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THE HOSTILE BROTHERS
Archetypes of Response to the Unknown
The
contamination of anomaly with the threat of death, attendant on the development of self-consciousness,
amplifies the valence of the unknown to a virtually unbearable point.
This unbearable amplification has motivated
the development of two transpersonal patterns of behaviour and schemas of representation, constituting the individual as such,
embodied in mythology as the “hostile brothers.”
One of these “hostile brothers” or “eternal Sons of God” is the mythological hero.
He faces the unknown with the presumption of its benevolence - with the (unprovable) attitude that confrontation with the unknown will bring renewal and redemption.
He enters, voluntarily, into creative “union with the Great Mother,” builds or regenerates society, and brings peace to a warring world.
The other “son of God” is the eternal adversary. This “spirit of unbridled rationality,” horrified by its limited apprehension of the conditions of existence,
shrinks from contact with everything he does not understand. This shrinking weakens his personality, no longer nourished by the “water of life,” and makes him
rigid and authoritarian, as he clings desperately to the familiar, “rational,” and stable. Every deceitful retreat
increases his fear; every new “protective law” increases his frustration, boredom and
contempt for life. His weakness,
in combination with his neurotic suffering, engenders
resentment and hatred for existence itself.
The personality of this adversary comes in two forms, so to speak - although these two forms are inseparably linked.
The fascist sacrifices his soul, which would enable him to confront change on his own, to the group, which promises to protect him from everything unknown. The decadent, by contrast, refuses to join the social world, and clings rigidly to his own ideas - merely because he is too undisciplined to serve as an apprentice. The fascist wants to crush everything different, and then everything; the decadent immolates himself, and builds the fascist from his ashes. The bloody excesses of the twentieth century, manifest most evidently in the culture of the concentration camp, stand as testimony to
the desires of the adversary and as monument to his power.
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The pitfalls of fascism and decadence may be avoided
through identification with the hero, the true individual. The hero organizes the demands of social being and the responsibilities of his own soul into a
coherent, hierarchically arranged unit. He stands on the border between order and chaos, and serves the group as creator and agent of renewal. The hero’s voluntary contact with the unknown transforms it into something benevolent - into the eternal source, in fact, of strength and ability. Development of such strength - attendant upon faith in the conditions of experience - enables him to stand outside the group, when necessary, and to use it as a tool, rather than as armour.
The hero rejects identification with the group as the ideal of life, preferring to follow the dictates of his conscience and his heart. His identification with meaning - and his refusal to sacrifice meaning for security -
renders existence acceptable, despite its tragedy.