What can you Restore with a Mythological Script?
Europa — a deeper pattern to bring balance to Liberty
Inexperience: in the eternal, cyclical nature of the mentor/student relationship — a mentor is merely a more seasoned pupil, further along on the journey. A pupil holds within himself the seed of a future Master.—I Ching, Book of Changes, 4
Where are you Europa?
Italia Turrita, Britannia, Marianne, Helvetia, Liberty— share the spirit of the times. Their quality of the body-less, laurel crowned, armored civic ruler and organizer of the Polis. This Athena like quality shines the torch of the smart city. But to what extent has She not excluded Soul? When everyone has the question of how to collaborate better, to make more out of the apparent wealth of knowledge and resources, yet remains prisoner of disconnected siloes and a feelings of scarcity?
How is this mythological pattern underlying the course of events? How do we stand relative to it—can we comprehend it? Can we see there—not metaphorically, possibilities for restoring health to self or community?
Contrary to widespread belief these are not mere allegorical figures made up to entertain for they recur throughout the world unexplained by mere physical contact between cultures, but like so many innovations, appeared triggered by repeating circumstances. These Goddesses, irrespective of our conscious beliefs, symbolize the logic for the allocation and use of resources, valuing of advancement and achievement. They manage to express beyond any words —or time local memes, our deepest and slowest changing convictions. According to the findings of analytical psychology, they reveal patterns in our personal and group attitudes that lie at the root of our biggest problems.
Up until now, in political and business circles, the myth of Europa though frequently cited, is simply reduced to an allegory for what we observe mostly in terms of flaring conflicts. I will show how this is a facet of our self-reflection that prevents us from seeing deeper —into the meaning of the the pattern of perception and action that guides policy, attitude towards entrepreneurship and development in general.
The Sirens seem to have evolved from a primitive tale of the perils of early exploration combined with an Oriental image of a bird-woman. Anthropologists explain the Oriental image as a soul-bird—i.e. a winged ghost that stole the living to share its fate. In that respect the Sirens had affinities with the Harpies. (Encyclopedia Britannica).
John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891
Would it be possible to perceive the presence of these ideals, their ordered pattern in the outcome where 1% hold all wealth, truth, image of success —while 99% live out the (unintended) consequences of a damaged commonwealth? How unsound design-thinking rooted in this pattern continues to lead towards the collapse of entire ecosystems —be it simple city or country life near nature, which put in jeopardy simpler forms of life? How can we hope on a system of policies and management practices when the record proves they are not capable of handling the complexity for which they are not designed?
While we vote for or against Europe, it is therefore not insignificant to spend some time to understand how Her myth is actually running deeper below the organized Polis. If in fact the ordered pattern of Liberty as we understand it, defines the limits of the embedded perceptional models we use, then it would make sense to explore how the values of Europa may actually offer a cure.
In contrast to Liberty, Europa like Columbia, may hold out the Olive branch, since it is the Dove that has always marked the turning tides after the deluge. In our modern understanding, we could see in it the kinds of adaptation patterns that we are desperately in deed of.
The last stop of the long cycle in economics is devaluation and or default on debt. Though we may have technically managed to extend the duration of this cycle, we know from history that no nation has ever avoided this collapse moment (to be exact, England did once.) And collapse is indeed a characteristic of the downturn. In companies, sudden and dramatic slowdown. In natural ecosystems, dramatic change and changes of custom (peoples have become cannibals, Easter Island, Diamond). Social models have equally left profound scars in the demise of empires — entire patterns of understanding reality which lighted earlier times, become almost incomprehensible riddles to following generations.
The current situation hints at the need to look at an epochal perspective of facts. A sort of view point similar to that which left an unmistakable imprint in the collective psyche which transpires in myths. In this sense, mythology is by no means story telling. Jung showed quite convincingly that images that appear in the mind´s eye come from literally imprinted experience in the body, capable of producing spontaneous images at the presence of conditions and stimuli, which it recognizes to be similar even if consciousness does not. Most evidence is from people´s cases, but to the trained eye, this is also so in collective situations.
Collapse and its risk have been captured repeatedly in the mythology of every age as the Deluge. There is abundant evidence of actual inundations that changed entire landscapes making probable the existence of tangible events — and we are inevitably reminded, as we face ourselves floods from melting ice caps. Would it make sense then to pay attention to the song of the sirens? to glance-over or not the myths and their uncanny recurrence?
The recurrence of this long-term shift in the order of events is as complex and little understood as are the workings of the large scale systems of life where we live in.
Where to begin when anything longer than a political term or short business cycle is rarely considered by normal folk? When we actually seem to believe that everything has a fact-based answer ex-ante, even though we are utterly at the mercy of complex changes in climate, social feeling and or city prosperity?
This brief review of prominent images and myths is perhaps insufficient to do justice to this topic. As for facts and data sets these too are too broad and therefore ask of you to keep an open mind. Allow the image to speak, to take shape and guide your questions.
Elaine of Astolat in Arthurian legend dies of her unrequited love for Lancelot. Also referred to as Elaine the Fair (Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur ; Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.) She inspired Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” ( The only herb that Shakespeare gives Ophelia “… there’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays; O, you must wear your rue with a difference”. (Rue is well known for its symbolic meaning of regret.)
John William Waterhouse, Ophelia, 1889
It seems to me that we are stuck in oversimplified models about the physical world, the social world and also about the fundamental aspects of our own cognitive processes. Dealing with the complexities that are staring us in the face, our management and policy methods are far too simple, flat, incapable of making sense to bring forth a new level of sustainable well-being. I don’t mean dealing with a symptom here and there, the improvement of known processes, but the challenge of nurturing a tide that may raise everyone´s boat— for designing futures, better.
The connection I will try to show is between the failure-point of long term cycles —some clearly visible like the precipitous end of companies, some perplexing like our economies or the environment, and the loss of Soul.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
…
Out flew the web and floated wide-
The mirror crack’d from side to side; “ The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.
This may at first add further to the confusion, while it will not begin immediately to offer any pragmatic answer to generating new jobs. And yet, perhaps it will lend a touchstone to get a sense of what is missing. Where Europa may have some answers to the sort of issues that we are avoiding to face at all costs.
Maybe this also helps some realize that much of the financial and market issues that mark EU elections talks are more about conditions, and the true nature of the problem still needs to be discovered for broad well-being to return.
Alien to mysteries
The kind of urgency we face should lead to change, but a house divided cannot stand, and on many levels we all are to some degree a house divided. The examples are in every industry, and they share a common characteristic: we produce more and more of stuff nobody can reasonably comprehend or gainfully consume.
Porter pointed to the extreme perils of a zero-sum game already 14 years ago that results from a scaling up and universalizing ideas, without realizing the need to cultivate own values. This extreme peril is embedded in patterns of imitation (the spell of Envy.)
Yesterday, perhaps in connection to our EU elections, it popped up on my radar the issue of the soulless condition we live in. A number of interesting but abstract ideas, metaphoric uses of the meaning of Soul (in film, in art, the Soul of Nations.)
But then when it comes to real connection between people there is little in the form of remedy for the distinctive lack of collaboration on system level issues.
At Davos, for example, back in January at the annual event, collaboration (or better, lack of it) was on everyone’s lips. But what was really understood about the notorious lack of it? Collaboration as such wasn't even recognized as an issue but is taken as granted. We do this inadvertently, like with parenting, we simply expect it to work out in the end. We hope not to repeat the errors of our parents, but have no real compass since we are pouring from the same container. How is that not magical thinking?
In organizations what I notice also conveys the avoidance of experiences of Soul in favor of Clarity. Whenever there is a bit where an irrational union of mind and body can take place, we see a determination to put it to rest. It is rare to find cases where a master listener enables the ensemble.
“It’s my job to find out the orchestra’s special qualities and preserve them. Then, if through a natural process, my own individuality adds something — and theirs to me — then it will be fine.” — born in Latvia, 72 years old, Juriss Jansons was not a leader in charge of a production; it was a man among equals, enabling the ensemble to flower, joining their efforts to his to evoke the spirit of the music. (It was one of three Bruckner symphonies performed on successive nights in London. They had had no full scale run-through of this huge work beforehand, no dress rehearsal. Some of the performers were new to Bruckner altogether.)
For most people the simplicity or subtlety of the pattern of strengths and qualities in a group, or nature is simply not noticeable, and even brutally suppressed.
Blood sacrifice,
How we hope emerging new answers by processes dressed-up to be palatable by reason?
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Yes, the deeper feminine is sunk into the earth, sensuousness is lost, connection to the land is hard to find… this is the tragedy. Whether its Io turned into a bull or Europa, carried by the bull (its parallel in myth), it is the mysteries of the blood that they signify, the loss of sensuousness, of connection.
John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus, 1903, “Yet a chatterbox, (Echo) had no other use of speech than she has now, that she could repeat only the last words out of many.” “(Narcissus) captivated by the image of the beauty he has seen” and falls deeply in love with “all the things for which he himself is admired.”
Turning points
Where did the pilgrim´s inner voice go? When did her voice sink? Where did go that other `freedom´ — moral choice? The choice of image for Liberty marked a crucial transition of the American and modern zeitgeist. The image of Columbia (the dove, which relates to the feminine principle) supplanted the earlier figure of an Indian princess, which had come to be regarded as uncivilized and derogatory toward Americans.
Echo’s aesthetic occurs in the empty spaces, the caverns. This emptiness — the emptiness in an event [sucked of all juice from mindless repetitions], the lack in a manifestation — gives shape to Echo.—Nathan Schwartz-Salant, Narcissism and Character Transformation
The space of diverse beliefs, melting pot of local inspiration, deep and sustainable innovation and collaboration, recedes further and further from the reach of the intellect. The emotional life sinks into health patterns and physical symptoms. We could all train our emotions with analysis or like actors in theater to great benefit. But predominantly without adequate training, our untrained and undeveloped emotional world merges into the earth, into the body with no intelligible voice, reduced to norm by the rod (festuca) of Libertas. Its main symptom is panic.
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung.
—Sir Walter Scott, from ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’, Canto sixth
The Liberty that became embodied had lost all the attributes of the land, the Indian goddess, the Dove and even the humble hat of liberated slave. And she took on the symbolism of Athena, the civilizer, ruler of order, light and law.
It is a particular kind of Liberty, one that shares with the images that rule many of the nation states. Turrita, Britannia, Marianne, and also Helvetia in Switzerland — all share the Athena quality of organizer of the Polis. She holds the torch high in the right hand and the tablets in the left, wearing the Apollonian crown of light rays.
In the United States, She is an evolution of the earlier Freedom (Crawford’s statue on the Capitol building, 1863,) which still had an unmistakable connection with nature in her soft features and plumage. Liberty is definitely aloof, disconnected from the blood. The plumage, bird and stars, become rather solar rays, the light of Apollo and no space for the reflection of the Moon and grays, where less defined figures and tales may be allowed to play.
Washington, D.C.
Earlier in Roman times, also Libertas had a quality of personal freedom, before becoming the goddess of the Roman commonwealth. She wore a humble pileus, a felt cap, worn by slaves when they were set free, which to the American designers was not acceptable.
The idea of personal freedom was something acquired by deed. Manumission was the name of this process, fairly common in the day to grant `freedom´ to the slave. Initially, this less formal process involved an earned quality which required the moral judgment of the master, who took on himself the moral risk of recognizing it as sufficient for citizenship.
The master brought his slave before the magistratus, and stated the grounds (causa) of the intended manumission. The lictor of the magistratus laid a rod (festuca) on the head of the slave, accompanied with certain formal words, in which he declared that he was a free man ex Jure Quiritium, that is, “vindicavit in libertatem.” The master in the meantime held the slave, and after he had pronounced the words “hunc hominem liberum volo,” he turned him round (momento turbinis exit — by the force of the whirl the slave comes out free ) and let him go (emisit e manu). The magistratus then declared him to be free.
But when this more informal method was supplanted by a general system of procedures based on rules and values, it inevitably decayed into a system of convenience. Where earlier, freedom meant extracting an individual from the collective, undifferentiated mass— from an addict state, it became another form of enslavement— the addict now is a slave to his/her habit — in Roman law addictus is “a debtor awarded as a slave to his creditor.” Libertas —Freedom by the Rod, was thus on its way to decay.
Over time the ritual degenerated and was often carried out for political or economic interest. This fiat citizenship degraded the value of democracy and rendered voting less and less meaningful. Where in Greece´s golden age, to lay the foundations of the entire Western civilization sufficed with ten percent Citizens in cities with a population of 5,000, in Roman times— as today, a pervasive globalization led away from a sense-making basis, towards a rule of force and persuasion (Pax Romana).
The idea of Limited Liability company followed a similar path. For centuries there was in every economic deal a residual moral risk, payable with prison, enslavement or death. While there were models since medieval times where the capital partners had limited liability financially, it was also the distancing from this responsibility, that permitted the model of absentee owners to become so prevalent. The more the system became norm-based, with increasingly less moral responsibility of managers and owners, the more it evolved as a system of convenience, an Echo.
By breaking this rule of local meaning, the laissez-faire (free market model), equivalent to the whirl, becomes a fiat process:
The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own… Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company — Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book V, chapter 1.
Magic circles and spin doctors
Where Echo prevails soon there will be Pan(ic.) The Sorcerer´s Apprentice, which inspired Disney has become a classic of this image of wanting to turn creative powers into everyday utilitarian tools. What the apprentice doesn't get is that such magic will spin out of control very quickly. It isn't however, a mere apprentice of a craft attempting its use out of place, but an authentic Promethean feat which cannot go unpunished.
The scaling up of the idea of Libertas has a flip side, for quickly the turning of a person into a citizen becomes an expedient way to a vote or a profit —a consumer driven by his debt could not be more vivid an image. The worst in this case, is that it enslaves, literally robing the possibility of an individual life experience. The person, slowly but surely, comes to await the policy promulgation, a carrot or stick, as some sort of external whip, which as for the slave, drives her actions. Education becomes rather a form of indoctrination, and action, guided by narrow self-interest.
The same year that Waterhouse painted The Magic Circle (above), on the 28th of October President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty. This happened after on the 4th of September the US signed the end of the Indian Wars, with the surrender of Apache leader Geronimo to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon in Arizon. The battle of reason against the (natural) man —adapted to nature, had a clear winner, and the Red man was suppressed but never really integrated, and this conflict has built up now to huge proportions.
When a war breaks out, a psychic meeting of opposites which are supposed to function together in culture, or consciousness (embodied by the two consuls), falls apart and takes sides with the two opponents in battle. Then it never comes back together again properly, for when one wins, he takes over the role of the other. In this way an enantiodromia is always engendered, unless the triumphator looking behind him is really able to integrate the idea that he is also the conquered slave and the dead man. If he were really able to understand that, then the interaction of opposites could function properly once again. —Marie Louise von Franz, Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (p.271-2)
Liberty become over time everything except personal Freedom, essentially curtailing the very possibility of actions that could build up the wellness and trust from collective endeavor. A chosen individual path, becomes an increasingly remote possibility, for which the collective has no valid safe containers—not even the artist is safe and becomes a mere entertainer. The individual is enslaved, unintendedly perhaps, because all visage of moral freedom is gone replaced by neat rules to follow—until there is only an empty Echo.
Ah, how deluded are those who think one ritual twirl of a slave Creates a citizen! Here’s Dama, an idle footman, bleary-eyed With stale wine, who’d cheat you over a handful of horse-feed. His master spins him round, like a top, and in an instant, there We have Marcus Dama. Brilliant! ‘Will you refuse to lend cash With Marcus as guarantor?’ ‘Do you blanch at Marcus the juror?’ ‘Marcus said it, it’s a fact.’ ‘Marcus, add your name to this paper.’ That’s pure freedom: that’s what the cap of liberty grants us.—Persius, Satire V
Deluge and Dove — European savoire vivre
Noticeably, the critics have no independent standpoint from where to see any other scenarios from those that the voters, business men or politicians themselves perceive. Yet every time when the long-wave is at its break-point, when deluge is unavoidable, the issue is simply one: the lack or moral freedom.
I think this is what we truly mean when we say we need entrepreneurial discovery —the capacity to see the value possibilities from a high order complexity that cannot be reduced to simple solutions by rules. Few are ready to let go of the ties and rules to find new paths of their own, and there is no acceptable walk-about formula. Life long learning, entrepreneurial discovery, even innovation area all framed in the path-dependent ways.
When it seems indeed almost impossible to think a re-connection to a different principle of personal Freedom, different from that of Libertas, where to look? How to look? How to rediscover moral choice?
‘So who is free, other than those who may live life as they wish? I may live as I like, so am I not freer than Brutus?’ ‘Yours is Faulty logic’, cries the Stoic, his ear cleansed by biting wit, ‘I’d accept the statement without the may, and the as I like.’
‘Once I’m my own master, freed by the praetor’s wand, why Am I not permitted to act as my inclination takes me, except For whatever’s forbidden under Masurius Sabinus’ rubrics?’— Persius, Satire V
Could Freedom be rediscovered in the “savoir vivre” of Europe (Wenders, Giving Europe a Soul)? Could the sacrificing of entrepreneurs gain a proper ritual value? Could we find the guts to embrace the truer entrepreneurial discovery needed (complex character)? Perhaps a true ball of yarn (mitos) to exit the labyrinth lies at hand left by the sequestered Europa.
The origins of Columbia connect history back to the renewal cycle after the deluge. Like the origin of the American cycle, before the Sumerian myth, the Mesopotamiam Atrahasis, Gilgamesh and Biblical/Quran Noah, the Baptism of Jesus . In the Grail Legend it is also the Dove and the other aspect of the feminine that bring about the transformation (in the various myths Atargatis, Ishtar, Inanna, Astarte and Aphrodite.)
Dove with olive branch, Domitilla Catacombs, Rome
Naturally the option to scrape by and hope for a better future to come from some expectation, that the conjured powers may work their magic again somehow, without having to change anything substantial, without risk and moral choice, remains the future by default.
Overcoming scarcity
Co-evolution, entrepreneurial discovery, are the potential remedy to the dissection by Libertas. The overcoming of the scarcity mentality requires breaking through, dis-solving the restricted solution-space, where we are simply not capable of defining the right problem.
This is less than a trivial question for we are baffled by the Vital 6%. Related Story
It is quite unavoidable, considering the recurrence of the myth, that what was once lived out symbolically as a psychological reality, is quite conceivable a pattern for modern man. It may be ascribed to coincidence that we fear most the rising seas, but clearly this is not the first time.
We can believe what we like about the human factor´s influence on climate change, but the manifestations are altogether the same. And the demands of the time call for a new type of freedom, which breeds in the restraint of the outpouring of passion. In favor of listening to what is truer of each one, and every local group. And this is what we rediscover every day in working with teams and groups learning about the subtle forces at work in co-creative activity.
Myth organizes our understanding of reality at deeper levels than we recognize. It is the basis of `pattern language´ which we use at Katalyst to design platform solutions for organizational growth and to deal with complex issues @growthpartners.eu
