frame them for his own crimes. The young antiheroes are shown as counter-culture icons, with iconoclastic dress and mannerisms, devil-may-care attitudes and a wide variety of gadgets. They are the prototypical teenage rebels, but with a technological edge and a kind of curiosity that is often associated with and revered by hackers of all stripes. They also refer to each other by their hacker handles, such as “Acid Burn” and “Lord Nikon”.

Their foil, the evil corporate shill named Plague, displays the villainous side of the hacker archetype. He’s megalomaniacal, self-serving, socially maladjusted, melodramatic and, typical of all portrayals of tech-savvy characters, extremely condescending to others, especially those who aren’t particularly adept with computers.

As Hackers shows, by 1995, the modern stereotyped conceptions of The Hacker were already well established. It took less than 50 years for “hacker” to be a word entirely absent in the American linguistic consciousness to become one so well-known and representative of such well-worn archetypes that it not only appeared regularly in the popular media, but was the direct subject of feature films (and, indeed, books, magazine and news articles, etc.). So while some archetypes are as old as The Epic Hero or as ubiquitous as The Star-Crossed Lovers, the example of The Hacker shows that the set of cultural character tropes is by no means a closed one.

4 . Star Maps: Intermediaries to the collective unconscious - Chris Dreyer^

Just as the modern-day hacker reaches into a cybernetic void of computer code, able to understand and even affect this foreign language to his own design, so too the shamans of long ago were able to reach into the realm of the Overmind. Terence McKenna argues that the role of the modern-day shaman lies more along the lines of the schizophrenic on the street, permanently cursed to reside in the realm of the Other.

However, “a shaman differs from a ‘possessed’ person, for example; the shaman controls his ‘spirits,’ in the sense that he, a human being, is able to communicate with the dead, ‘demons,’ and ‘nature spirits,’ without thereby becoming their instrument.”¹ Therefore, a shaman is unlike those who would be seen as crazy in present times, as they were allowed the tremendously useful capacity to remain in full control of their interactions with the Other. As McKenna points out, this makes him, “in Jungian terms, an intermediary to the collective unconscious.”² McKenna discusses the use of psychoactive substances as prerequisite for the shaman, and recounts personal experiences with the mushroom strain Stropharia Cubensis and his subsequent experiences. During the most intense of these exploits, McKenna describes a “violet psychofluid” emanating from the facial orifices of his comrades in concurrence with certain vocal patterns. McKenna notes with great interest that this experience of synaesthesia exhibited an emergence of the otherworldly material from which shamans derive their power. Further research with the Cubensis brought about episodes of glossolalia and alleged psychokinetic communication – all of which, while perhaps not the best exhibition of the scientific process, provoked interesting thoughts on the role of language. In our particular reality, language functions as the vehicle for formalizing the unarticulated notions of the collective unconscious – when individual boundaries are dissolved, by use of psychotropics or a shaman, language as we know it ceases to be important.

However, the role of the intermediary goes beyond that of the shaman or the adventurous ethnobotanist; certain tools of divination have been in use for many centuries, attempting to translate the language of the hidden Other into understandable terms. One such tool is the I Ching, a system of divination invented by the Chinese. Sticks were cast, resulting in a figure composed of six lines which were either solid or broken. A similar effect could be achieved by flipping a coin six times: Heads for solid, tails for broken. A total of 64 permutations of the hexagram existed, and each one of these represented a different category of experience. So, you would ask it a question, either about the present or about the future, and cast the sticks or coins – the collective unconscious would supposedly respond in the form of a poem associated with the hexagram cast. As such, the I Ching held essentially that there were 64 basic archetypes for formulating human existence, each expressed in a manner broad enough to incorporate personal details from the interlocutor, while remaining specific enough to supposedly answer the question.

While experimenting with the Cubensis mushroom strain in the Amazon with his brother Dennis, McKenna’s thoughts began to become frequently centered around the I Ching. He writes,

It is our supposition that the unconscious contents which our experiment made accessible were constellated around the I Ching because it is particularly concerned with the dynamic relationships and transformations that archetypes undergo; it is deeply involved with the nature of time as the necessary condition for the manifestation of archetypes as categories of experience.³

He goes on to interpret the King Wen sequence, the traditional ordering of all 64 hexagrams, as a model for mapping out the course of the entire human history in terms of novelty, up until his projected eschaton. The I Ching utilizes the most basic of dichotomies, solid and broken, and arranges them in such a way to provide a possible gateway into the Other.

The Tarot deck attempts a similar task, exhibiting the archetypes of human experience through arrangements of pictorial symbolic representations, instead of patterns of sticks. The deck is composed of major arcana and minor, which are meant to represent various personality types and attributes, such Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education in the case of the High Priestess. The cards are arranged in such a manner that each position relates the associations of the card to a different aspect of the individual receiving the reading, in interpreting their past or present, or projecting their future. The cards in the arrangement play off each other, and an overall meaning is synthesized, presenting a broad yet remarkably specific category of experience. Arthur Waite writes,

The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths imbedded in the consciousness of all, though they have not passed into express recognition by ordinary men.⁴

In this fashion, whoever is performing the reading is functioning as the otherworldly intermediary, using the Tarot as a tool to unearth the mysteries of this world which can be swiftly answered by intervention of the Other. The Tarot encompasses an expansive set of combinations; with 78 cards in a modern deck, and five cards in a reading, an incredible number of variations are possible. And, like the I Ching, the Tarot is a system composed of archetypes which in and of itself is an archetype; if all that is supposedly possible for human existence lies in the confines of those cards, then is it possible that some perfect arrangement will offer a map for human history?

A more scientific approach to mapping out the various categories of experience is seen in the Enneagram test, which divides all human personality into nine basic archetypes. The Reformer, The Helper, The Achiever, The Romantic, The Observer, The Loyalist, The Enthusiast, The Leader and The Mediator compose each type, One through Nine, respectively. The Enneagram’s dynamic ability to pinpoint personality derives from its system of allowing types to overlap, stating that in certain situations one Type will assume traits usually ascribed to another. As opposed to the Tarot and the I Ching, which draw on some form of chance in calculating their analysis of past, present, and future, the Enneagram utilizes more analytical techniques, inputting information based on questions asking how one typically acts in certain situations – resulting in a shockingly accurate portrait of personality. Within those nine types is supposedly contained all possibilities for human experience, and determining one’s Number can lend insight to past and present, while providing warnings and hints at one’s personal future.

We stand to learn a lot by tapping into the seemingly unreachable storehouse of knowledge embodied in the collective unconscious – and the shaman, the I Ching, Tarot and the Enneagram provide different routes to the same end, functioning as third-party gatekeepers who open the door just a crack, to let us peek inside.

 1) Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy, 6
2) Terence McKenna, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching, 12
3) Ibid., 121
4) Arthur Waites, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Full text available online at Sacred-texts.com/tarot

5 . Archetypes of nine: Exploring the Enneagram Anthony Lazzaro^

Several years ago, I took a course on human psychology, soul transformation, and self-knowledge. One of the most interesting aspects of the class focused on a mysterious typology called the Enneagram. The Enneagram test is a method of evaluating one’s spiritual state and directing one’s course of actions to further a healthier relationship with one’s self, community, and God. Literally a nine-sided figure, the Enneagram argues that all human beings belong to one of nine basic personality types. The nine points reflect and share nine different virtues and vices. The vices are specifically based on the seven deadly sins with the addition of the vices fear and deceit making the total of nine, and the virtues are their counterparts.

The notion of self centered on a specific virtue is not a new idea. In St. Catherine of Siena’s Treatise on Divine Providence she conveys this sense with regard to her mystical conversation with God. In the dialogue, St. Catherine writes that God grants a specific virtue to each soul and through that one devotion an individual may come to know the other virtues and live them out appropriately. In regards to the Enneagram, St. Catherine’s notion of virtue finds commonality. The Enneagram states that once an individual comes to fulfill one’s virtue one progresses onward to obtain the others.

The Enneagram argues that one’s personality is contingent on one specific virtue. Unlike the Myers-Briggs test in which one can change in one’s personality, one cannot change one’s Enneagram type. The Enneagram is based on character, precisely because character relates to internal responses, fulfillment, and needs, whereas personality is subject to mood and external responses. With this distinction in mind, one can come to understand what one needs and become increasingly aware of how one treats others and oneself and therefore grow.

Spiritual growth is specifically tailored for human beings, and thus it must be contingent on rational discovery which distinguishes the human race from the other orders of animal life. The Enneagram is a rational development arising out of the classical understanding of the science of ethics, and thus, it too will aid spiritual development. If integrated healthily, for example, the individual progresses on to the next number and the attending virtue. The geometric explanation for this movement is found in the internal lines which are drawn between several, but not all, of the points. The direction of integration is formulated by the series 1758241 and disintegration by its converse –1428571. In regards to disintegration, for example, an unhealthy one digresses toward the vice of the four and then of two, the eight, the five, and the seven. The appropriate vices that correlate with each of these are anger (1), envy (4), pride (2), lust (8), avarice (5) and gluttony (7). It should be noticed that the numbers 3, 6, and 9 are conspicuously left out of this series. Their points form an inner triangle and they are not connected with any other point amidst the inner crisscrossing lines. They can, however, be associated to their immediate external points. (For example, the three is connected to the two and to the four.) The sequence for integration amongst these three is 9369, and the sequence for disintegration is 9639. The nine stands for sloth, the six stands for fear and the three stands for deceit.

The objective part of the Enneagram does make sense certainly from philosophical and geometrical perspectives, but whether the subjective aspect is just as true remains to be demonstrated. I began this essay quoting St. Catherine of Siena not by accident. A well-known doctor of the Catholic Church, she aided the field of theology greatly with her works. Furthermore, her tremendous insight into the human person is not without merit. Unlike philosophy which consistently searches for methodology usually without subjective experience, Catholic theology, as much as it appeals to the rational, has an inherent element of hopefulness which relates to the emotional as well.

My own personal experience with the Enneagram has been at times uneasy. While the philosophy and psychology of the method is valid and admirable for its acute development, nagging thoughts constantly barraged my mind: How would Jesus be typed? All people are one these nine types? How can one be sure what type one is? The appropriate answers I have found are: Jesus transcends any kind of character type-casting because he is God, all people are in fact one of these nine types because we are creatures capable of virtue and vice and there is no way to deny that people actually are one of nine types if we concede humanity’s connection with virtue, and the way to discover one’s type relies on an individual’s desire to plum the depths of the soul. Akin to The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, both Ignatius’ teachings and the Enneagram advocate a deep searching of one’s inner sanctum.

I believe that I have tried hard to realize my virtuous disposition. In regards to the Enneagram’s efficacy, I now know what it is I have always needed but have never been able to articulate. For example, I am a One and I struggle with anger. The reason that I struggle with anger though is because I have an intense sense and intimate need for wanting to be good, to be beyond criticism, to be balanced, to have integrity, and to be perfect. More appropriately though, my type has a deep-seated fear of being evil, corrupt, and defective. General insecurity issues arise out this fear. And although I know that I cannot be an evil being, when I notice my deficiencies, I can’t help but feel that I am defective. This is not only a sense of my personal identity either, for I see the world in terms of being defective, and constantly in need of reform. I am a crusader for justice, moderation and harmony. Therefore, I have begun to work on fulfilling my need as God would not let us experience needs for which there was nothing to ultimately satisfy. And ultimately, this world will always be unsatisfactory, but there is no need to fill it with loathing for my part. When I am happy, I naturally gravitate to enjoying the moment instead of worrying that I’ve forgotten something. I regularly take time to appreciate those “little things” that make life fun and joyful. Ironically, this is exactly what the Seven does when they are healthy. In my experience then, the Enneagram does in fact reflect truly on the human disposition.

It is true that the Enneagram is primarily a method of evaluation. It is meant for improvement and integration. Its practical ramifications have no limitations with regard to developing one’s spiritual state and directing one’s course of actions to further a healthier relationship with one’s self, community, and God. In fact, it is the goal of the Enneagram that all should know themselves more acutely so as to make an offering of themselves ad majorem Dei gloriam and finally attain sainthood.