The Chemical Wedding
The Paradoxical Curative Power of Peterson’s Message Part II
I re-watched ‘Bourne Legacy’ last night, again. I was struck by a scene near the end, when Rachel Weisz’ character ‘Dr Shearing’, goes out in a Manila morning to get medicine for the healing Jeremy Renner character, ‘Aaron’. She’s returning to their hideout, and sees the Filipino Police surrounding their room. She’s a fugitive as well, and risks her own safety and security to scream out, ‘Aaron…RUN!!’. She chose loyalty to their partnership and purpose over the ‘safety & security’ of the state/ crowd.
Let me back-up. Dr Shearing was traumatized when a fellow lab-worker went on a shooting rampage. The Bourne program ‘Outcome’, had turned and was eliminating their participants including Aaron. Dr Shearing was in shock after the lab episode, and was hauled into a Lindsay Shepherd-style interrogation at her home. They were going to stage her suicide. She was surrounded, over-powered and outgunned and yet, held her own. ‘What kind of doctor are you, exactly?’, ‘Did you see the tapes, do you really think that’s what happened?’, ‘Do you know what we do in there?’, ‘Behavior modification’. Despite her fragile state, she was a fighter and was going to fight for herself to the end.
Aaron arrived to rescue his physician (Shearing), to save himself. He was after her expertise. But, he saw more in her. He challenged her choices morally — ‘you just load the gun?’, ‘you call us by numbers?’. She had her rationalizations, ‘I took sacrifices, I couldn’t conference, I couldn’t publish’. The combination of having nowhere to run and Aaron appealing to her humanity, had them both embarking on a global adventure together to redeem the situation and cut his strings. Dr Shearing was willing to sacrifice everything to help Aaron gain back his soul. She decided to use her abilities for the betterment of herself and humanity, rather than careerism.
The final scene says it all. Aaron had saved the Doctor. He gave her a chance to be so much more, ‘you’re a warrior’. In return, Shearing viralled him out. She became the best of herself which enabled him to be his best, his own man, hero & savior. In the closing scene, Aaron is still analyzing ‘assessing their options’ and Weisz’s character suggests they surrender to what they’ve become together, ‘I was hoping we were lost’, cue the Moby music.
Chemical wedding or marriage, sometimes called coniunctio, in alchemy is the joining of the male elements (fire and air that are represented by sulphur) with the female elements (water and earth that are represented by argent vive or quicksilver) in philosophical mercury. This symbolizes the gold, King Sol, and silver, Queen Luna, respectively. This final fusion of opposites produces the philosopher’s stone.
I’ve often wondered if Jordan Peterson is living a contradiction. He believes the sovereignty of the individual is the highest value. Yet, he espouses his marriage as his greatest source of strength. Isn’t his a party of two (group identity) at the fundamental level? The Chemical Wedding holds the answer. Could our partnerships be the contrast that holds the untapped potential and meaning for ourselves as individuals?
Lie #2 — “We don’t need each other to thrive. We don’t need to surrender to our partnership to be all that we can be as individuals. What makes us different, makes you wrong. The 3-year-old version of this is, ‘I can do this my own self’.” See here for ‘Lie #1’
Peterson sees his marriage as his foundational navigating vehicle. Most don’t seem to function this way. Our homes are our incubators intended for thriving lives. They actually are ‘safe spaces’. They should be non-competitive, celebrate individual differences and achievements, and treat everyone fairly. But maybe we take safe space too far. We all know it’s not good to coddle our children too long, for example. The below archetype could apply to husband/ wife/ father/ mother/ employer, etc.:
“… the devouring mother archetype is one that can be described as a woman who selfishly loves her children, “protecting” them from the real world to such an extent that they become permanent infants — incompetent wards of the mother for life. She is only loving when her children do what she wants, and she is hateful, cruel, and even homicidal when they don’t.
As social creatures, we need acceptance from our mothers, partially because when we are born we are completely dependent on our parents for survival. As a result, when we feel or get the impression our parents don’t want us, a powerful desire to gain acceptance takes hold. This motivates us in many different ways to do things that make us feel more worthy of our parental figures, acknowledged in psychology generals as the motivating power of shame. When we grow up, society takes on this role of parental figure, shaming us to do things to earn acceptance from our peers, society, or the world in general.
This shame motivates us to buy consumer goods, … go to war, eat toxic foods, and engage in codependent relationships, to name a few — all in an effort to regain favor with the archetypal mother deep within the subconscious mind.
The state, at present, is a hateful mother archetype because society dumbs down its citizens, making them incompetent to such an extent that they are wards of the state, who cannot manage their own lives. The quintessential oedipal mother who prevents her children from growing up.
Are we ‘selfishly loving our spouses, “protecting” them from the real world to such an extent that they become permanent infants’?’!! Maybe we should be incubating the right micro-routines in our homes. Peterson says that he and his wife have realized that there’s nothing too small to argue about. He admits if Hate Speech is ever going to get uttered, it will be during a passionate intimate argument. What if our relationships, are meant to be our ‘charging circuit for life’? Maybe the contrast that presents itself in everyday interactions, is your intimate untapped potential
“Things that bother you have to be confronted voluntarily’”
- Fundamental therapeutic truth, Jordan Peterson
‘Plugging the Profit Leaks’ was a business article in the 90’s about squeezing costs out of a typical supply chain. The idea seems relevant when looking at repairing our most intimate relationships. Where are your relationships leaking meaning? Where have you short-circuited or GMO’d the nutrition out of your home?
Virtue Signaling — ‘Better than’ rather than contrasting and differentiating. Devouring Mother — Pop idol/judge performance compliance dynamic. Sleeping Beauty/ Peter Pan — If you were the real Prince Charming/ Tinker-Belle, you’d anticipate and comply with my every whim. Virtue Signaling — Keep up appearances of success, that’s all that matters. De-Platforming — No conflicts/ contradictory views discussed. Equity of Outcome — Contrast is bad, sameness is good. Safe Space — Turn on, tune in, drop out & disconnect. Envy — What’s good for you must be bad for me (zero-sum game vs abundance attitude). Intellectual Arrogance — I have nothing to learn from you, and you can’t learn from me. Psychological Infancy — Being ‘right’/ proving myself ‘right’ is the highest value. Power/Dominance — If I go into a negotiation with you, it’s only a power/dominance battle that I’d rather deal with through passive-aggressive manipulation and besides, you’re going to be right about some aspect and that’s just not tolerable.
Relationships seem to have a life of their own, and like a child seem that they can be ‘traumatized’. Where you stumble into ignorant pride or narcissism, you arelikely close to a vulnerability. Vulnerabilities are where the gold is found. But, you have to let go of your ‘crowdsourced’ security blanket of narcissistic pride.
Peterson’s advice is to localize the vulnerability, and be painfully honest about your contribution. Re-state the counter-argument as strongly as you can (‘steel man’). Now you have a negotiation you can iterate as precisely and accurately and truthfully as you can, aiming for the highest good for all. You’re unleashing untapped potential. Unless of course, you only want to see the heroes realizing their full potential on the big screen. And, there’s always the make-up sex.
Neil McDougall is a global nomad expat father of two, who believes our shared reality is our shared responsibility.
Originally published at www.synthesismeaning.me on November 19, 2018.
