The God Archetype
The idea of God has been trivialized by both believers and non-believers alike. Terms such as sky-daddy or the spaghetti monster have often been used to laugh at the religious believers foolish and naive view that such a being could exist. (Yes the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is actually real.)
Queue the: “Seriously, you believe that there is some dude that lives up in the sky and grants you blessings when you pray to it?”
Even amongst believers, they are often forced to retreat to the weakest ground and cling onto the notion that God is something they believe in, so others should respect that. They may even go as far as saying that it doesn’t make sense, but religion makes them happier than if they didn’t believe. Theists have seemingly failed to give a rational basis to religious practice, belief, and God in general-hence the rise in skepticism towards those of religious faith.
And understandably, non-believers have ground to deny the existence of God. How could a being such as God be responsible for the suffering and malevolence in the world? Or in the words of some former believers: “How on earth could a God that I did my best to please be responsible for the great suffering I’ve encountered in my life? It’s just not fair.”
I don’t attempt to answer those questions in this post, but the very idea of a more secular approach and explanation to the psychology and philosophy behind the concept of God has been brewing in my mind over the last 6 months. Thanks to speakers such as Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Eric/Brett Weinstein and others, I felt intellectually and spiritually stimulated at the ways in which they were debating/discussing the existence of God. But I didn’t feel that I could articulate these ideas in a manner that would be comprehensible until I was sitting at a work conference one day and we began to discuss the concept of market personas.
Marketing Personas
An interesting principle in marketing is the use of personas. A marketing persona is defined as a fictional representation of your customers. This representation is based on market research, demographics, patterns, goals, etc. This persona is embodied in an individual and given a name.
Often, companies will have multiple personas because the product they sell is focused on not just one group, but a couple of groups. For example, let’s say company X sells a product that they’ve found through market research that mainly caters to 2 groups:
25–35 year old women, working full-time, owns cats, has an income of around 55–65 K, and lives in urban areas. Let’s call this first group Annie.
The second group is 57–65 year old women, married, has between 2–4 children, lives in the suburban, and has an income around 90K. Let’s call this second group Joanne.
The company that uses the personas of Annie and Joanne will have different marketing campaigns based on the group they are choosing to target. Although Annie and Joanne do not literally exist, they are absolutely true in the sense that (assuming it is based on correct market research) the company will have the best market returns if they choose to focus on these two personas.
In marketing, the use of personas is powerful and a great way for conceptualizing the market you’re working for. For the business employees, it anthropomorphizes the customer base, giving it a human element in which they are working to please. One can see that through the hundreds (or thousands) of hours of marketing research, the company is able to abstract these 2 key figures. Perhaps the personas they have created are missing some key details, but with additional research they should be able to refine the idea of their ideal personas. The more they come to refine it and match the actual market ideal, the better returns on investment they will obtain.
This task is not easy for companies and can often be very costly, but all companies looking for a competitive edge will invest time and money to develop and create personas for their business. The idea of a marketing persona embodies a commonality, a pattern, and a model-developed and abstracted from the research of the customer base that is pertinent to the product being created.
Archetypes
So why exactly did this spur excitement in me? Because the foundation of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Jordan Peterson and other’s works are based on an idea called an archetype.
Archetypes are repeating patterns, motifs, behaviors, models etc. of an original element that is repeated throughout narratives and is not limited by cultural boundaries. Other public intellectuals have used some forms of this archetype idea, but in favor of an agnostic/atheist standpoint. In the words of Richard Dawkins, “Religion is a meme and religious beliefs are a mind parasite.” His basic idea of a meme is something which transmits cultural and social ideas through generations. And due to this religious meme that has been passed down, it has stuck in the minds of man and must be eradicated like any other harmful disease.
Jordan Peterson in response has criticized Dawkin’s idea as simplistic. In a discussion with Sam Harris, Peterson was pushed to elaborate on what he meant by “God”. His explanation struck me as having a profound psychological and archetypal core:
“****God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence and action of consciousness across time****. As the most real aspects of existence manifest themselves across the longest of time frames, but are not necessarily apprehensible as objects in the here and now. So what that means, in some sense, is that you have conceptions of reality built into your biological and metaphysical structure that are consequence of processes of evolution that occurred over unbelievably vast expanses of time and that structure your perception of reality in ways that it wouldn’t be structured if you only lived for the amount of time that you’re going to live…”
Peterson’s idea is that the religious narratives are biologically and socially selected for through evolution and transmitted down to our current time. The very first line of that quote is the idea of God as an archetype that has been selected for and transmitted down to the present. Perhaps what he is saying is that God is an archetypal representation of how we imagine human consciousness across time. Our conception of things such as morality are based off of millions of years of evolution and sociological developments that were selected for. Peterson in the same discussion continues his elaboration on God:
“So, God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and truth. God is the highest value in the hierarchy of values. God is what calls and what responds in the eternal call to adventure. God is the voice of conscience. God is the source of judgement, and mercy, and guilt. God is the future to which we make sacrifices and something akin to the transcendental repository of reputation.”
Furthermore, he gives a sociological explanation for the way in which humans organize themselves and how the archetype of religious belief was selected for over time.
“God is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men. So you know, men arrange themselves into hierarchies and then men rise in the hierarchy and there’s principles that are important that determine the probability of their rise… It’s also the same thing that makes Men attractive to Women. Women peel off the top of the male hierarchy… so, that’s something that operates across tremendous expanses of time and it plays a role in the selection for survival itself, which makes it a fundamental reality.”
Essentially, Peterson puts forth an argument for the belief and existence of God (perhaps not literal), but a psychological and evolutionary supposition that the very fabric of reality has been composed of and selected for via the belief and conception of a God.
God
I do not articulate this idea as elaborately as Dr. Peterson, but utilizing the example of market personas and the explanation of God as an archetype, one may begin to see how God as an archetype is not farfetched at all. In fact- it seems quite plausible that from a complete secular point of view, the God archetype is a profound one and one that has not been sufficiently explored by those critics of religion.
To be clear, I have a personal metaphysical belief in the existence of God. One rooted in deeply spiritual experiences where I feel that God exists. What I attempted to give above is an archetypal exploration of why it is plausible and reasonable for humans to hold a belief in God. And just as I mentioned above, when discussing market personas, perhaps you may scoff at the idea that the persona “Anna” is literally true, but you cannot deny the absolute utility and truthfulness of acting in such a manner to fulfill the market persona that Anna is meant to describe. Likewise, the metaphysical belief of God may be scoffed at as one that is difficult to literally believe in, but the utility and truthfulness of pursuing a life that reflects the embodiment of Christ is one that absolutely manifests goodness and truth.
Taking the previous example of market personas, think of the religious discipline of Christianity (You could take any one of the religious disciplines and these archetypal principles would still apply). The hundreds and thousands of years that Judaism utilized to tell their religious stories, develop their code of ethics, and create their doctrines all contributed to the further Christian abstraction of new testament doctrines and the further development of God.
The religious scholars and philosophers of those times were in essence the market researchers, developing the idea of a persona that embodied the entire idea of the human condition and the state of suffering that inevitably falls upon all. And the idea of Christ, seemingly rose to the pinnacle of this archetypal abstraction of perfection and God. Religious believers will have no trouble telling you that by catering to (abiding by) the precepts that please this archetypal God, as a result, you will see the best possible outcomes. Not to say that your life will be free of strife and trouble, nor is it to say that a life of perfection will ensue. But a life that strives to develop more charity, compassion, patience, discipline, restraint, and knowledge to arm you with facing the hardships of this world.
And this religious archetype can be one that motivates the carnal instincts of the human mind to rise above and transcend selfish instincts, to attend church services in an effort to inspire and enlighten the mind, and cause one to look past the color of the skin and accept others as your brother and sister.
And just like a market persona, these are all based on the possible faulty assumption that the “market research” was done correctly. And that’s exactly the point. Churches and all man made institutions are not perfect, nor will they ever be. The abstraction of this God archetype is based on the faulty assumptions of mankind’s mind-but this does not rebut or destroy a belief in God.
Just as market research does not throw away the entire concept/idea of a persona due to imperfect results, the religious person should not throw away a belief in God. Market personas can and will have many flaws, but pursuing, refining, and further developing the current personas at hand will result in better returns and a thriving business. Likewise, the capacity to abide by and follow this religious persona will ultimately result in a more fulfilled, responsible, and moral life-all while refining and further developing the religious persona. And as we walk towards the City of God, a willingness to follow him will lighten the burden of the crosses we bear.
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