'Roles' and 'Cultural Evolution'

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Opening up this forum to consider the topic of ‘roles’, which has recently been quite prominent in my own sense making. What are the many ‘roles’ that we have, occupy and lean into in our own lives, consciously and unconsciously, and how might different ‘cultures’ might enable or invite different ‘roles’? In particular, Goffman researches and looks into ‘roles’ as a way to understand the dynamics of social life; and how a lot of our roles are ‘performative’. Confucius as well had a very strong interest in the power of ‘roles’ and how they shape social reality, and why we should obey them to maintain social order. I wonder, how if at all people have considered ‘roles’ as it relates to ‘integral’? In the shift out of ‘postmodernism’, might there be a more community based, playful, and liberating cast of ‘roles’ we might play, and what might that look like? How does this relate to ‘new kinds of social organization’?

Related to this theme, attached below is a brief piece on ‘roles’ in neoliberalism just published. I use the ‘Greek Gods’ as a way to consider roles in a more ‘mythical’ or ‘archetypal’ way and apply it to how I think (roughly) these mythical roles appear in ‘neoliberalism’ or the ‘neoliberal imagination’ (obviously very broadly); ie, what kind of person appears as Zeus, Hera, Apollo etc.

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The question of roles seems especially alive now, not only because the old masks are cracking, but because the stage itself feels like it’s dissolving beneath us. Goffman gives us the theatre, Confucius the order, Integral the evolution—but I wonder if we are being invited now into something subtler. Not new roles, but a new relation to role.

Neoliberalism, as you imply, offers roles as commodities—identities for optimisation, not for meaning. The archetypal dimensions still flicker (the Zeus CEO, the Apollo tech visionary, the Hera HR enforcer), but they are flattened, aestheticised, monetised. We perform not to participate in a mythic order, but to survive the algorithm.

Confucianism, in contrast, offered roles as relational harmonics—not performance but participation. Integral tries to reconcile the inner and outer, but often feels abstracted from the visceral, symbolic realm in which roles are actually lived.

Perhaps the task now is not to invent new roles outright, but to descend back into the archetypal field, and ask: what gods are being ignored? What roles are we starving of cultural permission?

The Rememberer. The Weaver. The Dissolver. The Edge-dweller. The One Who Waits.

Roles not in service of productivity, but in service of coherence. Roles that aren’t “jobs” or “titles” but modes of being in relation to the whole.

What kind of society makes room for these? That, to me, is the deeper social architecture question. And perhaps the answer lies not in designing new roles top-down, but in listening for the roles that already live in the silence, waiting to be re-invited.

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Well put. In trying to get SD and related models to work better in practice, I reconceptualized all the SD spirals as skill sets. (KSA - Knowledge, Skills, Abilities - in workforce training lingo). To me, the “postmodern” skill set involves gaining degrees of freedom from fixed identity, narratives, symbols, and roles. The postmodern is better at prying all these loose than it is on guiding people how to put them back on again under new circumstances, but first things first.

The person with integral (Gebser) ,or yellow (SD), consciousness supposedly has the ability to pick and choose from identity, narratives, symbols, and roles, depending on values, or circumstances, or skillful means, or really anything at all. That sort of consciousness is all about enjoying degrees of freedom, but using that freedom toward whatever telos may be on offer.

With respect to @matthewlifeitself’s article above, no one has ever confused me with Aphrodite, but I imagine having tested most of the other roles from time to time. (Zeus in small productions only, to be sure.). The point is to have a wide repertoire, and to make authentic and productive choices in the emerging moment.

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Well put Justin, I very much appreciate the feedback.

“Roles not in service of productivity, but in service of coherence. Roles that aren’t “jobs” or “titles” but modes of being in relation to the whole.”

" Perhaps the task now is not to invent new roles outright, but to descend back into the archetypal field , and ask: what gods are being ignored? What roles are we starving of cultural permission?"

Indeed it does mostly offer roles as commodities; and these roles as commodities end up having a deep effect on the underlying nervous system/soul of the person playing them. Another important ‘role’ or relationship here is being ‘right’ and ‘wrong’; more of an implicit ‘role’, but there is very often a sense in the way ‘debates’ are framed, or certain discussions are framed, that someone must be right, someone must be in the wrong. And the ‘observer’ role as well is key here. And also, from the ‘audience’ perspective, not having the expectation that one should be right or wrong, but instead moving towards participation.

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Just browsing on the forum and jumping in here because you’re talking mythology!
Given that you are talking about roles as commodities, it strikes me, Matthew, that your presentation of the Greek Gods is very much as images or feelings. I wonder if you would see them differently if you were to look instead at their stories.
Zeus never created the world, or anything else really, but, after defeating his terrible father, he rules it with cunning kingcraft as well as vast raw power. Yet he is always aware of, and always diverting, challenges to his rule, with subtle or brutal means. The first time he does this it is by eating his pregnant wife Metis which leads to the birth of his ‘heir’ Athena. Athena invented democracy and resolved an impossible moral dilemma by averring that women were less important than men. How it is possible to be the heir of an immortal is never clear.
Demeter, far from being a useless activist, is perhaps the only one of them ever to seriously threaten Zeus’ world order. She is motivated by overwhelming grief and rage and her ‘protest’ takes the form of a very real, and very deliberate, threat to cause a worldwide famine.
I feel that maybe this view of these gods as active characters rather than static archetypes has something to offer here against identities as commodities.
Or maybe this stuff is just fun to talk about.
Oh and the one left out - of the actual Olympians - is Hestia of course. Not hard to see why.