What One Sees

The myths a people tell are of great interest to anyone seeking to understand them. The same can be said of their symbols. Both build on an unspoken set of common ideas and history to give them their emotional power. Few would look in awe at Massadah if one did not understand the degree to which Roman Pagan rule offended the religious ideas of the ancient Jews and the glory attached to those who fight to the death.

The dusty chains of ancient slaving ports off the coast of Africa evoke powerful emotions among most non- African Blacks because it their culture and frequently their ancestors who were brought out of Africa as slaves. It is in that memory of their own slavery that they look upon such chains with horror. It is their interest in their own pasts or memories that drives one perception of History. Surely the slave routes overland were far more horrific than those by sea but so few survived and reproduced after the land treks that no Black culture was formed by them to lament their suffering.

So in seeing the symbol of such maritime shackles, one can see an image of the past and into the preoccupations of a group. The same can be said of Americans in general. The Western movie featuring one lone hero (or more recently the term protagonist removes any concept of the star being a good person) against the forces of either corruption or a staid order. The theme of the individual shaping society and being beyond its reach is a popular one in American culture. The theme of the "hip" young or tough people shaking up a conformist society is one that almost echoes the image of the American revolution fighting the Monarchist order.

While such an image is grossly misrepresentative, there is some justification by such an image for the individualist approach taken by some people. This is rarely if ever a conscious decision or idea but simply one of the many ideas that are beneath conscious thought that yet shape our judgements. Other societies that have less individualist myths tended to celebrate larger groups of protagonists in their myths and films. The complexity of keeping track of all of the characters in Anna Karenina is daunting while the difficulty in doing so for the latest thriller off the airport bookshelves is not even a task.

The focus of many other myths is the community or the group. In Anglo-American tradition, it is usually the individual. This is by no means an absolute standard as there are variations. One sees a definite focus on the individual in the Odyssey by supposedly the same author as the more social Iliad. Blinding the Cyclops thus carries great symbolism to those who know the myth.

It is also easy to take the reading of a mind through symbols too rigidly. Some read into the symbols on US dollar bills signs of a secret conspiracy noting the eye and pyramid. What a better understanding of history would have told them was that the growing popularity of "Ancient" and "Mystical" orders usually only a few decades old flourished who made up their supposedly passed down ancient secrets. The most popular was the Masons.

They made up most most of their symbols and appropriated others from less than classical times. The pyramid with eye was one of the symbols they made up. How did it pass to the US dollar? It comes from the popularity of such societies in both Europe and America among the more radical minded people. Masons in Europe were generally very anti-clerical and the Catholic (and other ) Churches tried to crush the radical organizations. This hostility is one of the key origins of the hostility many people simply inherited towards the Masons. In America, the organizations were lightly less antagonistic towards the Church but they were still the meeting houses of radical social reformers.

Such men are naturally attracted to revolutions and the American revolution was no exception although Masonic lodges were split on the subject. Leading members of the more radical wing of the American Revolution were Masons and they decided to adorn their new country with their symbols. Their influence pretty much stopped there as their other goals were quite overt but opposed by a strong faction of opponents who did not like the socially transformative plans of Jefferson et al.

So in looking at such a symbol of America as its currency, once can take the magnifying glass of history and see the political struggles of so long ago. That streak of radicalism and idealism is not gone from American life. While politics may shift frequently, other cultural ideas are more enduring and so the symbols are still clues the minds of their users.