In a discussion, I stated the above: the devil is a symbol. So I was immediately met with the charge of not believing in the independent reality of evil... or Evil, I suppose.
That whole business was neither here nor there, as far as I am concerned, because I no longer subscribe to the antique philosophy of "independent reality", at least not in its strong form where intelligent beings wander about the cosmos, trying to be intelligent, and bumping into independently existing rocks, speed bumps, and large bodies of water.
I said, do you consider Money as a symbol of value?
There was some blah-blah-yada-yada-yada about this, but everyone finally assented.
I said Money can start wars, money can destroy lives, money can give rise to lust, people murder for money, money sometimes gives happiness for a while...
I said we think of Money every day, not just one day a week. We have people and cable shows braying about money 24/7, not just on the high holy days.
I said Symbols are not just things that stand for something else; they are "independent" yet intangible structures created from our experience. And they can destroy us, or they can give us life just as surely as your tangible causes.
We don't really have a very good grasp on the nature of symbols.
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Nice analogy. Also a nice way to point a finger at the puzzle of consciousness. The Devil and Money both get their reality from individual minds.
(This also, incidentally, tests my abilitity to comment on yours.
It dawned on me last Thursday morning. All of our symbols are rather different.
What is there we "feed" into Money which lets it rule us so much more strongly than the symbol "God"? Or any other symbol for that matter?
And how do we call back the power from the symbol back into our own souls?
Your last sentence there strongly reminded me of Carl Jung's notion that individuation or self-development requires the rigorous withdrawal of our "projections," thus of our own feelings as projected outward onto phenomena.
Thank you. I have been looking askance at Jung lately, and this was a timely look into his thinking.
And it was opportune to be reminded of "projection".
I have been tending to a philosophy: "Intelligent beings create their own reality."
Now this is a pretty rough and ready formulation, but projection would certainly be one of the mechanisms by which it is accomplished.
We have enough to think about for 30 years or more.
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