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sym·bol·o·gy |
Modern society exists almost wholly in a vacuum, distant from any
possibility of meaning, and governed by a succession of symbols, gestures,
and images - few of which have any relation to reality, and many of
which are mapped to their opposites in reality. As a result, most adults
live the whole of their lives playing in a dream world with the symbols,
gestures, and images handed to them, never aware of the illusion that
both contains them and is the action of their perpetuation. Consequently
they exist in a pre-fabricated reality and never touch anything real.
Before the media age took hold, our primary symbology was in the use
of language to express thoughts and feelings. The symbols employed
in the language had a shared meaning known by those using the
language, correlating directly with reality and facilitating communication.
Today an additional layer of symbols rests on top of our use of language,
consisting of a lexicon based primarily around social creations of the
media age and the popular culture it supports. The problem with this recent
addition to symbology is that it disconnects the use of language from meaning
in reality - instead existing primarily in its own fictional and
self-referential world, though this goes unnoticed by the majority of
people who use and accept the validity of the symbols, gestures, and images
they have been given to play with.
Perception is Reality
As the nihilism of the 20th century emerged in full blossom after
the second world war, the ideas of truth, meaning, and value were
discarded as anachronistic and elitist. In its place was the democratic
refrain that whatever people believed was considered true. Similarly,
the valuation of "good" no longer was related to its place in reality,
but rather was decided as positive based on feelings of kindness, duty,
obligation, and mercy. The great triumph of democratic thinking was
that feeling overcame thought and reality - and feeling is eminently
manipulable.
Symbology succeeds through its method of "dumbing down" and
oversimplification which removes resistance and thought, thus making
it the easiest choice. Just as the complexity of polytheism and its
culture lost to the simplicity of monotheism, society increasingly
discards meaning, subtleties, and complexity in order to give a simple
democratic answer that the masses eagerly consume.
Symbol Manipulation
People who profit from creating images were shrewd enough to notice the
potential that this new approach offered for their efforts and offered it
their support because of its great effectiveness in manipulating the masses.
The societal results that followed from its use were considered less
important than than the successful use of the method, but were also worthy
of support because they helped to maintain the whole of the illusion.
It was quickly recognized that people would feel intense dissatisfaction
with a life that was manipulated and pre-determined, even though most
people would never figure out what was wrong, but would instead jump
between pre-made remedies in futile search for a way out. In conjunction
with the introduction of a symbolic reality was the need to force a
discharge of energy and tension. Revealing brilliance within the
architecture of media symbolism is an overload of icons creating its own
internal language disconnected from reality. This allows people to
expend their energy operating with any of these symbols but never being
able to achieve any results because the symbols do not interact with
reality, thus rendering all actions in the symbolic world to be completely
ineffectual and devoid of potential for harming the symbolic structure.
Here a paradox emerges: if one values the symbols used in modern society,
they remain distanced from reality and will never be able to achieve
anything that has meaning or value. But if one does not believe in the
symbols and instead insists on connections to reality, their values and
behavior will be bewildering and misunderstood by nearly all people.
Social Values and Politics Through Illusion
A reality encased in symbology is inevitably one in which the symbols
have been detached from their original meaning and worshiped as mere
symbols. These symbols have been inflated, misdirected, and repurposed
such that the symbol by itself and as a whole no longer makes sense, yet
it remains in existence out of tradition, though the original meaning of
the symbol, if there was one, has been long forgotten. In other cases,
the original meaning of the symbol may have been entirely fabricated or
based on an error in judgment or perception, of which awareness has since
arisen but without the revocation of the symbol.
A prism of illusion is cast over all things for which a public
symbol has been established. Consider for example the social image and
symbols related to a political organization which consists of three aspects,
only the first of which is reality but the latter two which have the
greatest weight in social valuations.
In more common and more subtle cases, we find the results of collective
illusion all around us. Cashiers everywhere are taught to ask how we are
doing as if they care and to offer a smile that shows they are pleased to
spend their time serving our need to consume. We are not only supposed to
believe that they are enthralled by our choice to purchase from the
store at which they are employed, but we are supposed to feel cheated,
offended, and insulted when someone doesn't put on a fake smile for our
shopping experience.
A similar illusion exists in how advertising succeeds in selling us images
that we then accept and buy to show our desired place in the symbolic
structure that advertisers have invented. There is no point in this which
is real - it is entirely faked and arbitrary at every level. Though flashy
advertisements can claim a soft drink or clothing style is exciting or
classy, this has no relation to reality, but is only an attempt to introduce
a new symbolic value into a fictional set of relations.
Thoughtless Morality and Chains of Duty
We are given rules but without explanation of the underlying thought
behind them, thus assuring that we are disconnected from their purpose
and will remain ignorant about them but yet compliant. For example,
most people are trained to stop and wait patiently at traffic lights,
even at 3am when there are no other cars on the road.
Such behavior exists everywhere and demonstrates that moral rules
without a logical foundation in reality are always only the method of
offering the comfortable assurance of fetters to make slaves and zombies
of all.
There should be no question that by adhering thoughtlessly to symbology
that we are the monkeys in the cage. But if we stop to look around we
can see a way out to a world that is forever open and rich with possibility.
It is within our grasp, but we must desire for meaning in our lives
instead of accepting the complacency of routine that we are offered.
Most of all we need to believe in ourselves and others so we are not
bound by the weight of these valueless symbols that perpetually offer
confusion and burdens that are intended to prevent us from going anywhere
so we feel obligated to serve their structure.
-Jesus
"Suffering itself becomes contagious through pity; sometimes it can
bring about a collective loss of life and life-energy which stands in
an absurd relation to the quantum of its cause (- the case of the death
of the Nazarene)."
- Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ
July 2, 2000