[UA] Tha Bad Influence Archetype

[Nick Wedig]

>Technically, Socrates was seen as a Bad Influence in
>his time period (or so Plato tells us.)

You get a better idea of that by reading the other contemporaries who commented on Socrates.  Xenophon, Herodotus (very little about Socrates, actually, and not really relevant) and Aristophanes are the ones I recall.  Esp. the last, what with the "Clouds" and all.

Probably Socrates was following some other archetype.  The Fool maybe ('I know that I know nothing') or the Sage (the wisest of all men).  Maybe the Philosopher, who sometimes is an intellectual rebel, like Socrates, or sometimes follows the established norms, like Anselm.

>Manson and Eminem certainly seem to expressing the
>archetype in a way, but for totally commercial
>reasons.  They are, to their credit, attempting to
>redefine the arts in which they work and are doing it
>in a sensational (i.e. very noticeable) way.

In the small handful of times I've seen Marilyn Manson interviewed, he's seemed pretty intelligent, and quite aware that acting as he does was bound to create a backlash from the Christian right and such.  So I'm thinking that he maybe was doing it deliberately, playing the Devil's Advocate, perhaps a version of the Two Faced Man.

>I think you need to define the Bad Influence's taboo a
>little more (it looks like you left something out.) 
>It would appear that the Bad Influence must, like the
>Flying Woman, never bow to conventional authority. 

It all seems to move toward the Rebel, really.  

Mr. Teapot
the Rebel

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