The father archetype looms large over our personal and collective lives. Fathers are inescapable, for better or worse, in their shaping of our identity, meaning, and purpose. Most cultures, including all those of Indo-European descent, are patriarchial. Father figures are central to our political lives and mythology. God is a father.
Our current political divide is steeped in the father archetype. Democrats are the mommy party, Republicans the daddy party. Never has that been clearer than with the current occupant of the White House, who seems to think that his orange patriarchial aura should suffice to get the entire country to fall in line behind every tweeted emission. But it is nothing to make light of- the psychology of these polar tendencies is fundamental to humanity and probably many other beings. Perpetual contrasts exist between competition and cooperation, risk and security, discipline and forgiveness, war and love, yang and yin.
A recent book about icons of the right argues that father mythology pervades the personal and political conceptions of the right. Fathers only have authority in the family if the state moderates its nanny-ish tendencies. CEOs only have proper authority if the state does not meddle in their companies. And the country is properly run only when a father figure lays down the law on standards of morality and behavior, however much that conflicts with the first two aims. Many prominent figures on the right have frought, to say the least, relations with their own fathers. Newt Gingrich comes to mind, but the author Jeffrey Dudas profiles William Buckley (absent, though overbearing, father), Ronald Reagan (drunk, weak father), and Clarence Thomas (deserted father, replaced by totalitarian grandfather). Each found a personal and political mythology in constructing a new image of the father figure, mostly drawn on the founding fathers.
It is the usual authoritarian / patriarchal story- what ails the world (read- the self, or the early self) is lack of discipline, and masculine modeling, which is supplied by the authoritarian leader who will restore order, law, and the scope for other elements of the patriarchy down the line (corporate, police-state, and family) to do likewise, will heal the society. This resolves the chaos resulting from lack of boundaries and discipline, and lack of social hierarchy. All this is claimed in the name of freedom- the true freedom of the orderly citizen, not that of the malcontent and rabble-rouser. Reagan provided an especially clear vision of this condition of the state, set in contrast to the hippie protesters on whom he cut his teeth as governor of California. And he justified it in terms of the American dream of freedom and equal opportunity for all- all virtuous and deserving citizens, that is.
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That is, however, a sucker's game, as likely to raise up the masses as is the local Indian Casino. Not only should success or even a decent life not depend on such extraordinary efforts and talents, but it clearly does not for the well-to-do, who bequeath countless social, material, and political advantages on their offspring, resulting in the remarkable lack of social and wealth mobility that we see in the US today. The starting blocks are starkly different for different people, and it is absurd to preach individual morality tales when material and other forms of inequality are so tragically and obviously responsible for the lack of freedom and prosperity for most citizens. Where are the reparations for slavery, for example? Also missing is any model or justification for communal, public goods. Life becomes a competition of atomized individuals, with family structure and discipline separating the wheat from the chaff, but without a rationale for wider social cooperation and institutions, such as public schools or anti-corruption mechanisms in government, or business regulation, that render the level playing field which the patriarchial myth assumes and depends on, but refuses to address.
Which is not to say that personal virtues, just saying no, stick-to-it-ive-ness, discipline, and the like, are not good things. The wise and benevolent father figure is also a very good thing. Yet, as Susan Forward points out, toxic, abusive, and even incestuous, parents are all too common. One in ten families, by her estimation, experience incest. It is shocking and horrifying, yet preaching from on high is not going to help, particularly as the perpetrators are often the very ones, through the magically empowering nature of the archetype, doing the hypocritical preaching.
Indeed, it is the damaged children who seem to end up on the right, latching on to the one certainty they have learned, that their own efforts avail them something in the rough-and-tumble of life. Desperate for good parenting, they seek father figures and a father mythology that will heal. And one is naturally ready to hand, in the patriarchy, the founding fathers, orginalism. Virtually every religion furnishes the same tale- a father who is both loving and strict, giving commandments and boundaries with one hand, while providing hope of temporal and supernatural power with the other. Most people don't take it too seriously, but if the need is intense enough, if the child within is damaged enough, this patriarchal solution seems to become a template for everything- how to live one's own life, and how the nation should be run as well.
As Dudas writes:
"Not exclusive to modern American conservatism, this longing for stability, for an end to what Willam Connolly calls the 'homesickness' of the human condition, is a hallmark of modern living. Modern times, Connolly argues, are defined by the widespread loss of belief in transcendent purpose (in 'myth') and, accordingly, by an eruption of nihilism. But this nihilism, and the felt loss of meaning that accompanies it, (of Kristeva's 'melancholia'), is so upsetting that it has been the subject of an astonishing range of ameliorative attempts. Hence the feverish devotion to those human projects that attempt to establish the sorts of 'antimyths' that Fitzpatrick locates at the heart of modernity: projects of science, reason, and the state, for example, with which human life might be organized and infused with the noncontingent foundations that existed before (to paraphrase Nietzsche) humans killed off God.
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But as with all other modern attempts to forestall nihilism, it turns out that the melancholic's desire is 'impossible'. ... The desire for the stable object is impossible and magical because the object (Father) is oversaturated with meaning; it is itself a floating signifier that is purposed and repurposed according to the endless demands of desire rather than to the rigors of logic or intellectual coherence."
Our current president is a damaged child, from a totalitarian father, who reproduces the same parenting style with his own children, and now towards the rest of us as well. Add in desperate narcissim, and the result appears to be pathological lying and manipulativeness, as well as complete blindness to the perspectives of those not on his favorite cable news channels. We have all become victims of bad parenting, and need to redouble our efforts to break the cycle.
- Back when the government ran finance, not Wall Street.
- Too many old savers leads to persistent low interest rates and inflation.
- The market is quite high.
- North Korea has very effective deterrence.
- The rich are still getting richer.
- Getting a PhD is not so great for your job prospects.
- Annals of feudalism, cont... workers are about to be stripped of legal recourse for abuse.
- Economic graph of the week. Robbing the poor to give to the rich, under the proposed tax "plan".
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