Word: totemism
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...bewitched, one bothered and one bewildered. Wrote the San Francisco Chronicle's Alfred Frankenstein: "[Partch's] score-fragmentary, subdued, elusive-vastly enhanced the . . . ominous tension of the tragedy." The Oakland Tribune man found it all "rather horrendous, and Sophocles came out low man on the totem pole." Wrote the San Francisco Call-Bulletin's critic: "There is both solid merit and miscalculation . . . judge it for yourself...
...calls itself "The Organized Smiths of America" named Marine General Oliver P. Smith ("Retreat, hell! We're just advancing in a different direction") the "Smith of the Year" because he "typifies the fighting American spirit." Among other Smiths who got bows: Humorist H. Allen (Low Man on a Totem Pole) Smith and Kate Smith...
There is then no flattering comparison, or no insulting deduction. But the rules of the totem, its taboos and its legends, are fairly well-known to us now, in the examples that have been found among primitive or barbaric races. What we fail to do is to realize that the experiences of these people are in a very real way similar to our own. Loyalty to a tribe of Samoan Indians exacts much the same sacrifice from the individual and returns to him much the same reward, only in different terms and units, as loyalty to an American college...
...great danger that always faced the primitive in his loyalties lay in the very strength of his allegiance, that strength which kept the totem valid long after its vital life force had disappeared. The formal totem became so fixed that life could depart from it, yet its magic suffered not, for man breaks his ideals and his gods but reluctantly, and a dead and meaningless symbol is better than no totem at all. And the very enthusiasm with which the artificial loyalty is buoyed does hurt to the reality and the force of the totem, stifling it and distorting...
Just such is the danger which menaces the American college, hidden in the warmth, the flame, the color and the laughter of its Class Day and Commencement celebrations. It is an offering by each individual to his own loyalty, to a totem, a kindred in this case with legions and generations of Harvard men. But such a sacrifice must not come unaccompanied by clear understanding and appreciation. The mass form assumed by the celebration tends constantly to render this appreciation more difficult and it is only the strict avoidance of set formulae and taboos which may keep it from becoming...