Goldmund Unleashed - The Pursuit of Pure Works of Art

Female Nature

A big reason I enjoy hearing Dr. Peterson's lectures is because he takes many cultures, works of art, and literary pieces and mashes them together. He finds the patterns that connect them all together. This is his art form. Digesting information in a manner that can instruct others to do the same. These blog posts are my attempt to do the same thing. Take different experiences, mash them together, and see the underlying patterns. Those are the insights, the tiny nuggets of gold.

I have gotten to learn about the psychology behind famous stories thanks to Dr. Jordan Peterson. I love how he illustrates the archetypes that make up a story. One of the earliest known written languages comes from Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age. There is a Mesopotamian creation story about a god who slays a dragon and creates Earth from the remains. Marduk is the god who defeats Tiamat. She symbolizes primordial chaos.

This motif shows up time and time again across many civilizations. The hero ventures into the unknown (the primoridal chaos), defeats a monster (dragon), and reaps the treasure. Beowulf and the Hobbit come to mind. In addition, humans were speaking long before writing. It is not a stretch to imagine this story framework being as old as humanity itself. The archetypes are patterns of behavior that have been distilled over countless generations. These are the building blocks for our most popular modern stories.

Female nature, mother nature, the feminine spirit represents chaos. Note chaos is amoral, neither good nor bad. Mother nature has the capacity to create or destroy civilizations. A fertile land brings life. But hurricanes, volcanoes, and droughts can wipe out life. The Oedipal Mother is an example of destructive female nature. It is the pathological protection of a child to the point of destroying a child's sense of self sufficiency.

Sleeping Beauty is one example of the Oedipal Mother. Princess Aurora is so sheltered that she is completely unprepared for life and falls into a coma. In Hansel and Gretel, the witch coddles and fattens up Hansel before attempting to eat him. When Dr. Peterson talked about the Oedipal Mother, it hit me hard because that was my childhood. But my story is not unique. Without a balancing masculine presence, many kids grow up with overprotective mothers.

There is a silver lining to this. Dr. Peterson talked about the story of Jacob from the Bible. Jacob is not a hero to begin with. He's a mamma's boy that does what his mother tells him to do. And he betray's his older brother. Despite all of this, he redeems himself and becomes the father of the nation of Israel. One thing Dr. Peterson said that I really enjoyed hearing, "The genius is in the resolution. The precondition of the genius is the dissolution". There must be a period of mental struggle before the solution comes. The mentors and older brother figures I look up to have gone through a period of struggle.

This brings me to one brother figure, Goldmund, who I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with at the 21 Convention. You can read about my thoughts on the 21 Convention here. He models his life after the character Goldmund from the novel Narcissus and Goldmund. Looking back, I can clearly see the female archetypes being played out in this novel. A couple of things really struck me from reading this novel. These are mild spoilers.

In the novel, Goldmund states that often times a woman can display conflicting emotions. He notices how pain and pleasure produce the same lines on a woman's face. To expand on this conflict, women seek a man who brings both joy and fear to her soul. Love in the midst of danger is a woman's kryptonite. In addition, a true work of art is not static. The object produces the whole spectrum of human emotion. As a result, there is a sense of mystery in the piece. Looking at it multiple times can generate different reactions. Finally, Goldmund's thoughts on a mother consist of both birth and death. Mother nature both creates and destroys.

Goldmund, the real life person, has also written a couple books himself. I read Go Forth and got to learn more about female nature. The big thing women look for is passion. And I think this passion is the result of a man's fighting spirit. A quote from the book:

If you observe all of the major mammals, the male is always the one pursuing the female. She is testing his genes, asking: does he have the willpower and determination to get what he wants? Is he strong and confident enough to reach his goal? If so, she accepts his DNA.

There was also a warning to women. "The educated ones who remain single until their late twenties ended up miserable and with men who are poor mates".

Another book, The Man From Brooklyn, offers a female perspective on what she thought of Goldmund. One piece of advice she gave, "Don't abuse this, but women are incredibly patient with a man they are in love with." One more quote further illustrates the yin yang nature of women. "Women will resist your efforts of sex, but then they will do everything in their power to keep you around."

Goldmund is in the pursuit of his own true work of art. There is a constant swirl of various emotions beneath the surface which I think you can see in his face. His smile is warm and open, yet at the same time there is a hint of melancholy eyes. Because the true artist hates being typecast, I have a feeling Goldmund began his metamorphosis because he felt he was becoming too associated with the Indiana Jones theme.

I recommend you read Narcissus and Goldmund and then read Go Forth and The Man From Brooklyn. You'll better appreciate the richness of Goldmund's stories and also get a better sense of how Goldmund thinks. I also wonder, since he is modeling his life after the character Goldmund, is he willing to meet the same fate that Goldmund faced...