The Grasp of Marduk

 I like this picture. This is a statue of Marduk. An ancient Babylonian  god, represented or perhaps believed to be incarnated himself in this  famous gold statue for centuries.  Behind him is the temple of Marduk,  which was allegedly used as a model for the tower of Babel. Believed to  be 800 pounds, 13 feet tall, whoever was in control of this statue was  said to be the ruler of Babylon--in the grasp of Marduk. To the sides of  him (but not facing him) are horn and harp players, surrounded by  people bowing down to this authority of antiquity (Playing their  Babylonian nation anthem, perhaps?). It would be difficult to imagine  the extent that something so material could mean to their culture.

It  made me think of the parallels to the American flag. It's cultural  significance, it's heightened level of prestige, and the raging  controversy that people have been quick to take sides on how we should  go about honoring it, or NOT honoring it. Lots of thought and rules have  been put into how we should respect it, and what it makes someone if  they don't respect it.  To some the public debate sparked by Kaepernick  protesting the national anthem and saluting the flag is an absolute  disrespect to the men and women that have or continue to protect and  serve. To others he is a herald of awareness to systematic racism and  inequality, exercising his constitutional right for social justice.  Whatever your stance on the issue, you are standing on the other side of  many Americans, and we remain divided.

During  the rise of the Persian Empire, Persian armies ransacked Babylon and  annexed it into the empire. They got a hold of the Marduk statue and as  an act of retribution, melted the statue--prohibiting anybody from the  grasp of Marduk again. The ultimate disrespect to their god. The  worshipers of Marduk died, and he became a dead god, a story of the  past. Their progeny went on to worship other gods as his grasp on the  minds of the Babylonians faded into memory.

History  shows us that symbols of national identity, although fleeting, live  inside of us. We live within our symbols more than we live inside  ourselves. The ones we have chosen to represent the achievements of our  reality have become our reality. They have given us something other than  the things they symbolize, and we should be clear about what they have  taken away. As humans innately do, we have gotten to caught up in the  momentum of the worship of our cultural symbols. We have designed  systems of overly specific etiquette. Rituals that have been imposed on  us, but not thought up by us. Now as we struggle on what exactly we  should be doing with our symbols as our country wrestles with it's  identity, we should remember what they actually are: a piece of fabric. A  book. A monument. An image.

As  civilizations rise and fall, symbols come and go, what remains is the  redundant behavior of people placing detailed oriented, particular  rituals around their representations.

Can we distance ourselves from the weight of our symbols for some clarity of the moment?

Or are we still in the grasp of Marduk?