The Things We Carry

On talismans, the power of belief, and our capacity to shape the world

Strange times we live in.

We kicked off the decade with a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, then emerged from our global collective quarantine to find a world much less stable than the one we'd left. Wars and humanitarian crises have erupted across the globe, economic inequality has reached extraordinary proportions, and democratic institutions have come under increasing pressure. Even the expectation that successive generations will enjoy better lives than their parents feels less certain than it once did.

In a world where so many of the assumptions that once made the future seem reasonably predictable have become difficult to sustain, it's hardly surprising that we're looking for answers elsewhere. Nearly one-third of American adults now consult astrology, tarot cards or fortune tellers at least once a year. We want to know what lies ahead, and perhaps more importantly, whether there's anything we can do about it.

We also seek ways to reclaim some measure of authority in our own lives, and sometimes we invest that authority in the smallest and most ordinary of things like rings or bracelets — things we assign almost mystical powers and carry with us as talismans to bring us strength, comfort, love, good fortune and hope.

Much like ancient Egyptian scarabs, Sumerian evil eyes, and Victorian lockets, these talismans offer tangible reminders of our connections to loved ones and larger communities, our capacity to overcome difficulties, and the possibility that the future might not be so frightening after all.

The Power We Give

The talisman really is quite an extraordinary proposition: that an object we hold in our hands can exert influence over circumstances we cannot. Even more extraordinary, perhaps, is that the power we believe these objects to possess is not inherent to them, but rather something we bestow upon them.

Consider a ring worn for courage. Its power lies not in its ability to alter our circumstances, but in its ability to alter our behavior. If believing in the ring makes us more courageous, and that courage prompts us to act, then our belief has produced something real. We have made meaning consequential. Through this ring, belief becomes more than just a way of interpreting the world; it can become a means of acting upon it.

The Power We Inherit

This relationship between belief and power extends far beyond personal superstition. Indeed, variations on this dynamic underlie much of human civilization.

Consider money. Its value depends upon collective recognition and institutional trust, yet it determines the opportunities available to us and the conditions under which we live. Political institutions claim legitimacy through various forms of collective recognition, then exercise authority over the people subject to them. Traditions, too, are human inventions that can become obligations, governing behavior long after their origins have faded from memory.

There is nothing imaginary about the power these systems hold. Their consequences are material, their influence pervasive, and their authority often enforced by institutions with considerable resources at their disposal. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with this arrangement. Shared systems of meaning make collective life possible, enabling us to accomplish things that would be impossible alone.

The danger lies in forgetting our own role in creating and sustaining that authority.  Over time, institutions come to seem permanent and hierarchies inevitable. We organize our lives around arrangements we scarcely think to question, until the systems we have created begin to determine the boundaries of what we can imagine for ourselves.

And then sometimes the world changes.

The upheavals of recent years have exposed the fragility of arrangements we once regarded as permanent. Institutions once considered trustworthy have lost credibility, established conventions have been challenged, and the balance of power has shifted in ways that once seemed unimaginable. What appeared inevitable turns out to have been contingent all along.

Such disruptions are horrifying because they reveal how much of our lives is governed by forces outside our control. But they also expose something else: the extent to which we have allowed established systems to determine not only our circumstances, but our expectations of what might be possible.

The Power We Choose

Changing the world isn't as simple as changing our minds. Not even changing our individual lives is. The power of institutions is real, and recognizing its origins does not make its constraints disappear.

But the limits of our control are not the same as the limits of our agency.

We may not choose the circumstances we inherit, but we can question the authority we grant them over our decisions. We can examine what deserves our belief, what merits our allegiance, and what we are willing to sustain through our actions. Individually, these choices may seem inconsequential. Collectively, they are among the means by which institutions acquire, retain, and sometimes lose their authority.

Perhaps this is what makes the talisman such a compelling object. We choose what it represents, invest it with meaning, and allow that meaning to influence how we live. In choosing what it means to us, we exercise our agency through the very object we've endowed with power.

We might approach the larger structures that govern our lives with some of that same awareness. What we believe in, what we value, what we choose to uphold: these decisions have consequences beyond ourselves. Our lives are ours to shape, and the world we have inherited is not necessarily the world we are obliged to perpetuate.