The myth of 'the bottom line' in war, home, food, healthcare, and relationships.

摘要

Human beings have engaged in trade, conducted war, created shelter, obtained food, practiced healing, and lived in community throughout the millennia. Historically, religion served as the overarching container used to create meaning within these human activities. In contemporary culture, the myth of "the bottom line" which is the Market economy has become the overarching container for a culture continually seeking to monetize human activity and create meaning through narratives of profitability.;Archetypal psychology employs polytheistic metaphors to describe the multiple autonomous forces or archetypes that exist within the human imagination. The work of archetypal psychologists and depth psychology authors including James Hillman, Ginette Paris, Michael Vannoy Adams, Karl Kerenyi, Charles Boer, and Thomas Moore form the foundation for an archetypal analysis of the myth of "the bottom line." James Hillman calls for attention to the narratives of business and names the myth of "the bottom line," in Kinds of Power , "The drama of business, its struggles, challenges, victories and defeats, form the fundamental myth of our civilization, the story that explains the underlying bottom line of the ceremonies of our behavior" (1).;This dissertation is an exploration of the way the myth of "the bottom line" and the Market economy affect human experience of the archetype of War in the form of outsourcing of military functions; the archetype of Home in relationship to the commercial entity of a house and the recent market bubble; the archetype of Food in the form of agribusiness, patented seed stock, and processed food; the archetype of Healing in the form of industrialized health care; the archetype of Relationships within social media and technology. This analysis is achieved through an archetypal interpretation of authors who critique the forces of the Market on each of the respective archetypes. In addition, there is archetypal analysis of the voices of the businesses involved in these territories by "reading through" their annual reports and web sites.;Keywords: archetypal psychology, Hillman, Hermes, market, war, home, food, health care industry, social media, technology.