Pillar Saints and Boy Pharaohs

Alexander Bard distinguishes between two archetypes—each of which can be dangerous—but more so together. Understanding them can help us become more complete, effective beings.

The inimitable Alexander Bard distinguishes between two archetypes—each of which can be dangerous, especially in such fraught times as these. But they are more dangerous in tandem. Bard calls them “Pillar Saints” and “Boy Pharaohs.”

The Pillar Saint is the archetype who loves his mind but hates his body (Plato). The Boy Pharaoh is the archetype who loves his body but hates his mind (Stalin). The Pillar Saint lives way up in the Land of Ought while the Boy Pharaoh throws his weight around.

One is sanctimony without efficacy. One is petulance without pondering. Each tries to live without pathos or logos, respectively, says Bard, depending on which reveals its childishness. What does Bard mean by childishness? Basically, Pillar Saints and Boy Pharaohs aspire to be gods, but they can’t be because they are incomplete and underdeveloped.

Pillar Saints—Ponder, fret, and moralize but do nothing of substance.
Boy Pharaohs—Do wreckless things without reflection or wisdom.

Philosopher

Cadell Last

describes Bard’s distinction thus:

For Bard, it is the failures of these types of men that have led to the reaction to a cynically nihilistic world (“post-modernism”), which cannot really think the masculine, which is not capable of navigating the split between body and mind.

One would hope, then, that a truly effective, embodied person would recognize where he is strongest but have enough of the other pole to find complementarity. The anima/animus distinction, for example, means the masculine and feminine aren’t a strict duality but are connected as a whole, as each appears in the other.

My simple American interpretation is autist-activists and narcissist-despots. Here are some examples. Remember, at the end of the day, these are but tendencies in people, so don’t be offended if you see someone you admire:

1. Greta Thunberg—Pillar Saint

2. Donald Trump—Boy Pharaoh

3. Yuval Noah Harrari—Pillar Saint

4. Gavin Newson—Boy Pharaoh

5. Patrick Deneen—Pillar Saint

6. Hilary Clinton—Boy Pharaoh

7. Ibram X. Kendi—Pillar Saint

8. Justin Trudeau—Boy Pharaoh

9. Immanuel Kant—Pillar Saint

10. Joseph Stalin—Boy Pharaoh

Even though each can be immature or inexperienced on certain vectors, Pillar Saints and Boy Pharaohs can make one hell of an unholy alliance—not unlike Bootleggers and Baptists.

In other words, the priest and the chieftain need each other. But when they exist as a strict duality, each relative to the other, their relationship can evolve out of expedience in perverse or destructive ways. Two immature souls find they are wholly incomplete and immature but powerful as an interlocking pair.

And therein lies their danger.

Power Couple

Greta Thunberg warns of an impending apocalypse and scowls at the old people for daring to drive and cool their homes while not voting for policies that would send humanity back to the Stone Age. She doesn’t know how to save the planet from the climate emergency, but she knows how to scold, shame, and ask “How dare you?” Some of us will still be rolling our eyes in twelve eight years, after yet another countdown to extinction hits zero.

Gavin Newson transmutes Greta’s sanctimony into a form of dark magick that drives his political ambitions. He doesn’t care about the planet. Pillar-Saint hysteria fuels his ambition! Today, he looks at himself in the mirror, gels his hair back—his A/C is always set to 69 degrees F to protect that sweet hairdo—then drives to Sacramento to sign some bill or other that rewards his political cronies, consolidates his power, and makes life shitter for poor people who must now pay $6.00/gallon and deal with more brown-outs from the CA energy utility.

For better or worse, though, these two are a dynamite duo.

Machines Eating Ghosts

But when Pillar Saints and Boy Pharaohs don’t get along, things usually don’t go well for the Pillar Saints.

Consider Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian writer and activist. He founded the website Free Saudi Liberals to advocate for free speech. His critical writings about religion in Saudi Arabia led to his 2012 arrest on charges of insulting Islam, followed by accusations of apostasy. Initially facing a death sentence, Badawi was ultimately sentenced in 2014 to 1,000 lashes and ten years in prison. He suffered 50 lashes publicly in 2015. During his imprisonment, Badawi has engaged in hunger strikes to protest prison conditions. His wife, Ensaf Haidar, now residing in Canada, has received numerous awards on his behalf.

Augusto Pinochet was a Boy Pharaoh who had Allende’s socialist Pillar Saints killed, a fact that also stains the legacy of the Chicago Boys economic reforms in Chile—merely by association. (Overthrow is different from Underthrow, you see.) In any case, Boy Pharaohs are kinetic, so when their emotions get the best of them, they stomp around, lash out, or seek to dominate.

That being said, Pillar Saints can make life hell for Boy Pharaohs, too. All it takes is the appearance of impropriety to destroy a career. Besides, how many Judith Butler wannabes does it take to dismantle the patriarchy? How many warnings of the “metacrisis” must we all endure before the Boy Pharaohs just say “fuck off” and start clear-cutting rainforests or driving monster trucks just to spite them?

Jnana, Bhakti, Karma

Mr. Bard might not like this, but in certain ways, Pillar Saints and Boy Pharaohs seem rather like extreme subtypes of Head types and Gut types, respectively, in the head-heart-gut triad. This ancient triad serves as the basis for Gurdjieff and others before him who developed the Enneagram.

I could be wrong, of course. This is not social science as much as symbology.

I think it’s useful to make this observation, however imperfect because Head, Heart, and Gut types usually need to figure out how to get into alignment with their secondary and tertiary types from time to time to become more integrated beings. We need the logos, the pathos, and the ethos working in harmony to be healthy beings. At the very least when we’re super strong on one dimension, we should team up and find complementarity.

Consider the practice of the Three Yogas:

1. Jnana Yoga or the Path of Knowledge (Jñāna-mārga)—head

2. Bhakti Yoga or the Path of Devotion (Bhakti-mārga) to Ishvar (God)—heart

3. Karma Yoga or the Path of Action (Karma-mārga)—gut

I ain’t no Hindoo, so I’ll quit the yoga talk before I make an ass of myself. All I’m saying is that to the extent we’re weaker along some dimension, we can seek each other out and become stronger as teams.

But this is not dissimilar to the unholy alliance between Pillar Saints—all head, no gut—and Boy Pharaohs—all gut, no head.

While both are emotional, their Path of Devotion is to an incomplete part of themselves—which they treat as a god. So they emote in dangerous outbursts as a child would: one holding forth or spitting sanctimony from on high, the other bulldozing that which he had no hand in creating so people will remind him that he’s the boss.

Integrated Beings

Those who are willing to summon both their priest-scholar self and their chieftain-mover self ought never to forget about their artist-lover self and endeavor to bring all of these selves into alignment for the job.

As a head type, I identify with the Pillar Saint subtype to some degree. In fact, my mother once said I was ‘just like’ my charismatic Christian paternal grandmother—an accusation from which I once recoiled.

In time, I came to see that Mom was right. I just had a different religion.

Anyway, I know if I get lost in my head, my writing will suck, and I’ll never create anything but aspy abstractions rendered in pixels. Good writing is head, heart, and gut.

The most interesting and efficacious people in the world are both/and/and beings.

• Steve Jobs (even though he understood he had to team up with Woz)

• Jane Jacobs (empathic urban planner, on-site observer, and writer)

• Thomas Jefferson (philosopher, farmer, and statesman)

• Marcus Aurelius (philosopher and ruler)

• Maynard James Keenan (singer/songwriter and vintner)

They used to be called “Renaissance” men and women, which is one reason why Alexander Bard considers himself a founding member of the Dark Renaissance.

Such integrated beings are perfect candidates for subversive innovation because they are neither gnostic ghosts nor mindless machines but embodied humans who live until they die. They want to raise good kids with the right balance of wisdom and whippings, make meaning and impact, satisfy their spouses both in the bed or at the kitchen table—and keep trying to liberate this world using every last bit of what it means to be human.

Or die trying.