They’re like money. That’s what I mean by a created abstract. It only has meaning because we give it meaning.

But they’re not absolutes. Trying to make them tangible absolutes causes misery.

We shouldn’t be forced into ones that don’t fit. This, too, causes misery.

We shouldn’t be slaves to an imagining. We shouldn’t give them power they don’t have.

Going back to the comparison with money... money was originally an imagined construct to facilitate barter so goods didn’t have to be exchanged directly. It became a token representing a trade, a tool. So far so good.

Until things like usury came along and weaponized the tool. The result of that is that a good idea has led to eons of misery.

Archetypes face the same dilemma. They can be useful as an abstract tool. They can also be weaponized against people to gain/manipulate position and advantage, creating misery.

But they’re not "real" like a person is real, or the wind is real, or any other physical thing is real, regardless of how many statuaries are carved in the archetype’s honor. Those statuaries are still just wood or stone formed into a particular shape with an idea attached to it. The same as how money is just a piece of paper, metal pressed into impressed discs, or electrons stored on a computer with ideas attached to them.

I’ll remind you that those attached ideas are not static. The same impressed disc you used to buy a pack of gum won’t necessarily do the same thing next week. It’s the same with archetypes. They are not and can never be absolutes because they’re not real to begin with. They are ideas and ideas shift, adapt, get discarded, morph, get added to, and get refined in an ongoing basis.

When you treat them as though they are tangible absolutes, like water, rather than realizing their limitations as a thought construct, you run the risk of doing more harm than good and causing misery.