Symbolismology

I watched my toddler, now just a little over one year old, dealing with language. She can say mono and duosyllabic things like "hello", "Daddy", "Mommy", and the string of "nonono..." Then I saw her checking out a fruity cheerio very closely. She was feeling it, smelling it, seeing it, and eventually tasting it. She was bringing the fruity cheerio into her world experience. She was interacting with that cheerio like she never will be able to again, because soon she will be equipped with a symbolic representation, the word, cheerio. The symbol will separate her from the quintessence. She will thereafter have to translate the object into the symbolic representation in order to process it intellectually. She will judge other cheerios by the standard cheerio in her experience- honey nut will be the cheerio without colors, etc. Our ability to effectively use these symbols elevates us as a species, but may detract from our individual life experiences. As symbols separate artifice and archetype, so do they separate our consciousness from the numinous. And when she can read, and reads this, she will know, intellectually, that her dad is a weirdo.

Acceptable Levels of Self Identification

I was in a meeting at work where the use of affinity groups to disseminate marketing material and bolster volunteerism was discussed. I'm not sure either one of those things is cool, but here it was, being discussed by people with big heads and degrees in this stuff. They were saying that it is OK to market the Firm as "the right firm for Latin Americans" to Latinos and the "right firm for African Americans" to African Americans through the unconventional, more word of mouth distributions by the affinity groups formed at the Firm. Is that genuine, or is it misrepresentation?

Volunteerism was discussed because people in a certain affinity group, it was said, will have a stronger tendency to sustain volunteer activity that directly benefits people with whom they identify. Is that really volunteerism after all, then? And, we know that the effort was supported as free marketing by building goodwill in the affinity group communities.

Here's the thing: should these activities be encouraged and supported by the Firm? Aren't affinity groups tools of exclusion rather than inclusion? And, tacitly, my group, the white male group, is excluded from having an affinity group. Are these groups as a whole a manifestation of man's modern need for Othering?