In The Arena of Archetypes

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”  Theodore Roosevelt

This quotation by Roosevelt brings to mind a fellow I once knew in church.  He was the eternal critic whose role in life was to find fault in the efforts of others.  He was a blustery guy, full of loudness and bad jokes, and he effectively shut down an entire church.  Why?  Because he signed up to be in charge of everything, but he never followed through, and he seriously resented people who did.  Many in the church enabled him through a dysfunctional institutional co-dependency; then again some of the old steel magnolia matrons sent him out to be their attack dog to keep under control the uppity women who were not "their kind" (as we so archetypically understand The Mother to be in small southern towns that have not progressed beyond 1963).  He was the archetypical Sinister Clown, a buffoon posing with The Mothers as a gigantic fish in a very small pond that had dried up long ago.  No life, no life.  And no valiant striving.  Entitlement doesn't even remotely resemble valiant striving.  Likewise there is nothing marred by the dust and sweat and blood because all that dried up with the pond, and Mother is very happy. 

I believe Jung was right about the collective conscience and living out the unconscious as archetypes.  All places have their archetypes, and we can become caricatures of humanity through the incestuous interrelating that happens when people do not think, do not face their own dark sides and do not grow.  I would say that this is a product of failure to travel and exposure to new ideas, but that is not the case.  Some of the Mothers of whom I speak travel with frequency to places above and beyond their power trips.  I doubt, however, that they have very good reading material.  And the Clown probably reads only what reinforces his garish role as ineffective masculine "big daddy" patted on the head by Mother.  Poor thing.  He doesn't know that they are one step away from changing his diaper.  Sadly Christianity sometimes reinforces these dark archetypes with such emphasis on trivialities that do not require an inner journey to look for the kingdom.