Meta-Masks and Meta-Archetypes
Tags: Archetypes, Masks, Metamasks, Meta Archetypes, Metamodernism

“Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?” - Thus Spoke Zarathrustra, Friedrich Nietzsche

The world is not always rational, there are phantasms of reality that can elude the most logical and rational of men. It persists as not always objective. Not a world that is governed by the unyielding demands of pure, rational science. Nor a world that functions in the manner that the mathematicians, biologists, physicists, and chemists would declare it to — that is, through abiding by the laws of simple, functional logic.

You create reality, by the very notions of existence, you input and abstract the external, these can be known as biases. You by abstracting, create thought structures, these thought structures bleed through and imprint the reality you abstract, your perception is in flux.

The reality tunnel we go through affects the perception of our entire umwelt, our reality tunnels are already different to other animals. Trying to explain a dream, it is inevitable some meaning will get lost in translation. In this post internet world, I press keys on some metal, and make appear symbols that do not exist, and thus communicate directly to your mind the words that have translated my “memes”. By virtue of existing, human beings enter the world-as-is and contaminate it with their memes, thereby transforming it. No meme is abstracted in isolation. We build off others, we build off ourselves.

Without realising you choose your masks. This behaviour is universal: we all have masks, and origins of these masks — these identifiable patterns known as archetypes — go back millennia, you’ll see patterns emerging. Most of them are easy to understand, we are embedded in the contextual memesphere, we cannot escape “ideas”. We are content with when we find ourselves embodying them or engaging with those who are embodying them.

These archetypes exist within all of our minds in some capacity, and play themselves out in all dimensions where the narratological structure of the mind is able to be unleashed. But there is one archetype that stands out, for its ability to avoid being pinned down and understood. The understanding of an archetype that bypasses the simplistic, mask-like properties of all other archetypes. Due to its nature of a fractal like mask transcending into a meta mask. A mask that is able to change its mask or archetype.

This archetype is something of a contradiction, it recognises the notion of masks and fulfilling these archetypes, but it is not pinned down by this. It recognises the notion of time frame iterations, the idea that masks can be adorned and cultivated.

A man of perfect balance between mind, body, and spirit. There is some form of morality here, but it is not born of some ethereal desire to live forever in the lands of some kindly god: it is born of skill.

The Competent Man, the meta mask archetype is a rebellious polymath. The Competent Man strives with every ounce of his being to become a master of all things, in the process transforms himself into a monumental force of nature in the world.

The movement from the static position of the mortal towards the electric speed of Nietzsche’s Übermensch. Within the Competent Man, we find the scientific genius, master artist, wise magician, and cunning trickster combined in a singular dynamic entity — his metamask is that of the man who can wear all the masks perfectly and switch between them seamlessly. As such, we must consider the Competent Man to be a meta-archetype.

The meta-archetype.

A biography, an actor plays a real person, but by playing the person he creates a new character, it has become semi-fictional, the meta-archetype is semi-fictional. This understanding of the meta-archetype has some implications, most prominent being the meta-archetype can only really be accessed in its totality when all other possible archetypes have been engaged with on a deep enough level to allow for necessary development. With this in mind, we can therefore proceed with an investigation into the meta-archetype of the Competent Man — but a caveat.

Signifying the move into meta-modernity, the notion that everyone can adorn meta masks seems apt. You get to choose your own reality, you have an exceeded ability to manipulate your reality tunnel and thus your meta mask, and thus your perceived archetype. It exists in multiplicities. There is no one meta-archetype, just like there is no meta mask. There are a multitude that exist in combination of many other archetypes.

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