Gamera

Here you go, gstafleu. It took me all of half an hour to make the irrefutable case that the Ikea catalog is a resurrection myth related to the last supper.

1. INTRODUCTION.
My suggestion is that in the Ikea catalog we find traces of the main theme described in food origin myths. Again a god is killed, self-sacrificed. The god resurrects and the symbols of his resurrection in the thanks giving rites are food and drink: the restaurant and "exit bistro." The "exit bistro" is a direct parallel to the Last Supper and plays a similar role in the catalog as the agape feasts do in Christianity. Now the element of the food-plant origin-myth is by no means the only element of the Ikea catalog: don't think I'm saying that Ikea is "just another food origin myth." I'm not saying that. But I am saying that we see the universal theme of the food origin myth as one element of the Ikea catalog experience. The element has no doubt lost much of its original meaning. But the symbolism of food as a representation of the body of a killed, self-sacrificed, resurrected god is too strong to ignore.

There are many more elements to Ikea catalog than just this, which makes it a complex story. But that complexity should not mean we should not recognize the individual elements where we can.

Here is the structure of the IKEA catalog (I'm using the online catalog so readers can confirm the sacred text themselves).
http://ikea.shoplocal.com/ikea/defau...toreid=2499966


2. THE PROMISE.

First, the "Promise". On the cover of the IKEA catalog in bold letters is the admonition: "Celebrate Your Everyday Life." This is repeated, but varied, on the first page, which tells us "a better everyday life" Like Jesus at the Last Supper, the IKEA catalog offers a better life.
Thus the IKEA text is going to tell us about celebration and a promise. A promise that this particular celebration will lead to a better life. What is that better life? The sacred text of the IC tells us.

3. THE SACRIFICE.

Second, the Sacrifice. The text presents IKEA as a god, separated out from other corporations, sacrificing itself for the benefit of mankind.
Thus under the "Our Vision" section of the text, we are told Ikea offers "a better way of life" by sacrificing its profit and self interest:
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_i...tter_life.html
"A better everyday life
The IKEA business idea is to offer a wide range of home furnishings with good design and function at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them. And still have money left!

Most of the time, beautifully designed home furnishings are created for a small part of the population — the few who can afford them. From the beginning, IKEA has taken a different path. We have decided to side with the many.

That means responding to the home furnishing needs of people throughout the world. People with many different needs, tastes, dreams, aspirations...and wallets. People who want to improve their homes and create better everyday lives.

It's not difficult to manufacture expensive fine furniture. Just spend the money and let the customers pay. To manufacture beautiful, durable furniture at low prices is not so easy. It requires a different approach. Finding simple solutions, scrimping and saving in every direction. Except on ideas.

But we can't do it alone. Our business idea is based on a partnership with the customer. First we do our part. Our designers work with manufacturers to find smart ways to make furniture using existing production processes. Then our buyers look all over the world for good suppliers with the most suitable raw materials. Next, we buy in bulk — on a global scale — so that we can get the best deals, and you can get the lowest price.

Then you do your part. Using the IKEA catalog and visiting the store, you choose the furniture yourself and pick it up at the self-serve warehouse. Because most items are packed flat, you can get them home easily, and assemble them yourself. This means we don't charge you for things you can easily do on your own. So together we save money...for a better everyday life"

Note that the text emphasizes how difficult the task IKEA has set out for itself. It's difficult to make beautiful furniture at a low price. What is tacit here (because it is sacred) is that IKEA will sacrifice profit -- the very life blood of any corporation -- in order to benefit others. The sacrificing of profit is symbolic a death, since profit is the life blood of corporations. IKEA "scrimps and saves" as the text puts it -- i.e., it gives up profit to benefit others and thus ritually, intentionally "dies" to its corporate status. And who are those others? The text emphasizes that most furniture companies only make beautiful furniture for the elite few, the wealthy. But IKEA, like Jesus, sides with the downtrodden, the furnitureless. IKEA, by sacrificing its life blood -- profit -- makes such home furnishing available to everybody, even the poor, to "improve their everyday lifes."

4. THE RESURRECTION INTO THE WORLD.
Third, having made the ultimate sacrifice to benefit humanity, IKEA is "resurrected" back into the world and prospers. Thus if you click on IKEA IN THE WORLD
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_i...the_world.html

We find a resurrected IKEA, strong and prosperous, and able to deliver "a better life" to everybody, as a result of its sacrifice of profits.

"IKEA in the world
The IKEA group has 90,000 co-workers and operates in 44 countries.

Range
IKEA of Sweden in Älmhult, Sweden, develops the IKEA range. This is the same for IKEA stores all over the world and consists of 9,500 articles. The basic thinking behind all work with the range is to use low prices to make well-designed, functional home furnishings available to everyone. Products designed by in-house and external designers are analysed while still on the drawing board to ensure they meet the requirements for function, efficient distribution, quality, the environment and low price.

IKEA of Sweden also gives each product its unique name, such as BILLY and KLIPPAN.
IKEA of Sweden also gives each product its unique name, such as BILLY and KLIPPAN.
Sales
IKEA stores stock everything for the home under one roof: sofas, beds, tables, chairs, textiles, kitchen utensils, flooring, rugs, kitchens, bathrooms, lamps and plants. By displaying the range in room settings, we aim to inspire customers with ideas and share hints and tips about smart, new solutions. 410 million customers visited our stores last year.

The catalog is our most important marketing channel. Last year, a total of 160 million copies were printed in 52 editions and 25 languages.

The Internet is being used by more and more people as a source of information. Last year the IKEA website attracted 125 million visits worldwide. Internet business accounts for a small but increasing percentage of total IKEA sales.

"Look!" the text tells us, "The sacrifice IKEA undertook hasn't killed it. On the contrary, IKEA now has 410 million customers and is "in the world" as a global force. It has, like Jesus, triumphed."

And it is through the catalog itself (the sacred text) that the word of IKEA's triumph is bruitted thorought the globe, just like the gospel: "The catalog is our most important marketing channel". One can almost hear in this claim, the Apostle Paul telling us how the gospel has reached the entire world! They are both -- Paul and the IKEA catalog -- drawing from the same soteriological myths.

5. THE RITUAL MEAL IN CELEBRATION OF THE IKEA GOD'S RESURRECTION.
Fourth, symbols of IKEA's resurrection are offered in the thanksgiving rites of food and drink.
Thus, click on food at IKEA http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_i...estaurant.html

"IKEA restaurant
At the IKEA restaurant you can take a break from the hard work of shopping. You can even start your day at IKEA with breakfast before the store opens. Or why not have coffee and cake in the afternoon!

In the restaurant you'll find healthy Swedish and local daily dishes made from high quality fresh produce.

You can use our highchairs and baby change stations for the little ones. And while the grownups rest a few minutes after lunch, the kids can have fun in the children play area."
for the kids!
Buying furniture for the home should involve the entire family. So should lunch. Our restaurants offer smaller children's meals, and IKEA stores also have facilities for feeding and changing babies.

The text emphasizes health and community. It's a community meal, not merely to satisfy hunger, but to "celebrate everyday life" with kids and family, the children represented the new life brought by IKEAs sacrifice.
And if that isn't enough, before one returns to everyday life, IKEA offers us the "Exit Bistro" as one last symbol of the "after life" one can experience after exiting this world and its furnishings.

"IKEA exit bistro
Feeling hungry after your IKEA experience? Pick up a hot dog, soft ice cream or other quick low-price snack at the Exit Bistro. It's located after the check-out"

The "exit bistro" is analogous to the last supper. It embodies the celebration of IKEAs role in the world and the promise of a better life, expressed through communal dining.
Again, I'm not saying the IKEA catalog is just about food myths, but it clearly is as closely related to resurrection myths as the Last Supper is.

spin

I can see that you've got a lot on your plate, Gamera.


spin

Gamera

He asked, I provided. Took about half an hour. It was fun. Though I admit it isn't half as fanciful as half of your posts.

gstafleu

Gamera,

thanks for your Ikea effort! I could address the individual similarities you posit, but I think that would miss the point. Rather, I would like to address a larger issue that I see here.

I will start with observing that the same objection of "just pattern recognition" can be raised against the similarity of the synoptic gospels. So what I want to address is the following: why is it valid to see similarity between the synoptics, why is it invalid to try and do the same between the Ikea catalog and the Eucharist, and where does my food-plant attempt stand?

Before I do that we need some theory, which I'll take from the discipline of plant taxonomy: the science of classifying plants. In the old days an enterprising biologist would go to the Amazonian jungles, collect a bunch of samples in the form of dried plants, and take them back to his office. He would then spread all the samples out on the floor and climb onto the table to get a good overview. Our biologist would then go through a number of iterations where he would climb down, shuffle the dried plants around into better groupings, climb back up to see the result, and so on. In the end the samples were arranged to groups that should correspond to taxonomical categories (taxons), for example genera and species within the genera.

There is of course an element of subjectivity in this, and with the advent of computers the question was asked: is there a more objective way of classifying plants? This led to the field of numerical taxonomy, which employs tools of pattern recognition, for example cluster analysis, to classify plants. To do this the samples are converted to sets of attributes such as height of plant, color of flowers, dimensions of the leaves and so on. This is then fed to a computer program which produces groupings based on the samples, as represented by these attributes.

When I was studying this in Theoretical Biology the question always came up: how many attributes should we measure? Is a question of the more the merrier? This is where an important bit of theory comes in, in the form of Watanabe's Ugly Duckling Theorem (UDT). I wouldn't want to reproduce the math here (even if I could ), but I can state its result in a generally applicable fashion. The UDT says that I can achieve any desired degree of similarity between any two (or more) objects by choosing my similarity criteria, that is the attributes measured, appropriately. Or "inappropriately" as the case may be. There is a significant practical consequence of this theorem: in order to discern significant similarities we need to use similarity criteria (attributes) that are meaningful.

Let me give an example to make this more tangible. Our biologist starts with measuring the leaf dimensions: width and height. This makes biological sense because we assume that the leaf dimensions came about through evolution, and we also assume that out classification should have an evolutionary basis. Our biologist is quite enterprising however, and possesses a walkman. The biologist now also records as an attribute the first letter of the title of the song playing when the sample was gathered. He gathered a daisy while "Ruby Tuesday" was playing, a fern while "Rock and Roll Music" was playing and an aster to the strains of "Don't get Fooled Again." Using just the first letter criterion he then decides that a daisy and a fern are very similar while an aster is something completely different. His fellow biologists have a fit.

The reason for the fit is simple: the first letter of the song played has no significance for plant taxonomy. There is no evolutionary meaning to it, no metabolical meaning and so on. Now, you might say, of course there isn't, this variable is totally outside the plants. Well, maybe. But let's look at the leaf dimensions. Measuring only leaf dimensions our biologist concludes that his fern is very similar to a Bearclaw (both have largish leaves), while a Queen Anne's Lace (close family of the Bearclaw but with different leaves) is something completely different. His colleagues are again rolling on the floor.

Why are they rolling? After all, leaf dimension is a plant thing and has an evolutionary meaning. They are rolling because leaf dimensions are not a meaningful attribute when comparing ferns and flowering plants. This has been established using different attributes, for example reproductive organs and vascular structure. There is well-reasoned consensus among biologists that these latter attributes should be taken into account before one can look at the leaf dimensions. That does not mean leaf dimensions are useless: if you look in a field guide you will find that in order to distinguish between various daisies the leaf dimensions can be useful.

I hope I have shown two things here. First a general principle: when establishing similarity you need to choose attributes that are relevant to the subject matter. The second thing is more specific: it is not a given that attributes that can be used do discern similarities (and differences of course) between sub-groups within a parent group can also be used on the level of the parent groups: my example showed that (just) leaf dimensions cannot be used when your samples contain both ferns and flowering plants.

We can now go back to your Ikea catalog. You observe similarities between it and the Eucharist. True, the similarities are there, but they are not meaningful because the catalog and the Eucharist are, for good reason, seen to belong to different groups: the catalog is sales literature and the Eucharist is mythology. The similarities you adduce are valid within the realm of mythology but not between mythology and sales literature.

Similarly we can see why it is valid to see the usual similarities between the synoptics: they all belong to the group "gospels" and within that group the similarities are meaningful.

Which leaves us with my food plants. It should by now be clear that your objection "it is just pattern recognition" is not sufficient. Of course it is pattern recognition, that is how we establish similarities and correspondences. What you have to do is show why the similarities I adduce are not valid when comparing these origin myths with the Eucharist. My position is that they are valid, because both the Eucharist and the origin myths belong to the group Mythology, and within that group it is valid to compare their basic elements, in this case a dying and rising god who, in his risen form, is represented by food.

I take it your position is that the similarities I adduce are not valid, and the question is why? The easiest might be just to say that christianity is not a mythology and hence you cannot compare its elements to the elements of myths. If that's your position I suspect you'll have a difficult time defending it, but who knows, it may be worth a try . Or maybe you think that the central elements of the myths are somehow not relevant to the mythologies? Again, I'd have a difficult time seeing how that could be. However, I share with spin that I failed mindreading 101, so you'll have to tell me what your position as to why my similarities are invalid is.

Gerard Stafleu

spin

As I said, I can see that you've got a lot on your plate, Gamera. In retirement?

Clivedurdle

What if IKEA is deliberately playing on xian motifs?

gstafleu

Then the comparison would be valid, provided you can show that that is what Ikea is doing. You cannot assume it, that is begging the question.

Gerard Stafleu

Gamera

Always a possibility when you have an older text. But of course the Christian mss are all older than the mss purporting to set forth the various mythic narratives that are alleged to have informed Chrisitianity. So we have a time travel problem. Or rather the JM people do.

For all we know the pagan myths that are recorded in texts were created out of Christianity, given the priority of the Christian mss in time.

Gamera

I'm trying. I'm planning to get a stipend with payment with all those Alexandrine coins you claim prove Alexander's existence. When I'm done spending them, even you will have to admit there is no evidence of this mythic character, Alexander, and my triumph will have been complete.

Gamera

[QUOTE=gstafleu;4098484]
You've assumed the conclusion, gstafleu, which in this case is easy (and valid) because Ikea catalogs are modern artifacts and we can observe how they are produced, by whom, and for what purpose they are used. But if the Ikea catalog were a 2nd century artifact from a culture that is understandable only through other texts, then you wouldn't be able to assume the conclusion. So you've missed the point -- the narratives you are comparing are not in a modern context. So you are using a methodology, which if used in a modern context, leads to a false positive. There is no etiological relationship between resurrection myths, Christianity and Ikea catalog. We know that. But we can't figure that out using your methodology. Using your method, we reach the opposite result, which is what I tried to show. Only if you know beforehand that the narrative (in this case the IKEA catalog) is not related, can you conclude by making a structural comparison that it is not related.

If you don't know (and we don't with the narratives you are making claims about) your methodology will always tell us they are related, because like the Ikea catalog, I can always find structural similarities between any two texts.

You've switched gears here. The synoptics are compared not based on narrative structure per se but textual similarities that go way beyond narratives. The point of the Q analysis is to claim a prior TEXT that is the origin of these texts, and to elucidate their interrelations. It is not an analysis based on thematics or symbolism or other NARRATIVE structures (at least not primarilly). The Q thesis got off the ground because whole textual passages are the same or similar in these mss, which would never occur unless the mss themselves are related, not thematically, but actually as mss which the authors had in front of them.

Caldistics and category analysis of living structures is simply a false analogy for the comparisons of narratives. Why? Because living structures have no meanings and don't require interpretation per se. They require only categorization. In contrast, narrative structures exists because we interpret a text a certain way. They exist only as an interpretation of a text, not as an independent structure. The only indepedendent structure any text has is: a bunch of words in a line. And using that structure you would categorize a text with other texts, and not say with plants. But of course you aren't make that kind of structural analysis of the narratives. You're intepreting the meaning of the narrative and in doing creating what you deem to be structures that are meaningful and historically related through their meaning.

Not at all. The Christian texts are texts. So are the myths you cite. They are all just texts. My point is that their meaning exists in our reading of the text, and that any attempt to correlate the texts based on claimed meta-narrative structures is simply a product of your particular interpretation (like mine with the Ikea catalog) and has nothing to do with any historical connection. That is why structuralism (which is a subset of modernism) has pretty much been abandoned and replaced by poststructuralism.

Further, as I pointed out elsewhere, the texts at issue are embodied in mss in which the Christian mss are older than the ones with the myths you claim take priority. For all we know, the Christian narrative gave rise to the resurrection myths you claim the Christian narrative arose from. The mss history would support that admittedly odd conclusion.