Analyzing Walker Percy's 'Symbolic Complex'

Brandon Chong
Professor Stephen Elias
English 105
26 January 2015
Title
Walker Percy describes a “symbolic complex” as a pre conceived notion a person makes when it comes to a place or situation based on the fact that society has already influenced a person’s feelings before personal thoughts could be formulated. This taints a person’s viewpoint as the experience is greatly reduced as hopes or expectations are not met. These “symbolic complexes” plague everyday life as they strip people of their ability to make their own decisions without being swayed by an outside source and prevent people from having the feeling of curiosity of charting the unknown. Society is spoon-feeding us ideas about the world that people are being stripped of the
opportunity to explore the world themselves. A driving force for many people is to have a high paying salary and to amass as much wealth as possible in their bank accounts. Money leads to the better clothes, the bigger house, the fancy cars, and the life of a high class society. This is because money is linked to the idea of having more money means happiness and success is also abundant. It is seen as a building block for something greater, as a way of improving one’s life. However this outlook shapes the way people live out most of their lives. Spending most of their day at their jobs, people are pushing themselves to work long hours with the idea that the money they make here will lead to better luxuries in the future. But spending most of one’s life working seems counter-intuitive to achieving happiness and success. Money is a means of achieving the successful lifestyle but it does not ensure those dreams.
Going up the social hierarchy of our economic society, the value of money dwindles. The Low-income class or middle-class perceives money in higher regard than the one percent because they have so little of it. Imagine a billionaire donated a million dollars to a charity while poor worker donated $500 (which is half his savings). The billionaire would feel no repercussions from this charitable act since he or she has so much money to spare. Although the amount of money being donated is less than the billionaire, the worker is giving up more because half of his or her savings is going into the donation. The one percent that has no need to worry about not having enough money is able to explore other aspects of the world while those who struggle with money must focus on obtaining money throughout most of their days. The value of money fluctuates throughout the world but the fact that it means more to those who have so little of it shows that the focus on money limits the outlook of many impoverished and middle-class citizens. Reviews from Yelp or from Rotten Tomatoes are one of the many ways symbolic complexes are created within the general mass. These reviews created by other people subconsciously conforms a person’s thoughts from general curiosity of exploring the unknown to figuring out if the review truthful in its description. When a person reads a movie review before watching movie then watches said movie, the person will subconsciously look out for flaws or critiques made in the review instead of watching the movie with fresh eyes. The person has some idea what they are watching before they even set foot in the movie theater. Everyday people are planning their experiences when it comes to looking at reviews or seeking others opinions as a guideline when they should be more open to embrace the good and bad experiences. People are catering their lives in a way that seems favorable to them when it comes to eating at the best restaurant or making sure that the movie they watch is worth the view. However, these people are only depriving themselves of new experiences. When only good things happen to a person, it begins to lose its significance but when there is a string of bad events then one good event that happens, it is like finding a diamond in the rubble. The positive finds greater importance in a person’s life when it is paired with many other bad experiences. By going into bad experiences, such as watching a bad movie, a person can figure out their tastes and preferences. When a person is used to the same thing over and over, opting to stay with their norms, the person will never expand their preferences and thus never realize the other countless ways or things that can appeal to them in the world. By relying on others reviews or opinions to judge what is desirable, a person will never understand the things that make themselves satisfied. As a society, our appearances shape others first hand impressions of that person. The way a person dresses or their hairstyles are one of the many factors that people use to distinguish the kind of person he or she is. Everyday people pass one another when walking through highly populated areas with the only their physical appearance as the guideline to the kind a person they are. A man dressed in a nice suit is usually seen as a business man, uptight and orderly, while a woman with fur coat and a Gucci bag is usually seen as a rich and snobby person. Overall, we as a society barely interact with one another to truly understand a person thus we use appearances as our baseline. When we see a person who works at Target with the red shirt and khaki pants walking around the store, we don’t see the person as an individual, but as a person who just works at Target. Uniforms differentiate a person through whom or what they are associated with or their status in society thus limiting our perspective of a person. Speaking of status within society, celebrities have a symbolic complex associated with them.
Celebrities are seen through their public personas and the projects they are involved in. For instance, the rapper well known as Snoop Dogg has the persona as a man who occasionally indulges in the use of recreational drugs because of the songs he makes. Celebrities are generally seen as highly successful with highly eventful lives. These lives are publicized through tabloids or T.V. shows that exemplify the personal lives of these highly regarded icons. Through these glimpses at the lives of celebrities, people see small and likely manipulated fragments of these people’s lives and begin to form opinions about them without actually knowing the person. If you are lucky enough to actually see or meet this person in real life, your image of them has already been conceived and you begin to feel like they know the celebrity on a personal level. Connecting to the fact that society judges people on their appearances, when we see celebrities in ordinary settings, they stick out among the rest. Although the celebrity is a total stranger and no different from the other people, our imagination of them is retained from all the previous exposure of them from other impersonal sources. The lives of celebrities soon become another form of entertainment for the mass and the idea that we are invading the personal space of these people becomes nonexistent. These celebrities soon become characters in a story and not real
people. Our symbolic complexes of people are usually based on the way they look and our exposure to them in the media. They limit the way we perceive and interact with people as they strip a person’s ability to get to know someone without already predetermining the character of the person. As a society, we barely interact with many strangers besides having small talks. Thus we are able to judge a person by the clothes the person wears or by the way the person presents himself in a public setting. Sometimes people stop themselves from interacting with others just because of the way they look. By putting appearances in high regard, people miss out on other aspects of a person’s character that are much more endearing and important. Being influenced by outside sources instead of relying on one’s own intuitions demotes the importance of new experiences. Symbolic complexes plague most people in distorting the way they perceive the world and the way they live their lives. We are exposed to many remarkable things from the shows we watch or the websites we browse online that it’s hard not to at least have a glimpse at all the things the world has to offer. This advantage due to the technological age we currently live in comes with a price as it strips people of the ability to explore the unknown. To become bewildered and amazed at the natural world is hard to come by when that experience can be seen online. With owning a cellphone becoming a social norm, it becomes harder to not be disconnected by societal expectations and to have personal interpretations be created.