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When Systems Mimic Fatherhood

Jeremy:
Jeff, I want to have a five minute philosophical conversation with you. Go really deep.

Jeff:
Yes. Let’s do it.

Jeremy:
In five minutes. I just have noticed something and I’ve read something and I’m really kind of teasing it out. I just want to get your reaction to this. So, mythologically, archetypally, philosophically, there is something about big-scale systems that represent kind of almost an archetypal father. So this could be universities, governments, corporations, things like that, where they’re huge systems and what a lot of psychologists have said, people that kind of study this, is that human beings have kind of a fatherly sort of reaction to that. And the reason why I wanted to ask you about this is because I have noticed a consistent pattern of people that I would, especially women, that are really, really, deeply connected to their daughterhood.

Jeff:
Yes.

Jeremy:
They just seem like they are deep, and their fathers don’t really, they haven’t given them much of a vision. There’s no real opportunity for them to interact with their father. That they become obsessed with these big systems. So they get really, they become very good parts of a big university system or really deep into serving in the government. And this is not a critique, by the way. This is an observation that there’s something there that is inside the heart of a daughter that really wants to serve a father and that where does a woman go who is experiencing their daughterhood at a deep level, but they can’t engage their father?

And so I’ve just seen this. I’ve noticed it over and over and over again. I’ve noticed a lot recently. And it keeps coming up and I just keep having this thought that she doesn’t have a daughter … Or she doesn’t have a father to work with in that way. But she’s got this incredible passion to serve this larger entity, so to speak.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Jeremy:
It’s the thing with a strong vision, with a lot of understandable structure, with a lot of order. I think men interact with those same systems, but they interact with them somewhat differently. And that’s why I kind of wanted to tease this out with you a little bit. What are your thoughts? Does that stir up anything for you or what do you think is going on there?

Jeff:
I wasn’t ready for that.

Jeremy:
Five minutes, we’ve got to. It’s like, we got to deal with this philosophical issue.

Jeff:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yes, I totally agree. I would say, I think about it not evenly, but I would say, I was just thinking about it in the sense of both, yeah, what places are people looking for? And I don’t even think this is conservative Christian culture. I’m just saying, “Yeah, everyone from Carl Jung to psychological archetypes live and exist and breathe in certain places.” And yeah, which ones are the motherly ones and which one are the fatherly ones? Is it in culture that you’re going to for resonance? That you’re going to for … Not to fill the void. That’s you on an evenly … But at some level you are.

Jeremy:
Right.

Jeff:
But in a more minor way. These echoes, these shadows, that are doing something on a deeper level for you that you’re not aware of.

Jeremy:
That’s right.

Jeff:
And I think that is a fascinating conversation. I don’t know, but I do think there’s warrant there to what you said for sure. And so I think anyone asking that and asking themselves of that would only help, not hurt. It’s just like, oh, is there anything there? What story am I telling? What story am I believing? What story am I pursuing? Because in every story, there’s going to be someone who is that person or that hero or that, that, and it could be a system or an institution under the guise of an archetype that you want or have missed in the past. So, yeah. I think it’s fascinating.

Jeremy:
Yeah. And I think we oftentimes don’t see the family connection between the things that we’re experiencing or not experiencing in our family and the things that we are experiencing larger in the culture. We don’t realize that there is probably … There are these sort of family archetypes that exist beyond the family. There are people like Carl Jung who has sort of teased out that connection. We’re not going to get to the bottom of this today, you guys. But I just think it’s important to know that. It’s important to understand that. That because we’re all living out a story, and it tends to be a family story, just because people’s families sort of fall apart or people’s families are strong or weak in different areas, it doesn’t mean those same family stories aren’t playing themselves out in some other realm.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Jeremy:
And if you can start to notice those connections, they’re really interesting. And yeah, that’s something that I’ve been thinking about.

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