There is will in thought, there is none in dreams. Revery, which is utterly spontaneous, takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the form of our spirit. Nothing proceeds more directly and more sincerely from the very depth of our soul, than our unpremeditated and boundless aspirations towards the splendors of destiny. In these aspirations, much more than in deliberate, rational coordinated ideas, is the real character of a man to be found. Our chimeras are the things which the most resemble us. Each one of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible in accordance with his nature.
Victor Hugo - Les Misérables (1862)
Our chimeras are the things which the most resemble us. We know this too well when a chimera is an ideology.
This is what sceptics seem to dislike about ideology, it is possible for an ideology to become a largely ineradicable aspect of a personality. A chunk of personality goes missing, the chunk which would have allowed an ideologue to have a conversation within the domain of the ideology, but that domain now lies elsewhere, beyond the person, beyond their ability to have such a conversation.
To my mind this is why Keir Starmer seems to have no personality. His chimeras are all there is, nothing left, nobody inside the suit.
6 comments:
And a big problem with chimeras is that they are inexpressible. Starmer has some vague desires which drift in one particular direction. He can't really articulate that direction; even Lammy can couch his ideas in standard race/colonial stuff, and Rayner can gob off like a barmaid who is doing a sociology evening class. But Starmer can't say what he wants. It's all just half-remembered buzz-words, and off the script he is ill at ease in the extreme.
You can have a long and interesting debate about Jung's archetypes. Are they 'real' or as Jordan Peterson says 'Most fundamentally an archetype is a behavioural pattern and the reflection of that behaviour in a story.'
From which you can argue that Starmer has no natural 'archetype' to follow (such as Hero, Father, the Sage, the Ruler etc.). If Starmer is only a chimera in a suit then perhaps his archetype, his personality pattern, is 'The Suit Wearer'.
Have you noticed how he is usually shown with only the topmost shirt button undone when he is 'casual'? I rest my case.
Sam - yes, there is an inexpressible element to socialism, environmentalism and woke culture generally. It doesn't distil down into something with the adaptability to work and evolve. Starmer's legalistic outlook seems to run up against this all the time, but he doesn't appear to grasp what is making him ill at ease.
DJ - I'd go with Jordan Peterson's interpretation because it makes the idea of archetypes more fluid and usable. Your example of 'The Suit Wearer' would then be an example of that fluidity because there are such people.
I hadn't noticed Starmer's topmost shirt button signal for 'casual', although I've noticed how he never manages to look casual, but there are people like that who can't do casual.
top button? more than that would signal slob to me. I sort of do casual, it just that it tends to turn out smart anyway. In my teens a friend noted I was the only person who could make jeans look smart.
djc - I think it's almost impossible for older people to look smart in jeans. I don't try hard to look smart, but I do avoid jeans.
indeed, I gave up jeans about the time I gave up being a teen!
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