Mer: The Myth of the Puer Aeternus

I saw the image of the book on how to be everything up there and immediately thought of Barbara Sher, the grandmother of life coaching. Specifically her idea of "scanners" which is her name for people who cant pursue one interest in a sustained manner but have many interests they don't know how to narrow down, like herself. She wrote a book about it that I like very much.









I don't know her CT but she gives very funny talks (the kind of funny that isn't being deliberately so or at least doesn't appear to be) about these topics. Like this one.

Ah! TeSi. I'm starting to see a theme here. You typed Martha Beck (another famous life coach whose books I read) as TeSi too, and indeed these two have similar approaches. Martha's program teaches people to combine their varied interests and experiences into a career and life they love (and that earns them a good living) using an inner guidance system that we decided was Fi (she calls it an inner compass or sense of integrity that always knows what's right for you). The difference I see with Barbara is that Martha's system focuses on individuals long-term and one-on-one while Barabara seems to do the workshop things. Her advice is also always very practical but quirky/zany and in my experience works if followed through. She also seems to be primarily concerned about whether something works or not in real life and is also very exploratory. Maybe this career attracts these types.

I do wonder what an Ne hodgepodge combined with Fe rather than Te follow-through would look like.

Edit: I'd like to thank my recent Jungian counselor for telling my inner Western Te critic (and you, too, von Franz) to simmer down, that my psyche just really wants to be Ne. 

Both N functions (N myths) tend to a different sort of insanity, and having been part of an Ne-heavy forum in the past, I know this atmosphere very well. But it's not very easy to describe unless you've had direct exposure to it. Here are a few graphics saved from those days:


I suspect there's a lot of dark Ne in sites like 4chan, reddit, imgur, etc... where whole subcultures exist around this manic fantasy/sci-fi motif.

ugh yes finally i've been kind of dissatisfied with the mischief/trickster component of Pe being predominantly attributed to Se but i've not found the words to describe the Ne flavor just right and this has been a big help, auburn.

It kind of hit me looking at the Ne profile how the sections under mythology are "wonder" and "madness" opposed like that. I can only really speak from my own experience but i hope to build a picture of this idea in a way folks can hopefully resonate with.

As a child i was very much prone to awe. My best friend at the time i think was some kind of Ne lead as well and we annoyed everyone (especially my dad) with some of the mose insane questions. At baseball practice when we were playing catch with each other we'd be talking and bantering and it would turn into wordplay which would end when one of us found some kind of phrase or word that struck us interestingly and we'd pester my dad -- the coach -- with questions about what the phrase really means or where it comes from or why we still say it. Idioms were a big one for us.

That, i guess, is very much the spirit of Ne (or Pe in general); "if i poke this, what will it do? will it delight? will it educate? will it surprise?"
there's always an underlying belief that even if the thing being poked is a simple ol' rock there's still a chance that something interesting might happen.

but the feeling of wonder still grows muted over time. After the billionth time you've poked a rock you've gotta be realistic with yourself about how it's going to behave. Sure, maybe the rock will do something interesting, but statistics aren't on your side (lol Ti development?) and there are other endeavors to pursue more likely to yield the delight and novelty you want out of the pokeage.

but what if you look up from the rock in front of you and see that everything around you is rocks?
what happens when everything you poke resists you in the most ordinary and boring way possible?
when every avenue in front of you is one you're intimately familiar with to the point you say "why the fuck bother?"

i really cannot stress how fundamentally, hatefully, unbearably awful a feeling it is for me to wake up in the morning and know exactly what i'm going to do for the day. to know how every nuance of every moment is going to feel. to know what conversations i'm likely to have and who i'm going to have them with. i hate hate hate hate hate that. it makes me not want to get out of bed. my mind wakes up, looks around and says "nothing new? just go back to sleep, something'll change later"

pushed to this limit and beyond i think Ne springs back really savagely. if there is any part of me that is fundamentally angry, it is this part of me. it's ultimately the one feeling that throws the fight-or-flight response into full overdrive. And it becomes this hole or singularity of really primal, directionless energy that essentially perceives itself as being trapped beneath rocks upon rocks. Imprisoned, if you will.

and what a truly, awfully, soul-drainingly horrible feeling it is to walk out the door in the morning and see a world around you that feels like prison, stretching out as far as the eye can see. believe me.



Now take that^ feeling. Of living in a meaningless, blank world, and add in some pretty fucked up Si associations. Tragedies that, through the sheer cruel randomness of the world just seem to keep happening and, despite your natural optimism and ability to adapt to each one in stride, they begin to form some negative patterns.

Most girls i've known well and a lot of the guys (including myself) have been victims of rape, or abuse, or have been homeless, or hurt in some other way. People are hurting everywhere and nothing seems to help and the wounds just keep deepening as everyone throws armor over them instead of bandages and no matter how hard you try you know that as soon as tomorrow the next tragedy could shoot through your life like a cannonball to the ballsack.

the thing you're thinking to yourself on repeat is no longer "wow, what a strange exciting universe i live in, i wonder what i can do to make it dance for me?" but rather "i'm living in a prison made of boredom and human suffering where the vast majority of the inmates are also the guards and they all seem very very proud of this mausoleum of misery they've constructed for themselves and i need to know what in the fuck it's going to take for me to break out of here."

And that's what it tries to do. that's what actual prisoners try to do. break out.

I'm bored, and i'm lonely, and i'm tired, and i'm tired of being bored and lonely and tired, and i'm in a fucking prison. given the supplies, if i lived in real prison i think i'd end up painting a tunnel on one of the walls and at the end of the tunnel, just out of reach, would be love and fulfilment. And i'd sprint at that fucking wall and believe with all my might that *this* time, maybe this time i'll make it through and i'd run and i'd run and i'd run at that motherfucker until either I fall down or the wall does.

i feel like that's what i'm doing sometimes. banging my head against a wall.

i think that's what a lot of art is or tries to be. it's cell graffiti. it's the metaphorical version of that anime waifu the dude in prison drew on the wall next to his bed (pauses writing to find the picture)


After a certain point of disenchantment, i think that^ is really what Ne turns into. "I just want to feel like I'm back somewhere cozy and loving. Anywhere but here." (Polar Si coziness + Si/Ne feelings of childhood nostalgia?)

BUT
as anyone familiar with Ne knows, "there are always other solutions!" Yes indeed, there are whole lot more ways to escape prison (infinite! you could even say) than just drawing on the walls.

In fact, if you look at it from that one meta-level up, you can see the Ne game within the notion of escaping in perhaps the most unique way. What's my way out? Not the way out, mind you. My way out. the one that's going to make me unique and special and noteworthy. what's the most novel way of creating novelty i can possibly manage?

At it's very darkest i think you see behavior like Rick's in Rick & Morty. The nonstop thrill-seeking because i'm bored and my mind is the size of a universe and it never stops oh god i'm bored and i'm trapped make it stop i don't care what it takes i'll break everything in sight if i have to just to get a reaction because i'm almost literally starving for something fresh and i have perhaps an overconfident sense of my abilities to put things back together later on. It very genuinely feels like your brain begins eating -- no, devouring -- itself.

But i also strongly believe the angry energy of bored Ne can be used positively, actually. I think it does become heavily touched by the Je function (personally as i've felt this and reacted to it i think it's taken a kind of exertion on the part of my Fe to turn the feeling of being trapped into a feeling that i have some kind of agency in at the very least trying to make it a fun or interesting place to be trapped in), but the point remains that this energy can definitely be channeled into a sense that i have some kind of force of will that, almost like magic, can affect the walls of this prison in some way.

I've been very interested in Jim Carrey lately, too, and he talks about how when he was younger he had a lot of anger in him (check) as a result of family/life misfortunes/disappointments (check) and he wanted to feel special and loved (check) and so he took up comedy (impressions, mostly) and acting -- both ways of taking on Fe personas -- in order to escape the life he found himself in and try and help other people escape. It's the same thing. (Anyone interested in getting a good look at the performer and escapist sides of Ne should really take a look at the documentary Jim and Andy)

You get a lot of really off the wall, wacky art and media this way. 
Bruegel the Elder, is i think a great example of the pandemonium that Ne can feel. A kind of distorted, absurdist madness that needs to be unleashed.


The movie Paprika auburn posted a clip of blew my fucking mind. I've only watched it once and i remember very few of the characters or plot details and to be honest i don't even care. it was the aesthetic of it that bored (like a drill bores, not like boredom) its way into my head (saw it in high school). the idea that the dream world and the real world were becoming one. "people with cell phones for heads! flying! frogs in a marching band! the world here is a fucking joke so let's forget it all and just celebrate!"

The Cheshire cat, also, has long been a role model for me as far as the trickster archetype goes. He always knows what he's talking about. He always knows what's up. But he doesn't hurt you or fuck with you. He just knows his shit and he won't tell you any of it in a way that makes sense, because watching you puzzle it out is just so much more fun. For everyone! And just when you want more he vanishes, leaving the big ol' smile behind last, taunting you, driving you kind of nuts.



I dunno. Just some thoughts. This has been on my mind for a while.

This resonates with me.... And yet the older I get, the less angsty and idealistic I get, and I wonder, if I get to the end and I loved the experience, I think in a sense I have 'outsmarted' the universe. Obviously the universe is a sneaky bastard and doesn't always play fair, but I win plenty of 'moments'... An evening with good wine and a great book, a sunrise in solitude, good times with close friends.

From the universe's perspective - wars, jealousies, triumphs, mysteries, suffering, redemptions, heart-ache, confusion, serenity - it's a perfectly rigged social experiment.