Let Us Not Be Cyclopes!

Do you remember the last time you were a one-eyed monster?

The Cyclops is a one-eyed monster in Greek mythology, but one-eyed monsters also appear in the legends of many peoples and even in religious beliefs throughout the world.

The image of the one-eyed giant is a universal image rooted in the collective unconscious of people across different cultures. Its narrative presence can be found from northern Europe to Africa and from Japan to Brazil; in Jungian analytical psychology, it can therefore be understood as an archetype. Archetypes are not merely narrative images and symbols. They point to a deeply rooted characteristic in the structure of the human psyche that can be studied.

If the Cyclops is an archetype and a symbol of a psychological and mental characteristic present in each of us, what does its one-eyedness mean?

What can we learn about ourselves from the story of the Cyclopes’ origins and their way of life?

In Greek mythology, as narrated by Hesiod, the ancient Greek poet who lived around the eighth century BCE, in his famous Theogony, the genealogy and story of the Cyclopes are marked by the following characteristics. I will first identify these important features and, after each section, try as far as I can to decipher the hidden meaning of this myth:

1) The Cyclopes are one-eyed monsters.

— What does the one-eyedness of the Cyclopes mean? In fact, it can be understood as seeing in one dimension and possessing a closed consciousness. Having only one eye open onto the world signifies a limited understanding and a one-sided, inflexible mind. We know that the eye is a symbol of consciousness, attention and awareness; to have only one eye is to understand only one thing and to fail to see anything beyond it. With one eye, the field of vision narrows, and one thing becomes not merely the focus of attention but the centre of the mind.

Remember the last time you had a heated argument with your partner. At such moments, anger can turn us into a Cyclops, because while arguing we are not seeking to understand the truth or to make things better; we are seeking only to prove that we are right. Anger narrows our angle of vision, and in the moment of anger the only thing we want is to win. When we are angry, something awakens within us that feels it is right and that what it understands and knows is all that is true.

How many times have you argued with Cyclopes? Beneath any article or Twitter post where dozens of people write their opinions, you can see the awakened Cyclopes in people.

Throughout mythological stories, Cyclopes are depicted as half-conscious, unintelligent and minimally attentive to their surroundings, angry and cruel, and lacking feeling, subtlety and complexity of thought.

If we think a little more deeply about this idea, we arrive at an important understanding that may free us from being Cyclopes forever.

The problem with Cyclopes is not that they cannot see, or that what they see does not exist. Their problem is that, because they see nothing beyond what is before their single eye, they possess an extremely limited understanding of truth. This is precisely what ideologies do to human beings.

Many ideologies contain some truth and focus on an important issue. But because, by definition, they present what they understand as the definition and final solution of the whole truth, they turn their followers into one-eyed giants: creatures with an extremely restricted field of vision and enormous anger, capable of a monstrous violence like the cruelty of the Cyclops. It is interesting that in religious traditions—Christianity and Judaism as well as Islam—the Antichrist and the Dajjal are depicted as one-eyed. With the understanding we have developed so far of the archetype of the one-eyed giant, the meaning of this image and the warning concealed within it are not difficult to grasp.