May 1, 2007
-
Symbolism is important. It really is. A symbol can guide you through a dark time. A symbol can strengthen your resolve. A symbol can heighten your awareness. And through symbols you can better understand the mental worlds of those around us. What drives society and what drives individuals can often best be understood through looking at the symbolism that surrounds us.
Too bad it likely all a bunch of hooey. Worse, it is often dangerous hooey. In the end, a rock or a piece of cloth, no matter how many people put great stake in their symbolic meaning is still just a rock or piece of cloth. Atoms bound together in a particular configuration. There is no second order reality infusing rocks and cloth with deeper significance that can be unearthed and understood through rational analysis. WE create that second level of meaning through our actions and our beliefs and our traditions over time. It’s not inherent. We could just as easily drop any symbol, turn our mind away from it and make it back into a simple collection of molecules. But often we don’t. We choose not to. Why? I can only think that it is because we find that there is something beautiful in the creation and adherence to symbolism, something wondrous that we want to protect.
But I said that they can be dangerous these symbols and I meant it. And I don’t just mean the obvious danger of having some sort of evil leader who corrupts and abuses symbols in order to garner support from the masses. No I think symbolism can be dangerous for us individuals too, even when we regard them in good faith with a normal person’s sense of their significance.
You see often we start to dwell on the symbolism of moments and items and ideas and excuse ourselves from the analysis of their substance. We think this was “the first” or “the most” or “the biggest” or “the least” or “the last” or “the turning point”. Something can be that symbolic moment, that fundamental gesture, or that advent of deepest significance. That! Right there! That’s the heart of it, the thing which symbolizes all the rest and wraps it all up in a neat bow. So easy to understand. So easy to dwell upon. So easy to blame…
But of course the symbol should only be the beginning of our analysis, not the end. We have to ask ourselves why the symbol has come to mean so much to us, how it makes us feel, what caused the circumstances to come to be and what the likely consequences are. If you are asking questions like why did x come to pass, and what does x mean to me and where is x leading me then those I think are worthy questions with regards to symbols, deep and important and very rational to boot and likely to lead to rational decisions. But if you dwell on the symbolism of a thing, dwell upon or become obsessed with the fact of it being the first or the most or the greatest or the importance of a moment or the deep significance of an event, by virtue of it being such a substantive symbol, I think that’s dangerous. It can lead to irrational decisions. It can drive us to make mistakes that we can later come to regret.
That’s not to say that we should abandon such symbols or forget about them. No, symbols can be a great means of self motivation. They can provide a focal point that sharpens the mind, helps us to grow and understand ourselves better. Real or not, they are very valuable to us in our day to day livings. We can and do put great stake in symbols, we throw a lot of ourselves into them and then use them to drive ourselves to fulfill what we want., or to make ourselves be what we want to be. That, I think is a wondrous process of self becoming. The danger is when you are not in control of the manner in which the symbol is driving you and you abandon rational analysis for the simple advocacy of some supposed deeper “truth” of symbols.
