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General News    H4'ed 1/25/22

Right vs. Left Culture Warriors in the U.S. (REVIEW ESSAY)

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Because Pope Francis does not take the culture warrior stance, I would align him and his stance, in general, with what the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) refers to as open closure in his essay "Voice and the Opening of Closed Systems" in his book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, 1977, pages 305-341).

In systems terminology, what Ong refers to as open closure stands in contrast over against, on the one hand, closed systems, and, on the other, open systems. In theory, a totally open system of thought is not a tenable position in Ong's judgment.

But culture warriors of both the right and the left tend to embrace a closed system of thought - instead of embracing what Ong refers to as open closure. According to Father Bergoglio's way of thinking about corruption, both culture warriors of the right and the left represent corruption.

A fine test of the corruption of the abortion culture warriors of the left is offered by the priest in the Anglican Church in North America Tish Harrison Warren's recent op-ed commentary in the New York Times titled "The Systemic Realities Created by Legal Abortion" (dated January 22, 2022):

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Also see her earlier op-ed commentary titled "Why the Feminist Movement Needs Pro-Life People" (dated November 28, 2021):

Click Here

Inasmuch as abortion culture warriors of the left do not accept her arguments about what the larger concerns (besides abortion) that women in general and feminists in particular should be working for, the more those abortion culture warriors reveal their ideological corruption (in Bergoglio's terminology).

Now, I want to switch gears here. Thus far, I have found it useful to use Ong's adaptation of systems terminology. But I have also referred here to culture warriors of both the right (such as the American neoconservatives discussed by Borghesi in his new 2021 book) and the left. However, without forgetting Father Bergoglio's apt use of the term corruption, I want to turn my attention now to the late Jungian theorist and psychotherapist Robert Moore's discussion of the masculine and the feminine Warrior archetypes in all human psyches.

With Douglas Gillette as his co-author, Moore has written most extensively about the masculine Warrior/Knight archetype in all human psyches in their self-help book The Warrior Within: Accessing the Knight [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (New York: William Morrow, 1992b). Briefly, Moore and Gillette discuss the two "shadow" forms of the Warrior archetype and the one optimal form. They refer to one "shadow" form of the Warrior archetype as the Masochist (see esp. pages 121-131) and the other "shadow" form as the Sadist (see esp. 132-142).

Colorful names, eh? But they refer to the optimal form of the Warrior archetype as simply the optimal form.

Moore posits that the feminine Warrior archetype of maturity in all human psyches is also structured along similar lines - with two "shadow" forms and one optimal form.

By virtue of the sheer assertiveness of culture warriors of both the right and the left, I would say that they are accessing the Sadist forms of the masculine and the feminine Warrior archetypes in their psyches.

But this is not all that I want to say about the culture warriors of both the right and the left. Their corruption (in Bergoglio's terminology) is far deeper and more extensive that just that.

Moore and Gillette discuss the King archetype in the male psyche most extensively is their self-help book titled The King Within: Accessing the King [Archetype] in the Male Psyche, revised and expanded edition (Chicago: Exploration Press/ Chicago Theological Seminary, 2007; first edition, 1992a).

As in the case of the masculine Warrior archetype in all human psyches, the King archetype in all human psyches comes with two "shadow" forms and one optimal form. Moore and Gillette refer to the two "shadow" forms as:

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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