Who Controls Our Symbols?

So we might see culture as the fundamental struggle between unconscious complexes, all vying over the meaning of the signs that we toss back and forth. Who is really in control of their symbols? Certainly, it is we who are under their thrall. Myth supersedes us. For instance, the self is a narrative, by which we narrate to ourselves our memories and relationships with one another, and ourselves. We live in relation to the narrative, as much as any real world that dwells beyond. There is reason to believe that each time we call a memory to mind, we edit it slightly. We draw over it, lightly in watercolors or etched in broad ink strokes.

The Geopolitics of Memewar (Excerpt from Narrative Machines, 2017)