1. Can You Become Like Shohei Ohtani?
(1) The Narrative Superiority of Shohei Ohtani
Let us summarize the discussion so far. Modern democratic citizens live with a fragmented, 1/N share of sovereignty. Because of this flattened egalitarian consciousness, they instinctively reject any hierarchy superior to themselves or the existence of a sacred manifestation (Hierophany). They have either lost the sensory capacity to experience the sacred, or they willfully reject it even when given the opportunity.
Furthermore, the democratic welfare state promises to alleviate all personal suffering, acting as a god in exchange for political governance. Consequently, modern citizens no longer understand the mechanism of enduring suffering, transcending it, and growing through it. This inability to unite with a grander existence or to achieve personal transcendence constitutes the core of the anxiety and meaninglessness experienced by modern democratic citizens.
Because they fail to live a life of true reality—which can only be experienced by enduring raw suffering and acknowledging hierarchy—they escape into a theme park of simulacra. This hyper-realistic fake world created by the media and capital is where they project their egos. In this space, concrete contexts like blood and sweat are excised. There is no need to accept that someone else is superior; only a dopamine-driven fantasy remains.
This is precisely where I believe Jean Baudrillard’s diagnosis falls short. This phenomenon of the fake dominating the real is not a sin of capitalism. Capitalism has merely staged the very theme park that democratic citizens crave. Producers do not engage in what is unprofitable; they always produce what the masses desire.
In fact, in the classical capitalist world prior to the advent of the democratic welfare state, a fake was nothing more than a fake. This was because a powerful triple filter—composed of ancestral wisdom accumulated over generations, local reputations and traditions, and the discernment of citizens as producers— slaughtered non-genuine products in the market. Many of us probably remember a childhood moment when, after buying a sketchy, low-quality item on the street, a grandmother at home would correctly guess exactly who sold it and for how much, and then successfully get a refund with the help of a neighborhood elder. Past producers, therefore, ran companies under their own names, knowing they had to create something genuine—even when making a pot—to survive.
Yet, even now, when the welfare state has plundered this organic, self-generating filter, an archaic instinct to return to a strong, enduring reality—the authentic rather than the fake—still breathes deep within the hearts of democratic citizens. No matter how much the welfare state claims to be a god, it remains a human institution, incapable of taking full responsibility for an individual’s existential void or their need for true reality.
The problem is that it is far too risky for an independent producer to recklessly rely on faiths like moral absolutism or optimistic eschatology to target this archaic instinct of the masses. As discussed in the previous article, producers choose one of two paths:
- Regression & Reinterpretation: Returning to a homologous past in terms of economic and social context, linking those origins to the present to infuse products with rich meaning.
- Dominant Might: Proving oneself as a powerhouse that overwhelms the market, the sole untamed frontier of civilization.
A prime example of someone who has created an aura by proving his dominance over market through skill, while simultaneously leveraging foundational codes of the past, is Major League Baseball’s Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani is not just a great baseball player. In fact, looking at pure statistics, there are players like Aaron Judge or Paul Skenes who perform better. Nevertheless, what makes Ohtani special to the Japanese people is that he (unconsciously) encapsulates the virtues and DNA of the three great heroes of Japan’s Warring States (Sengoku) period—Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu—while reinterpreting the wisdom of Shinto, Japan’s traditional religion, into a daily lifestyle. This narrative superiority has generated a massive premium on everything from Ohtani’s gestures to any product bearing his name.
(2) Shohei Ohtani: The Embodiment of Warring States Heroes and Traditional Shinto
Shohei Ohtani has constructed his image over many years to equip himself with every virtue revered by the Japanese public. Let’s look at why he stands out as uniquely exceptional.
Oda Nobunaga and Disruptive Innovation
Oda Nobunaga is an icon of innovation who upended the existing feudal order and methods of warfare. His tactical deployment of matchlock firearms (Tanegashima) at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575 neutralized the traditional cavalry-centric tactics that were considered invincible at the time.
The two-way play (pitching and hitting) spearheaded by Ohtani holds the same status in baseball history as Nobunaga’s matchlocks. For the past century, the principle of division of labor in modern baseball defined the separation of pitchers and hitters as an order. Ohtani challenged this dogma. Proving that a combination of a 100 mph fastball and a 50-home run, 50-stolen base season is possible, he blazed a new trail for what highly profitable baseball can be.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Subversion (Gekokujo)
Hideyoshi is a self-made figure of legendary proportions who rose from a humble peasant and low-ranking foot soldier to become the Kanpaku (Regent), the highest authority in Japan. He co-opted his enemies through meritocracy, adaptability, and diplomacy. He represents the allure of Gekokujo (the lower dominating the higher)—a myth of shattering class barriers through ability alone, a concept Japanese society simultaneously taboos and adores.
Ohtani mirrors this path. Hailing from rural Iwate Prefecture and starting his career with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters—a small team in the northern periphery of Japan—Ohtani marched into the heart of the baseball world: the Major Leagues. He proceeded to captivate American media and fans, who initially met him with cynicism and skepticism, through his overwhelming skill and impeccable character.
Tokugawa Ieyasu and Relentless Patience
Ieyasu operated under the philosophy, “If the cuckoo does not sing, wait until it sings.” By enduring the slights and marginalization of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, he emerged as the ultimate victor and laid the foundation for the Tokugawa Shogunate, which lasted for 250 years. His greatness lay not in momentary power, but in a long-term vision and the patience to endure defeat and humiliation.
In Ohtani’s career, undergoing two Tommy John surgeries, enduring rehabilitation, and quietly walking to first base without a grimace even when struck by a pitcher’s beanball evoke Ieyasu. When surgery prevented him from pitching, he endured the dark period for the sake of the team’s victory, and during that very hiatus, achieved the monumental milestone of the 50-50 club as a hitter.
Picking Up Trash on the Field and Japanese Shinto
His signature move, which garnered the most attention in Western society, is picking up trash on the field. Regarding this, Ohtani remarked “Picking up trash is an act of gathering the good fortune (luck) that others have carelessly discarded.”
This is a pragmatic, Japanese reinterpretation of Hindu/Buddhist karma within Shinto. In its original context, the doctrine of karma and reincarnation is tied to an individual’s past-life sins and existential suffering—a pessimistic and individualistic teaching aimed at escaping (attaining liberation from) this cosmic prison.
In contrast, Japanese Shinto historically showed little interest in a post-mortem afterlife. Instead, it emphasizes interconnectedness: the idea that “I” as an independent entity am not isolated, but interwoven with everything in this world—other people, nature, and spirits. Therefore, in Shinto, the focus is not on ascetic practice to individually cleanse past-life karma, but on accumulating virtue to purify the energy of the society and world to which one is currently connected.
To them, evil is not a corruption of the soul, but a state of pollution (Kegare), like dust on a mirror. They believed that if one purifies the surroundings by picking up trash left on the street, the relational algorithm of the universe recognizes them as a virtuous person and returns that deed in critical moments, translating it into a reward called Luck (運). Ohtani is dominating the American Major Leagues by accumulating these invisible, uniquely Japanese credit points.
(3) Modern Producers Who Cannot Be Ohtani Need Imagination
However, for producers like us to become like Ohtani requires too much time and capital expenditure (CapEx). This is because he successfully completed a process of roundabout production, converting his entire physical body and every episode of his life into a capital good. We, on the other hand, are not athletes; we are entrepreneurs who design production processes to sell goods and services.
What, then, is the most realistic and clever detour left for us? It is the strategy introduced in the previous article: returning to the origins of the past but reinterpreting them phenomenologically. In other words, it means unearthing a source code whose value has already been proven in the distant pages of history, and narratively linking it to the product or service we intend to sell. Let us call this cheat code—which humanity’s greatest pioneers from Plato to Freud have deployed to salvage mankind—the Strategy of Anamnesis (recollection or the recovery of memory).
The advantage of this strategy is that because the sanctity of the origin has already been proven in the past, we as producers do not need to become supermen like Ohtani ourselves. Instead, we can possess that sacred source code as the heritage of our product. All that is required is a mythological imagination that enriches the meaning of the consumer’s life.
2. The Alchemy of Memory — Linking the Origins of External Objects with Discernment (Aristocratic Selection)
First, the Anamnesis (Alchemy of Memory) strategy for producers is divided into two branches:
- Aristocratic Selection: This uncovers the sacred origins of external objects and connects them to a self-identity. Living in anonymized spaces with a fragmented 1/N share of sovereignty, modern democratic citizens possess a desire to validate their identity and answer the question, “Why is my life meaningful today?” Developing a high-resolution connoisseurship for objects that others do not possess, and fulfilling the rites of passage presented by the producer, becomes a rich life experience and a source of aristocratic pride.
- Plebeian Consolation: Because democratic citizens live within the comfortable, safe confines of the democratic welfare state, they have lost the wildness required to collide with things in the world and endure risk and pain. Furthermore, possessing a sense of sovereignty, they refuse to accept that any existence is grander than themselves. Therefore, producers aim to delve into the origins of the public’s private psyche, uncover the causes of their helplessness, pain, and irresponsibility, and grant them an existential absolution: “It is not your fault.”
Let us first examine the strategy of excavating the origins of external objects.
(1) Where Did Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes Come From? — The Myth of Hainuwele
If we cannot reset time back to the primordial moment of creation (in illo tempore) like ancient peoples did, modern individuals are left with only one strategy. We must start from the present, trace back through the lineage of history, and dock at the very inception where the object was born. We must then reinterpret it in a way that is meaningful for the present.
One must first undergo a proof-of-work process by recollecting the history and intimate origins of an object down to its finest details before imagination can be unleashed. This is the alchemy of memory.
From a phenomenological perspective, Mircea Eliade emphasized:
“To fully master and dominate an object means to know its origin and history precisely.”
The decisive reason why origins generate meaning is that the antiquity of an object serves as evidence that it has overcome the terror of history—the terror that consumes things through aging and death. To humans who grow old, fall ill, and die, an immortal existence is always a form of divinity, an object of unification as reality itself. (Nassim Taleb called this the ‘Lindy effect’.)
The routes to reaching the origins of these objects vary. One can excavate repressed childhood sexual memories and present them as origins, as Freud did. One can rely on karma and past lives, like traditional Indian ascetics. Alternatively, primordial, collective archetypes and myths shared by a community can serve as the origin, or the Ideal Forms (Ideas) arrived at through philosophical dialectic, as Plato demonstrated.
Disputing which route is the most persuasive is pointless. It is not a matter of logical superiority, but a difference in methodology. It is a domain determined by human intelligence, curiosity, available resources, and the nature of the community to which one belongs.
The core takeaway for producers is this: an individual who succeeds in decoding the origin by any method acquires a consistent perceptual framework that pierces through the structure of things. A producer equipped with this capability can exercise a sort of magical dominance over the masses who lack it—an alchemy of memory that commands a premium on products. Those who hold the origin of a product deliver an existential catharsis called Reality to a public that normally never tastes it.
Ancient peoples relied primarily on myths of the primordial beginning to practice this “alchemy of memory.” When primitive humans discovered objects like potatoes, sweet potatoes, or pigs in barren lands, how did they bestow an aura upon them to transform them into sacred objects? To explain this, Eliade points to the Hainuwele myth, passed down among the natives of Ceram Island in New Guinea.
In the mythical age, a man named Ameta went out hunting and found a wild boar. In its attempt to escape, the boar drowned in a lake. On the boar’s tusk, Ameta discovered a coconut. That night, he dreamed of the coconut and was commanded to plant it, which he did the following morning.
In three days, a coconut palm shot up, and three days after that, it bloomed. Ameta climbed the tree to gather the blossoms to make a beverage. However, he cut his finger, and a drop of his blood fell upon a blossom. Nine days later, he discovered a female infant atop the blossom. Ameta took the child and wrapped her in coconut leaves. In three days, she grew into a maiden of marriageable age, and he named her Hainuwele (meaning “Coconut Branch”).
During the great Maro festival, Hainuwele stood in the center of the dance grounds and distributed gifts to the dancers for nine consecutive nights. But on the ninth day, the men dug a pit in the middle of the dance floor, and as they danced, they threw Hainuwele into it. The pit was filled in, and the men danced over it.
The next morning, seeing that Hainuwele had not returned, Ameta divined that she had been murdered. He located and exhumed her body, cut it into pieces, and buried the parts in various places, except for her arms. The buried pieces transformed into plants previously unknown—specifically tubers—which from then on became humanity’s principal sustenance.
Ameta brought Hainuwele’s arms to another deity, Satene. Satene drew a nine-fold spiral on the dance ground and stood at its center. Using Hainuwele’s arms, she fashioned a gate and summoned the dancers, declaring: “Since you have committed murder, I shall no longer dwell here. I depart this very day. From now on, you must come to me through this gate.”
Those who managed to pass through the gate remained human. The rest were transformed into animals—such as pigs and fish—or spirits. Satene proclaimed that after her departure, humans would only meet her after death, and then she vanished from the earth.
(Source: Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality)
The myth of Hainuwele instills in tribal peoples the worldview that the sweet potatoes, potatoes, and pigs passing down their throats are not wretched lumps of dirt, but the very flesh of a sacred deity murdered at the beginning of time. Consequently, every act of a native hunting wild boars or digging up root crops for survival is elevated to a ritual—a re-enactment of the mythical slaughter of Hainuwele. It transcends subsistence and generates a sense of cosmic holiness.
An intriguing business insight emerges here. The moment it passes through this myth, a commonplace object like a sweet potato is endowed with a narrative premium as “the flesh of a god.” If an oblivious primitive ignored this mythical origin and treated the sweet potato merely as a mass of carbohydrates to fill his stomach, he would fail the aristocratic selection. By the laws of the community, he would be stripped of his human status and downgraded to that of livestock (animals or fish).
In other words, the ability to comprehend an object’s origin myth becomes connoisseurship itself. From this vantage point of discernment, economic disruptions like stealing from a sweet potato patch or undercutting prices are blasphemous acts that defile the entire system. In conclusion, he who rules the origin holds the power to meaningfully interpret present phenomena.
(2) Why Is Golden Beer So Special to Beer Geeks?
Let us now shift our stage to the modern business arena. Why is the beer we drink every night golden? Humans have brewed and consumed beer since the Mesopotamian era around 5000 BC, but until the mid-19th century, the visual appearance of beer was different from what we know today. The primordial origin of golden beer is Pilsner Urquell, born in 1842.
In the past, when drying malt (barley)—the core ingredient of beer—people burned wood to roast it directly over an open fire. Naturally, the smoke and soot charred the barley black. As a result, the beer produced was turbid, deep brown, or a heavy, murky black. In the 1840s, the residents of a town called Plzeň in the Czech Republic grew so furious at the consistently unpalatable, sour black beer served to them that they dumped the existing stock into the streets. To pioneer a new product, they recruited a genius German brewer named Josef Groll.
Instead of roasting the barley directly over a fire, Josef Groll utilized Britain’s cutting-edge technology of the time: roasting with anthracite hot air, which created clean, pale-hued malt free of soot. Furthermore, the local water in Plzeň happened to be soft, containing almost no calcium or magnesium. When this soft water met the pale malt, the beer began to gleam with crystalline clarity. This was combined with the crisp bitterness of local Saaz hops and the German lager method of cold-aging in caves.
Simultaneously, as the Industrial Revolution swept Western Europe, clear glass cups—once the exclusive luxury of the aristocracy—were mass-produced and adopted by the masses. Prior to this, people drank from opaque earthenware or pewter mugs, obscuring the beer’s appearance. When they witnessed the visual of golden beer inside a transparent glass cup, the public experienced a shock and went wild.
Mastering the historical and scientific origins of how an object came to be grants a producer (including pub owners) dominance over that product category. While the vast majority of the public mutters low-resolution phrases like, “Lager is just supposed to be cold,” or “Aren’t all lagers basically the same?”, those who grasp the origin can manipulate the charring of the malt and the hardness of the water to create new beers and forge fresh liquid narratives.
[Photo: Pilsner Urquell Brewery Museum and Saaz Hops, located in Prague, Czech Republic (Source: Myself)
The same applies to consumers. Those who wish to step into a world of rich meaning while appreciating why the beer they are drinking is special seek out producers capable of delivering that depth.
Drinking beer while decoding its source code in one’s mind opens up the palate to a new dimension. Some enthusiasts even embark on pilgrimages deep into the subterranean caves of the Plzeň brewery in the Czech Republic, yearning to physically sense the aura of this hierophany in its most primordial form. They are fully prepared to pay a premium price if the product and its narrative represent “Reality.” Because they consume value rather than cost, they anchor themselves as a highly loyal core fandom for the brand. To them, a Pilsner Urquell poured fresh in the Czech Republic is a “sacred relic.” (If more records had survived detailing whether its creator, Josef Groll, endured trials or suffering akin to Jesus or Steve Jobs, the aura of a “martyr” would be added, maximizing the premium even further. Unfortunately, few such records remain.)
Conversely, a person who says, “I just want to sit in the bleachers at a baseball stadium and get cheap buzz” possesses no connoisseurship regarding origins. Much like those in the Hainuwele myth who failed to possess discernment and were turned into beasts or spirits, these consumers will defect to a competitor if the price hikes by even a few cents. This does not mean their behavior is inherently bad or inferior—as it yields the highest personal utility for them—but it indicates they are not the primary target a premium producer should focus on.
Consequently, if you examine manufacturing firms that exercise true market dominance, you will notice a dual strategy:
- For the Masses (Low-Resolution Connoisseurship): For the general public who claim that all functional features have been “standardized upwards,” companies deploy entry-level product lines paired with mainstream advertising models representing a specific lifestyle. This safeguards the company’s financial health (Cash Flow).
- For the Priests (High-Resolution Connoisseurship): For the discerning elite, companies offer premium lines infused with the alchemy of memory, branding into their consciousness why their present moment becomes so extraordinary by using this specific product.
For example, the global beverage giant Diageo establishes its entry-level front lines with commercial mass-market lagers. Yet, the brand’s aura heavily relies on Guinness. Specifically, the urban legend of the 9,000-year lease signed by Arthur Guinness in 1759 for the St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin titillates the curiosity of beer aficionados.
Guinness trains its “priests” that to fully savor a single pint of this stout drawn from this legendary brewery, one must wait 119.5 seconds for the head to rise. “Good things come to those who wait.” The priests recite this slogan like a mantra. Learning this legend and enduring the time it takes for the beer to settle is a modern re-enactment of the initiation rituals ancient peoples underwent to enter a sacred community. Priests equipped with this connoisseurship are captivated by this rite, cheerfully paying a premium multiple times the price of an ordinary lager.
The same holds true for Suntory, Japan’s leading beverage producer. Suntory secures the vast majority of its revenue through cheap happoshu (low-malt beer) like Kinmugi lining convenience store shelves, or mass-market Kakubin Highballs served at izakayas. However, the soul of the brand rests upon its Yamazaki or Hakushu single malt whiskies.
By combining elements that priests recognize as “Reality”—such as decades of aging in rare Mizunara oak casks and water sourced from Japan’s most pristine environments—Suntory constructs a premium lineup commanding thousands of dollars per bottle. Thanks to the aura radiated by this premium line, even the undiscerning general public perceives Suntory as a “brand you can trust,” gladly paying a slight premium even for its entry-level products. Though not detailed here due to space constraints, brands like Leica and Porsche utilize this strategy of memory alchemy. It is virtually the only way to bestow sanctity upon a brand.
Therefore, if a producer’s entire portfolio consists solely of mass-market, entry-level lines, it reveals that they are incapable of practicing the alchemy of memory. Driven by an urgent need for cash flow, they skipped targeting the select few priests with connoisseurship and plunged straight into the mass market. However, without priests who recognize the value of the origin and validate it as “Reality,” a producer loses any justification to demand a premium. Ultimately, they are bound to sink into the swamp of emotional labor, hyperbolic advertising, and manufactured hype.
(3) Is the Invention of Tradition Possible?
Within this framework, the essence of the alchemy of memory lies in two things: imagination and the refusal to forget the original source codes of the events and figures that birthed the object. The producer must implement these sacred origins and rituals by reinterpreting them through mythical, scientific, historical, or literary contexts.
Furthermore, highly engaged consumers “selected” by the producer must be made to realize that by understanding the origin and following the ritual, their own lives have become vastly enriched. This is the technique for making people experience “Reality.”
Yet, independent producers often run into an question: “How on earth can a newborn brand that has just entered the market—possessing no heritage or special lineage—secure an aura?” The truth we frequently overlook is that no myth or legend in human history ever arrived fully formed from the very start. Every myth, including Christianity, was structured and invented retrospectively. What existed at the absolute inception was raw style or a loose plausibility—the simple fact that back then, “that’s just how people generally acted.” How, then, did it become a myth?
Roland Barthes illuminated this mechanism in his work Mythologies. The essence of myth lies in thoroughly bleaching away the historical context in which an object was born, and naturally inserting an artificial metaphysics or an intentional morality designed by those in power, repeatedly reinforcing it over time.
Originally, every sign possesses a historical and physical context born out of its creation process. For instance, if the image of a Black boy saluting in a French military uniform is the signifier, the signified consists of the grim reality of a boy conscripted from a colony (Africa), forced onto a battlefield with a rifle, alongside the cruelty of French imperialism. However, by placing that photograph inside a magazine article praising the grandeur of the French Empire, a new interpretation is seamlessly slipped in: “Look here, even this Black boy voluntarily and loyally salutes the French flag. This is proof of the benevolence and greatness of French imperialism.” Viewing this image, the masses fall into the illusion that French imperialism is natural and beautiful.
Another fascinating case introduced by Barthes is how 1950s French society suddenly began consuming ordinary french fries (Pommes frites) as a myth of “national nostalgia and patriotism.” French General Christian de Castries was the commander-in-chief at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954), which symbolized the collapse of the French colonial empire. Defeated by Asian resistance forces, he was captured and endured four months of severe hardships in a prisoner-of-war camp before being released under a ceasefire agreement. The news that General de Castries, upon returning to his homeland, ordered and devoured french fries as his very first meal deeply moved all of France. To the public, this was interpreted as a sovereign ritual—a symbolic return from the hellish battlefields of Asia back to the grand community and cultural identity of France. French fries were instantly elevated to a myth of authentic Frenchness (Françatude), igniting the patriotism of the citizenry. Although General de Castries never opened a restaurant, had launched a brand named “De Castries French Fries” at that time, he would have raked in a fortune.
What warrants close attention here is that the French media took a bleak historical fact—the return of a defeated general and the ruin of a colonial empire—and laundered it into a mythical narrative of a hero reclaiming the French soul through native food. You cannot charge a premium on bare facts, but an overwhelming premium attaches itself to myth. Ultimately, meaning is a matter of what the producer chooses to attach.
3. Case Studies in Myth Engineering
(1) The Scottish Kilt Is an Invented Tradition
Historian Eric Hobsbawm’s The Invention of Tradition provides invaluable insights into this process of myth engineering. Like Barthes, Hobsbawm wrote from a leftist perspective to dismantle state ideologies and imperial myths. However, we can bypass the ideological undertones and focus on the core mechanism to deploy it as sovereign producers.
The Scottish kilt is widely viewed as a symbol of ancient antiquity. In reality, the knee-length pleated skirt we know today originated as 18th-century workwear invented by an English industrialist. Originally, the kilt was a feileadh mór (great plaid)—a massive, blanket-like garb wrapped around the entire body. Following the 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England, an English ironmaster named Thomas Rawlinson established a foundry in northern Scotland. He noticed that the blankets worn by his Scottish laborers were cumbersome in front of the furnaces and posed a fire hazard if caught in the machinery. To remedy this, he cut the fabric in half, structured pleats below the waist, and secured it as a short skirt (the small kilt, or feileadh beag). Thus, the kilt was reinvented as functional attire for the lower class.
Then came an accidental twist. When the Scottish clans rebelled against the British Crown and were defeated, the British government passed the Dress Act 1746, banning the kilt and tartan to prevent clans from rallying. Ironically, the Scottish upper class—who had previously looked down on the kilt as the garb of peasants—began wearing it as a defiant badge of national pride and resistance.
The definitive turning point arrived in 1822 during King George IV’s historic visit to Scotland. Sir Walter Scott, the preeminent novelist of the era, orchestrated the royal reception. To present a dramatic, romanticized image of Scotland, Scott suggested that the King and all attending aristocrats wear kilts. The event became a sensation. Overnight, the kilt transcended its lowborn roots to become the time-honored traditional attire of the entire Scottish nation. The elaborate system of tartan patterns representing distinct clans was also codified during this period through a commercial alliance with textile mills.
Queen Victoria (reigning 1837–1901) subsequently became deeply enamored with Scotland, a region once defined by rebellion. This shift was fueled by Walter Scott’s literature, which romanticized the Scottish Highlands as a misty landscape populated by valiant, honorable warriors. Exhausted by a smoky, loud London undergoing rapid industrialization, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert purchased the Balmoral Castle estate in the Highlands in 1848. Captivated by the untamed wildness of the Scottish landscape, the royal couple saturated the castle’s interiors and their personal wardrobes with tartan checks.
Analyzing this case reveals that engineering a myth by tracing an object’s lineage requires a baseline of plausibility shared between the target consumer and the object. There must be a recognizable real-world context—such as the French eating fries as a staple, or the kilt being worn by Scottish laborers. When you introduce friction and resistance against an external force (war, political oppression, bureaucratic overreach), that plausibility evolves into authenticity. French fries instantly become soul food; commercial workwear transforms into a monument of national pride. The more demonically the external world—whether England, Vietnam, modern bureaucracy, or unethical corporations—is portrayed in the present, the more a commodity absorbs the aura of a sacred past (“the Good Old Days”), triggering a profound nostalgia among the masses. If engineering this type of external friction is impractical, an alternative is to deliberately create friction through exclusion, shutting out the undiscerning public. The barrier of scarcity—demanding that consumers first prove their qualifications and taste to appreciate the product—is translated by the public into an “untouchable” authenticity.
Identity, at its core, is a ontological proof of why “I” am distinct from “You.” Modern citizens living in anonymized metropolises with a fragmented 1/N share of sovereignty harbor a craving to validate their personal exceptionalism. Developing the connoisseurship to recognize objects with a mythical lineage—and ultimately possessing them—is a powerful mechanism to satisfy this need. For instance, the Apocryphon of John, an ancient Gnostic text, states:
“I [Christ] raised him up, and sealed him in the light of the water with five seals, that death might not have power over him from this time forth.”
In this context, the seals represent a sacred object unavailable to the psychics (the masses, conventional believers, and followers of the demiurgic law). Because the origin of this object is traced directly back to Christ, it generates an aura that the lower archons cannot violate.
Returning to the main point, once an object is reinterpreted through a myth, artists, journalists, and influencers desperate to reflect the zeitgeist begin consuming the brand as a semiotic vehicle for self-expression. In the final stage, the moment sovereign arbiters of taste bestow their validation (the “shout-out”), the nascent brand is elevated to luxury status.
By executing this five-step protocol—establishing plausibility → introducing external friction or intentional exclusion → securing authenticity → securing adoption by early-adopter priests → receiving a shout-out from apex connoisseurs—a producer can invent a lineage and a tradition retrospectively.
(2) Is Häagen-Dazs a European Royal Brand?
Let’s look at how this formula plays out in another market context.
Häagen-Dazs, the pioneer of premium ice cream, was founded in New York in 1961 by Reuben and Rose Mattus, a Polish-Jewish immigrant couple who originally delivered ice cream to local candy stores. It is a quintessentially American brand. To break free from the low-tier, cheap image associated with domestic frozen treats, they engineered a layer of plausibility. To project an aura of old-world pedigree and dairy craftsmanship, they invented the fictitious name “Häagen-Dazs” to mimic the cadence of Danish. By superimposing a Scandinavian phonetic structure with a northern European umlaut (ä)—a combination that does not exist in actual Scandinavian linguistic syntax—this naming strategy delivered an illusion to American consumers: that they were enjoying an artisanal product.
Häagen-Dazs’ brilliance lay in its refusal to compete on price or distribute samples indiscriminately to the mass market. Instead, they appealed directly to the upper class. They secured exclusive distribution in high-society spaces dedicated to culture and art, such as opera houses, musical halls, and elite tennis clubs. Their bold demand—that consumers must first prove their access to these exclusive spaces to enjoy the ice cream—was perceived by an anonymized public as a mark of authenticity.
(3) TWG Tea: The Luxury Singaporean Brand
TWG Tea, which currently commands a premium price index internationally, is a young manufacturing enterprise established in 2008. It has been around for less than two decades. Yet, by prominently engraving the year 1837 at the center of its logo, the brand induces global consumers into assuming it is a centuries-old institution that has purveyed tea under the patronage of the British Crown and the East India Company. As Starbucks—once revered for premium coffee and service— democratized and diluted its “Seattle/New Yorker vibe,” TWG targeted the tastes of the upper class who sought distinction through loose-leaf tea.
In actual history, 1837 has nothing to do with the company’s founding year. It simply marks the historical date when the Chamber of Commerce was established in Singapore, officially inaugurating the regional tea trade. TWG deployed the alchemy of memory to superimpose this public historical milestone onto its private brand heritage. To reinforce this bold narrative, they curated their flagship salons with golden tea tins, imported Italian marble, and heavy, polished Victorian-era hardwood furniture. This environment served as a clear signal of exclusion: those who do not understand the origin and value of fine tea should not cross the threshold. For those who did enter, it functioned as a validating rite of passage. This calculated arrogance—implying that if you lack the connoisseurship to pay the true price of the product, you need not enter—paradoxically morphed into a fantasy of originality for high-engagement priests.
Ultimately, modern citizens feel their lives touch true Reality when they discover that a hidden, sacred source code underlies an object or phenomenon, and that decoding it enriches their personal experience. Consequently, a producer who commands the alchemy of memory wields a magical authority over a public that consumes simulacra. A land lease for an old brewery, industrial workwear, an unrelated historical date like 1837, or a fabricated Scandinavian word can all be transformed into myths that siphon global capital.
4. The Alchemy of Memory — The Origins of the Inner Psyche and the Healing Business (Plebeian Consolation)
The first tactic of memory alchemy aligned the origins of external objects with the structures of personal life to answer the question, “Why is your life exceptional and meaningful?” This was aristocratic selection. The second tactic is plebeian consolation. This moves inward, diving deep into the individual’s psyche to explain, “Why am I suffering so much today?”, while absolving them of the responsibility for that pain.
Ancient Indian philosophy maintained a division between objective knowledge regarding the origins of external matter and subjective knowledge regarding the recollection of past impressions. Both were attempts to find meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence. However, the Indians revered the ascetic who decoded the origins of the human psyche as a spiritually superior practitioner to the artisan who manipulated external matter. This asymmetry offers inspiration for producers designing modern healing businesses.
Looking back historically, early humans obsessed over primordial deities and cosmic creation because they wanted to understand the mechanics of the world by projecting it onto their own bodies and lives. Over time, as the cosmic architecture settled into a stable default, the Creator receded into the background, becoming a Deus otiosus—an idle deity who no longer intervened in human affairs.
At that point, the public began to calculate: if the Creator does not actively afflict me, why should I offer sacrifices and pray daily? From then on, human supplication shifted away from metaphysical inquiries into why the universe exists, focusing instead on existential crises: “Why is the world so cruel to me specifically, and how do I survive this immediate moment?”
(1) Ancient Indian Philosophy: Karma, Samsara, and Moksha
One of the most unyielding responses to this human crisis is found in Indian philosophy. When confronted with the question of where the self originates, Indian ascetics tracked the lineage of the soul as if executing a forensic recovery of a system’s log data. This is the matrix of Karma (action/deed) and Samsara (the cycle of rebirth).
From the perspective of Indian philosophy, karma is an absolute law of causality: every word spoken, action taken, and thought harbored in the past or a previous life serves as a cause that yields an equivalent effect. The physical vessel inherited in the next life serves as the leverage through which that accumulated karma governs one’s existence. Even if a person fails to liquidate their karmic debt within a single lifespan, they remain strapped to the carousel of Samsara, destined to pay the price in a subsequent incarnation. Therefore, the sole path to liberation (Moksha or Nirvana) from this cosmic penitentiary was to trace the genealogy of one’s attachments, recognize why one craves specific phenomena, flip off the power switch of worldly desire, and extinguish the ego.
The issue was that reaching Nirvana was a luxury reserved exclusively for elite spiritual virtuosos. The vast majority of individuals succumbed to terror or the temptation of despair before ever attaining liberation. Over time, the doctrines of karma and Samsara—which initially sought to explain the origin of suffering and preach detachment—mutated into a crushing psychic shackle for the masses. To alleviate this, Indian thinkers introduced the framework of Kali Yuga (the Age of Darkness), asserting that the current epoch itself is so thoroughly corrupted that individual salvation is impeded. Concurrently, they engineered practical technologies of spiritual regression to unravel karma by reversing the soul’s timeline: Yoga and the Buddhist technique of Pratiprasava (counter-sprouting or reverse birth).
To translate this spiritual regression into modern terms: an individual sits quietly, regulates their breath, and summons a specific emotion of suffering or obsession buried in their consciousness. They then wind back the clock of the mind, tracing the cause that triggered that emotional explosion.
“Why am I experiencing such acute anxiety right now?”
──► “Because of that derogatory remark someone directed at me earlier.”
──► “Why did that crude comment penetrate my defenses so deeply?”
──► “Because it mirrors the shame of isolation I felt during a childhood rejection ten years ago.”
──► “Where, then, was the original blueprint of that shame first acquired?”
If this excavation continues without interruption, one eventually hits the deepest log entries of the subconscious: the Samskaras (latent impressions or subliminal traces). Samskaras are the residual footprints of every experience and emotion we have ever endured; they do not evaporate, but remain embedded like microchips in the deepest bedrock of the subconscious.
At this threshold, the practitioner does not stop. They erase variable inputs—such as anger, grievance, or environmental factors—from their awareness. Once all the superficial clutter is bleached away, the individual confronts the invariant, structural framework of the self: the immutable architecture that instinctively cowers and surrenders before an external stimulus without any logical reason. This exact coordinates reached repeatedly across separate regressions is the Samskara. At this terminal node, the individual stares directly at the root of their helplessness and shame.
Therefore, when a meditator confronts this archetypal energy and confesses, “In a past life, I was a crayfish crushed to death,” they are not speaking of biological taxonomy. A crayfish is simply the most homologous metaphor chosen by the mind to visually render the raw essence of that restriction and shame. The moment the seed archetype of this shame is observed, the Samskara dissolves. By seizing control of the origin, one reclaims personal sovereignty and completes the healing.
From the standpoint of a healing business, however, it is not the intricate metaphysics or the meditative mechanics that generate an aura. The origin of the aura is the presence of the healer (the producer) who has successfully journeyed into the origins of the psyche and returned.
The masses do not wish to dig down to the roots of their own agony; instead, they seek to align themselves with the healer by reciting their mantras, adopting their breathing patterns, reading their literature, and purchasing their goods. They just settle for a vicarious, symptomatic remedy. Consequently, producers entering the healing business must demonstrate through their entire being that they have attained this realization. In the healing rituals of primitive tribes, a shaman treating a toothache derived no authority from knowing the mythic origin of the tooth-burrowing worm. The shaman had to have experienced the agony of the toothache firsthand, journeyed into that hell through ritual, and returned alive to earn the right to officiate.
This remains an exceptionally high barrier to entry for the producer. Without psychological fortitude, a person cannot complete the proof-of-work (PoW) required to dig out the origins of suffering through asceticism and contemplation. Furthermore, verifying that enlightenment is difficult—for as Shakespeare demonstrates in King Lear, the boundary between the madman and the sage is razor-thin.
Is there, then, a more accessible and market-friendly methodology for a producer to descend into the private mental universe of the consumer?
(2) Freud’s Mythological and Scientific Indulgence-Selling Business
If it is too difficult for a producer to attain enlightenment through asceticism—like Indian monks or early Christian prophets—and then dilute that presence into a accessible version for the masses, an alternative strategy is to display sacrifice and suffering for a grand cause to trigger a sense of debt, much like later Christianity did.
In a democratic society where everyone holds a flattened 1/N share of sovereignty, explaining why your product is superior often triggers an instinctive backlash: “Who are you to lecture me?” Therefore, to induce voluntary purchasing, it is far more effective to trigger a psychological debt: “My suffering is a sacrifice so that you, I, and all of us can live better.” As history has repeatedly proven, the masses rarely seek enlightenment through personal agony; instead, they are highly vulnerable to the cross of salvation because they crave costless grace—a “no pain, yes gain” paradigm.
However, this approach carries side effects. Displaying one’s personal trauma and soliciting guilt through pity can induce emotional fatigue and risk being dismissed as cheap emotional pornography. Furthermore, championing altruistic moralizing—such as “Don’t be evil” or “Make the world a better place”—has become cliché. Without a sophisticated narrative to anchor it, the public will question the producer’s authenticity.
[ Two Paths of Psychic Intervention ]
┌──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┐
▼ ▼
[ The Ascetic Path ] [ The Freudian Path ]
• Requires intense PoW (Asceticism) • Leverages Institutional Authority
• High execution barrier • Packages Trauma with Mythic Symbols
• Mass resistance to "Lecturing" • Grants Costless Absolution (Indulgence)
In this regard, Sigmund Freud was the pioneer who sought to heal the human psyche through the clinical authority of “science,” bypassing personal or physical asceticism. The enduring popularity of Freudian psychoanalysis among the public is not merely due to his elegant explanations of human behavior through the mechanisms of libido and the subconscious. In fact, if one closely reads The Interpretation of Dreams or Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, the texts are rife with unverifiable concept, pseudo-scientific assertions, and leaps of linguistic and historical analogy.
The essence lies elsewhere. Freud conceptualized his core theories based on the psychological friction he experienced within his own family dynamics, yet he never paraded this personal anguish like pornography to beg for public sympathy. Instead, he generalized his private insights using unfalsifiable, unverifiable concepts—such as archetypal symbols from Greek and Roman mythology and psychological models (Id, Ego, Superego)—and repackaged them as a benevolent act of clinical therapy. By diagnosing the manifest suffering of his patients (neuroses, helplessness, nightmares), analyzing their repressions, and presenting these as the origin of their pain, he issued a scientific and mythological indulgence. His popularity rested on a liberating message: “This trauma is why your life is structured this way—and it is not your fault.”
Freud framed human infancy as a Garden of Eden. He posited that traumatic events destroying this paradise dictate an individual’s adult behavior and subconscious matrix. Consequently, he marketed a powerful narrative: by undergoing a regression to recall and confront these veiled traumas, one could purge their neuroses and achieve healing.
Brilliant still was Freud’s designation of family as the culprit behind these traumas. By dragging the origin of suffering into the other, this strategy was far more disruptive than the mental anamnesis practiced by isolated ascetics. To secure authority and arguments, he cross-pollinated these insights with mysterious symbols from mythology: Oedipus, Narcissus, Eros, and Thanatos.
Sitting in Freud’s consulting room and confronting this “truth,” the modern individual experienced a tempest of tears and catharsis:
“Ah, the origin of my broken, anxious existence was not my own failure or irresponsibility. It was a scientific phenomenon. The trauma afflicting me was an inheritance planted by my parents—and even the tragic heroes of ancient Greece endured the exact same agony.”
Experiencing profound relief at the revelation of their own innocence, the consumer willingly forgives their family and undergoes a Christ-like resurrection.
The Private Genesis of Freud’s Universal Myth
How did Freud engineer this highly lucrative, pseudo-scientific healing empire? It was forged from his own family dynamics, which were profoundly complicated by themes of cognitive dissonance, sexual repression, and filial tension:
- The Generational Disconnect: Freud’s father was twenty years older than his third wife (Freud’s mother). When Freud was born, his father was already an old man, while his young, attractive mother was a contemporary peer to his half-brother. Furthermore, his half-brother’s son (Freud’s nephew) was older than Freud himself. This inverted hierarchy bred acute cognitive confusion, sexual repression, and a deep-seated sense of inferiority.
- The Muddy Hat Incident: During Freud’s childhood, a Christian pedestrian yelled at his father, Jacob Freud, and knocked his hat into the gutter, shouting: “Jew! Get off the pavement!” Jacob quietly picked up his hat and walked away without offering any resistance. The young Freud felt shame and rage staring at his father’s muddy hat. This trauma became the scaffolding for his Oedipal Patricide theory—the concept of the father as the castrating authority figure who thwarts the child’s growth.
- The Golden Sovereign: His mother, Amalia, favored Freud over his siblings, referring to him as “mein goldener Sigi” (my golden Sigi) and treating him like royalty. This partiality instilled in him a certainty that an individual blessed with a mother’s blind adoration carries a lifelong confidence in success, linking this affection to the Oedipal archetype.
- The Shadow of Taboo: Freud maintained a highly scrutinized relationship with his sister-in-law, traveling alone with her across Europe and sharing hotel rooms. Years later, Carl Jung claimed that Freud had impregnated her and arranged a clandestine abortion.
Every spiritual guide who has left an indelible mark on human history underwent personal suffering. Their genius lay in converting that private torment into a universal vicarious atonement, promising healing and salvation to the masses. The more mythologically and scientifically refined the packaging, the more irresistible it becomes.
[Photo: Sigmund Freud’s consulting room and academic photographs, located in Vienna, Austria (Source: Myself)]
(3) The Rapture of Mass Culture and Commercial Art
Mass culture and commercial entertainment are enamored with this comforting Freudian narrative framework. It is the ultimate box-office insurance policy because it sells costless redemption. A textbook example of this mechanism is Christopher Nolan’s film Inception.
In the film, Robert Fischer, the heir to the world’s largest energy conglomerate, lives in the shadow of his cold, distant father, Maurice Fischer. He is paralyzed by a lifelong trauma: “My father was deeply disappointed that I couldn’t build an empire as great as his.” Yet, when the protagonist opens the secure vault hidden in the deepest layer of Fischer’s subconscious, a redemptive relic is revealed. Inside the safe, instead of a legal will or corporate documents, sits a fragile paper pinwheel—the sole material vessel of a memory where his father once truly validated him. The dying father, hooked to a respirator, delivers his final words to his son: “I wasn’t disappointed because you couldn’t be me. I was disappointed because you wasted your life trying to be me.” The trauma that had crushed his psyche for decades evaporates the moment it connects back to this origin relic. The son breaks down in tears, resolving to dismantle his father’s empire to forge his own sovereign path.
Let us analyze this critically. In the real world, does a textually embedded, lifelong trauma instantly correct itself because of a paper pinwheel discovered in a dream? The narrative lacks baseline plausibility. Yet, the public universally lauded this as a masterpiece scene. Why? Because it delivers what the masses crave: costless absolution. The pseudo-scientific rationalization that “all of my deficiencies, failures, and agonies are entirely due to the repressions and scars inflicted by my family” sanitizes contemporary indulgence, failures, and irresponsibility, all while claiming authority through the Oedipal myth.
(4) Indian Ascetics’ Asceticism vs. Freud’s Narrative Strategy
Freud’s monumental success offers practical inspiration for contemporary producers operating within the fields of yoga, meditation, psychology literature, and the arts. Forcing the modern public to study the dissolution of cosmic epochs (Kali Yuga) or decode the latent psychic log entries of past lives (Samskaras) is far too complex and tedious.
Furthermore, proving one’s own personal enlightenment through asceticism is an incredibly steep hill to climb. Unless a producer performs miracles like Jesus or commands a legion of fanatical devotees, the public will refuse to validate them. Even then, followers are plagued by constant skepticism. As the New Testament notes:
“Unless you [the masses] see signs and wonders, you will never believe.” — John 4:48
“Jesus said to him, ‘Have you(Tohmas) believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'” — John 20:29
Viewed through this lens, Freud’s narrative-centric strategy is more rational for a market economy. First, you identify a homology between the consumer’s private pain and a time-honored memory already validated by humanity—such as the Bible or Greek mythology—and fuse them together. Next, you apply a layer of scientific authority, declaring that the cause of their neurosis lies within a specific “subconscious architecture.” By blending this narrative plausibility with scientific and mythical legitimacy, and finally delivering an absolution—“It is not your fault”—the public embraces the framework as an undeniable salvation and absolute Reality.
We can map this business protocol across four distinct phases:
| Phase | Strategic Business Execution | The Narrative Alchemy Mechanism |
| Phase 1 | Bind individual suffering into a homologous lineage using the institutional authority of classical myths, symbols, or evolutionary frameworks. | Securing Plausibility (Probability) |
| Phase 2 | Diagnose the pain: “The origin of this trauma lies in your parents, society, or evolutionary biology—not your choices.” Sell the absolution and the corresponding material relics. | The Baptism of Authenticity |
| Phase 3 | Pre-emptively neutralize external logical counterarguments: “Do you possess the emotional depth to understand this agony?” or “How dare you deny these foundational archetypes?” | Evolution into Devotional Rapture |
| Phase 4 | Dilute the core thesis into hyper-potent, single-line mantra like “Find your bliss” or “The Fastlane to Wealth,” allowing the narrative to proliferate across the public matrix as a meme. | Liquidity Extraction (Cash-In) |
I must emphasize a critical distinction here. The fact that the modern healing industry operates via this mechanism is not an indictment of capitalism’s supposed immorality, nor is it a proof that producers will sell their souls for cash flow. The memory alchemy deployed by a sovereign producer is never a “scam.” What Freud demonstrated was an art form: gathering the fragmented clay of an individual’s life and history (plausibility), pressing it into the cast of an archetypal myth, and baking it through a scientific fire to forge a new worldview. The public voluntarily surrendered their capital to Freud because the utility of his narrative—the absolute mitigation of personal guilt—was flawlessly executed.
We arrive at a profound realization: the hyper-realistic fake world (simulacra) engineered through the alliance of the modern welfare state and mass media is not an evil. It is a sanctuary voluntarily chosen by democratic citizens who reject the weight of Reality and the existence of hierarchy to embrace the illusion of 1/N equality. Capitalism has merely and faithfully constructed the very theme park they demanded.
[ The Sovereign Producer's Compass ]
Origins
│
┌────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┐
▼ ▼
[ Aristocratic Selection ] [ Plebeian Consolation ]
• Target: Elite Connoisseurs • Target: The Suffering Masses
• Method: Exclusion & External Friction • Method: Excavation of Psyche
• Asset: Post-Facto Lineage / Heritage • Asset: Absolution ("Not your fault")
If this is the nature of the public, the sole mechanism for an independent producer to survive and command a premium is the Strategy of Anamnesis—the alchemy of memory. Whether you choose to excavate the genesis of external commodities (Pilsner Urquell, Guinness, TWG) or tunnel into the intimate traumas of the inner psyche (Freud, the healing industries), the core imperative remains identical: unearth the primordial source codes forgotten by the masses, link them to the present, and enrich the landscape of their lives.
- Aristocratic Selection: Transforming industrial workwear into national pride (the Kilt), converting an immigrant’s kitchen recipe into European royal prestige (Häagen-Dazs), or translating a dry trade date into high-society tea culture (TWG)—all of these miracles are birthed by ruling the origin. By securing a plausibility between the object’s origin and the present, generating authenticity through intentional exclusion or external friction, and captivating priests who possess high-resolution connoisseurship, a brand’s aura can be invented retrospectively.
- Plebeian Consolation: From Freud’s indulgences and Christianity’s unearned grace to welfare-state narratives and Nolan’s tear-stained paper pinwheel, the core engine of every healing narrative is the gift of absolution: “Your helplessness and suffering are not your fault.” This is achieved by drilling into the intimate lineage of the human spirit.
In the next article, we will examine the second dimension of Anamnesis: The Alchemy of Classification.
6. Related Articles
- [The Democratic Citizen’s Brain 1] The Market Landscape Hidden by the Democratic Welfare State: Why We Must Abandon ‘Making’ and Sell ‘Romance’
- [The Democratic Citizen’s Brain 2] Why a Linear View of Time (Judeo-Christianity, Historicism, Democracy) Threatens Modern Producers
- [The Democratic Citizen’s Brain 3] A Phenomenological Guide to Debugging Agony: Why Producers Must Read the Citizen’s Pain to Dominate the Market
If you enjoyed this article, you can support the project – thank you!