“Thought of the Week” for August 23, 1999
THE SACRED POWER OF METAPHOR TWISTED TO MANIPULATION AND ENTRAPMENT
“Thought of the Week” for July 5, 2004
...Quoting Manfred Lurker, “The meaning of the symbol does not lie in the symbol itself but points to something else outside. According to Goethe, true symbolism is found wherever ‘the particular represents the general, not as a dream or shadow, but as a living, momentary revelation of the inexplicable.'” (p. ix)
“The ‘hidden persuaders’ of modern advertising,” writes Gerhart Wehr (1972), “know how to use the power of images. They know how to subject the Average Joe to an even greater loss of freedom—by manipulating symbols that lead the unsuspecting fellow to spin fantasies.” Usually discussing symbols is a benign activity, one that points the way to the intellectual treasures of the past and revitalizes them. But unscrupulous use of this coded world can trap people and turn them into robots.” (p. ix-x)
Hans Biedermann. (1992). Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings Behind Them (J. Hulbert, Trans.). New York: FactsOnFile.
Comment:
The “sacred” power
of metaphor and symbol
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 1999 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
As the windows to the subconscious (the spirit, the “inexplicable”), symbols, metaphor, and myths are sacred in the sense that they connect us to the deeper emotions and meanings in our lives. We respond to them at the deepest level of our awareness. They activate archetypes, emotions, instincts and longings that are the foundation of our being.
In traditional times, the use of symbolic language was usually reserved for the shaman, the monk, the priest, corandara or magic-user, the person whose character and training had prepared him or her to live on the dangerous interface between the temporal and eternal. The shamans had transcended the basic attachments to life, including greed and a desire for power. They could be trusted to use the symbols and retell the myths. They could be trusted with the symbols (the spiritual language) of their cultures because they were concerned with the good of the community and the individuals in it.
Today, however, things have changed. The symbols, myths, metaphors (including the hero)―those traditional guides to our greater spiritual self―are now being used not by the trusted shaman, but by those who wish to manipulate: the advertisers, the politicians, the pseudo religious leaders. These people have discovered the power in the symbols, and they are using our sacred language to manipulate and control us.
The Hero, formerly a symbol of the highest values of a culture, now is paid tens of millions of dollars to use his/her sacred role to convince us to buy shoes or subscribe to a certain long distance telephone service. Recently, the American women’s soccer team won the world championship. The women on the team were touted as role models who could motivate girls on their journeys through life. Last night I saw a commercial in which one of those soccer players was pushing beer. As a cultural hero (at least for the moment), the young lady was in position to be heroic; she chose instead to be part of the manipulation, to strengthen the tie between alcohol and sports, telling those young ladies who look up to her that drinking is ok, even for athletes.
But heroes are not the only cultural symbols being used to control and manipulate us. The symbols of the archetypal energies which are the core of our sense of being have become tools in the hands of advertisers. The “Anima” and “Animus” now sell products through references to sex. The Warrior now sells us video games, guns or tickets to WWF. Our Orphan archetype is activated to generate fear — of rejection, of the future, of abandonment — to sell us soap, deodorant or a political philosophy. The Shadow, perhaps the most powerful of all, is used the drag us into violent video games and movies, to convince us to support a war against “them,” and to manipulate us into striking outward instead of looking inward.
Who are the most susceptible to these manipulations? Our children. They are the primary targets, and they are the least prepared to see the manipulations for what they are and to resist them.
Is it any wonder that many children feel like violence it their primary mode of expression. Their sacred points of passage have been turned into marketing opportunities. Their sacred stories have been twisted into movies and books designed to earn money rather than to point to growth and understanding. Their sacred symbols are used to take from them rather than to give to them. When our young people go to the symbols, the myths, the heroes — those sacred windows to their deeper selves and sense of true meaning — they find someone trying to manipulate them, to take their time, their money, and their minds.
The one refuge from this attack has been the school. Traditionally, schools have been free of the pressures of the media and advertisers. In school we can take time to look, to explore and to understand. The words school and scholar come from the Greek schole, which means leisure employed in learning. Even the word educate — from the Latin ex-, meaning out, and ducare, meaning to draw — suggests schools should be places where we can take time to explore ideas and to draw out the student own understanding.
But the school’s role as a refuge from the pressure of life and the media bombardment is changing. Many schools have bought into the message of business, which is that we should train their workers, not educate our young. Many schools have sold out to the advertisers, with exclusive contracts for soft drinks, athletic equipment, and food. More and more schools buy texts which use brand name advertisers (who pay for the privilege) in examples of math problems. Many schools use slick, “free” lesson packages created and provided by businesses, businesses which have their own agenda to promote. The leisure is gone and the refuge is gone.
Where is the individual’s Hero’s Journey in all of this? Unfortunately, it has been subverted for the pseudo journey created by the media, the advertisers, and the manipulators. Is this why children feel frustrated and too often violent? Are we stealing their childhood from them by pressuring them onto the “road to success” and by treating them not as exciting, growing intellects, but as cogs in our culture’s capitalistic machinery?
Our children are thrust into in an accelerated, consumption-oriented, thought-discouraging competition to reach the top of some ladder. Will they thank us for the shove we give them on their way up? Probably not. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, most of them will struggle up that ladder toward what they have been taught is success only to discover years down the road that, in the rush and confusion, they’ve put their ladder against the wrong wall.
When the language of the spirit, of the unconscious, of the Self is appropriated to manipulate, the connection with the spirit is damaged. When this happens, we are damaged because a vital aspect of our lives is missing. In our compulsion with progress, consumption and technology, we are damaging our children in countless ways. That damage is only beginning to manifest itself in frustration and violence, violence made easier because the sense of Self and the capacity for deep thought have been stolen and replaced by a fear of the future, by a rushing to keep from being lost, and by the conditioning to be a good consumer, a good worker — but never oneself.
The Hero’s Journey may still be a part of our children’s lives, but the din of “false calls” from the advertisers, the media, the politicians, and the businesses make the genuine Call harder and harder to discern. Even when one hears the Call of the Self, that voice may do nothing more than mock our inability to act. When the Self is crushed and the Journey is gone, what is left? Bitterness, anger, frustration — dangerous emotions in a world which teaches you that violence is the first resort to solving problems.
What do we do? Schools may be the only hope to begin the process, but not until we decide that “job training” is only a small part of education. We can do little until we decide that it is more important to help our children sift through the media din to hear their own Call. We can do little until we decide that wisdom is the first step toward growth and trust facts and information to come along naturally when the time is right.
The first step may be to reclaim ownership of our sacred symbols. Teach students how they are being manipulated by these powerful carriers of meaning. Teach them to use the symbols for themselves, to gain insight into life and themselves through their literature, their films, their history, and their own experience. Otherwise, Columbine will be just one of an ever-growing number of violent expressions of a youth which has lost touch with its spiritual side. We can never return the sacred language to the control of the shaman, but we can help our students see how the language is used to manipulate them and how they can resist the manipulations and hear the Call to their own journeys.
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“Thought of the Week” for August 23, 1999
THE SACRED POWER OF METAPHOR TWISTED TO MANIPULATION AND ENTRAPMENT
“Thought of the Week” for July 5, 2004
...Quoting Manfred Lurker, “The meaning of the symbol does not lie in the symbol itself but points to something else outside. According to Goethe, true symbolism is found wherever ‘the particular represents the general, not as a dream or shadow, but as a living, momentary revelation of the inexplicable.'” (p. ix)
“The ‘hidden persuaders’ of modern advertising,” writes Gerhart Wehr (1972), “know how to use the power of images. They know how to subject the Average Joe to an even greater loss of freedom—by manipulating symbols that lead the unsuspecting fellow to spin fantasies.” Usually discussing symbols is a benign activity, one that points the way to the intellectual treasures of the past and revitalizes them. But unscrupulous use of this coded world can trap people and turn them into robots.” (p. ix-x)
Hans Biedermann. (1992). Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings Behind Them (J. Hulbert, Trans.). New York: FactsOnFile.
Comment:
The “sacred” power
of metaphor and symbol
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 1999 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
As the windows to the subconscious (the spirit, the “inexplicable”), symbols, metaphor, and myths are sacred in the sense that they connect us to the deeper emotions and meanings in our lives. We respond to them at the deepest level of our awareness. They activate archetypes, emotions, instincts and longings that are the foundation of our being.
In traditional times, the use of symbolic language was usually reserved for the shaman, the monk, the priest, corandara or magic-user, the person whose character and training had prepared him or her to live on the dangerous interface between the temporal and eternal. The shamans had transcended the basic attachments to life, including greed and a desire for power. They could be trusted to use the symbols and retell the myths. They could be trusted with the symbols (the spiritual language) of their cultures because they were concerned with the good of the community and the individuals in it.
Today, however, things have changed. The symbols, myths, metaphors (including the hero)―those traditional guides to our greater spiritual self―are now being used not by the trusted shaman, but by those who wish to manipulate: the advertisers, the politicians, the pseudo religious leaders. These people have discovered the power in the symbols, and they are using our sacred language to manipulate and control us.
The Hero, formerly a symbol of the highest values of a culture, now is paid tens of millions of dollars to use his/her sacred role to convince us to buy shoes or subscribe to a certain long distance telephone service. Recently, the American women’s soccer team won the world championship. The women on the team were touted as role models who could motivate girls on their journeys through life. Last night I saw a commercial in which one of those soccer players was pushing beer. As a cultural hero (at least for the moment), the young lady was in position to be heroic; she chose instead to be part of the manipulation, to strengthen the tie between alcohol and sports, telling those young ladies who look up to her that drinking is ok, even for athletes.
But heroes are not the only cultural symbols being used to control and manipulate us. The symbols of the archetypal energies which are the core of our sense of being have become tools in the hands of advertisers. The “Anima” and “Animus” now sell products through references to sex. The Warrior now sells us video games, guns or tickets to WWF. Our Orphan archetype is activated to generate fear — of rejection, of the future, of abandonment — to sell us soap, deodorant or a political philosophy. The Shadow, perhaps the most powerful of all, is used the drag us into violent video games and movies, to convince us to support a war against “them,” and to manipulate us into striking outward instead of looking inward.
Who are the most susceptible to these manipulations? Our children. They are the primary targets, and they are the least prepared to see the manipulations for what they are and to resist them.
Is it any wonder that many children feel like violence it their primary mode of expression. Their sacred points of passage have been turned into marketing opportunities. Their sacred stories have been twisted into movies and books designed to earn money rather than to point to growth and understanding. Their sacred symbols are used to take from them rather than to give to them. When our young people go to the symbols, the myths, the heroes — those sacred windows to their deeper selves and sense of true meaning — they find someone trying to manipulate them, to take their time, their money, and their minds.
The one refuge from this attack has been the school. Traditionally, schools have been free of the pressures of the media and advertisers. In school we can take time to look, to explore and to understand. The words school and scholar come from the Greek schole, which means leisure employed in learning. Even the word educate — from the Latin ex-, meaning out, and ducare, meaning to draw — suggests schools should be places where we can take time to explore ideas and to draw out the student own understanding.
But the school’s role as a refuge from the pressure of life and the media bombardment is changing. Many schools have bought into the message of business, which is that we should train their workers, not educate our young. Many schools have sold out to the advertisers, with exclusive contracts for soft drinks, athletic equipment, and food. More and more schools buy texts which use brand name advertisers (who pay for the privilege) in examples of math problems. Many schools use slick, “free” lesson packages created and provided by businesses, businesses which have their own agenda to promote. The leisure is gone and the refuge is gone.
Where is the individual’s Hero’s Journey in all of this? Unfortunately, it has been subverted for the pseudo journey created by the media, the advertisers, and the manipulators. Is this why children feel frustrated and too often violent? Are we stealing their childhood from them by pressuring them onto the “road to success” and by treating them not as exciting, growing intellects, but as cogs in our culture’s capitalistic machinery?
Our children are thrust into in an accelerated, consumption-oriented, thought-discouraging competition to reach the top of some ladder. Will they thank us for the shove we give them on their way up? Probably not. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, most of them will struggle up that ladder toward what they have been taught is success only to discover years down the road that, in the rush and confusion, they’ve put their ladder against the wrong wall.
When the language of the spirit, of the unconscious, of the Self is appropriated to manipulate, the connection with the spirit is damaged. When this happens, we are damaged because a vital aspect of our lives is missing. In our compulsion with progress, consumption and technology, we are damaging our children in countless ways. That damage is only beginning to manifest itself in frustration and violence, violence made easier because the sense of Self and the capacity for deep thought have been stolen and replaced by a fear of the future, by a rushing to keep from being lost, and by the conditioning to be a good consumer, a good worker — but never oneself.
The Hero’s Journey may still be a part of our children’s lives, but the din of “false calls” from the advertisers, the media, the politicians, and the businesses make the genuine Call harder and harder to discern. Even when one hears the Call of the Self, that voice may do nothing more than mock our inability to act. When the Self is crushed and the Journey is gone, what is left? Bitterness, anger, frustration — dangerous emotions in a world which teaches you that violence is the first resort to solving problems.
What do we do? Schools may be the only hope to begin the process, but not until we decide that “job training” is only a small part of education. We can do little until we decide that it is more important to help our children sift through the media din to hear their own Call. We can do little until we decide that wisdom is the first step toward growth and trust facts and information to come along naturally when the time is right.
The first step may be to reclaim ownership of our sacred symbols. Teach students how they are being manipulated by these powerful carriers of meaning. Teach them to use the symbols for themselves, to gain insight into life and themselves through their literature, their films, their history, and their own experience. Otherwise, Columbine will be just one of an ever-growing number of violent expressions of a youth which has lost touch with its spiritual side. We can never return the sacred language to the control of the shaman, but we can help our students see how the language is used to manipulate them and how they can resist the manipulations and hear the Call to their own journeys.