I love my symbols. I’ve face-palmed multiple times when people have blurred the caduceus of Hermes, found on medic alert badges for the NHS, with the much more modern satanic snake in Eden. Being a regular tarot reader I also deeply understand how interpretation of symbols is not and cannot be universal. Our experiences and the bits of us we haven’t examined tend to determine how we relate to most symbols. There is a jumble of reference points out there. It is very easy for us to forget that our particular understanding of each symbol is not a universal understanding, it is personal.
There’s a fundamentalist movement brewing, led by the stupid, driving against anything that brings people together. It is fronted by the Russian troll factory, which is seeded deeply now across social media, uniting voices that feel that they’re on the margins. They’ve tricked the incels, they’ve tricked the hippies, they’ve tricked the survivalists. The content of the message differs but it is universally against togetherness. It’s driven by Russia who must hate these Olympic Games. They’ve been excluded. So their troll factories are relying on ignorance. I slept through the opening ceremony, but apparently loads of people have been encouraged to mistake Bacchus for Jesus. When I last checked in, Jesus wasn’t half naked and purple, but the troll factories will be in overdrive. The country that invented propaganda has been excluded from this playful event. They will do what they can to hurt it. I’m surprised by how many of my friends are swept up in other people’s interpretations of symbols that, by right, should be theirs.
Things are going well for Team GB, a result that helps push towards a justification of all the years these modern athletes have trained… “sport is changing forever,” says the ghost of my dad. “True achievement is about having a life of your own th at is rich and still being an Olympian. But now these countries are pushing out people with no life but their sport, putting so much money into it, so much time. When you still beat them it’s satisfying, but there’s nothing to some of these people.” Funny to think of dad in the context of this event. He’d have been right at home here. Hot summer again. We are all getting knackered. But the team is strong.
AlBarclay 