I don’t doubt that you can name a few bad traditions. I, likewise, could point out that adherence to tradition could have protected humanity from eugenics, communism, prohibition, electroshock therapy, Wayans Brothers movies, and countless other horrors. Such lists don’t bring us any closer to understanding.
The question that we seek to address, shouldwe generally adhere to the ideas and ideals of the past, or get on board with any idea that appears to be the wave of the future. I say the past for two reasons. First, traditions have been time-tested while the fads have not, by definition. Second, traditions generally appeal to the great mass of ordinary people while new ideas come from the ruling elite. I have much greater respect for the former than the latter.
In any case, as you’re asking for advice on improving the essay, these are all topics which I think you should address. Currently the essay doesn’t go very deep, because it rarely stays on one topic for more than a paragraph.
By now it’s clear that I’ve done a poor job articulating my point, which is that people need to learn to look past symbols and get to the substance of issues, or lack thereof, and not let themselves be corralled into thinking a certain way.
Well, if the Danish Mohammed cartoons, the Koran-in-the-toilet incident, and the Pope’s remarks about Islam didn’t provoke conflict, they did something very close to it. Cross burning isn’t a very good example, because an incident usually indicates the presence of real racism (but when thousands of black people see an incident on TV, it can exagerrate the level of racism in their perception). A better example would have been Rodney King, because millions of people were made to react in a certain way, and because it’s an example of how a symbol isn’t always a familiar design, but can be a person or incident, etc.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here.
That they can sometimes become flashpoints of controversey is bad enough! Again, I’m saying let’s somehow get rid of symbols, just the foolinshness that they often bring.
I’m not saying that all traditions are bad and should be gotten rid of; that’s radicalism. I’m saying that traditions are not a reliable guide to what’s right, and it only takes one bad tradition for that to be true.
False dilemma. Ever try reason and deliberation?
Traditions are old rather than new, but “tested” implies that they’re responsive and ready to adjust, when in fact they tend to be set in stone.
Traditions are very often exploited by the ruling elite to justify staying in power. The American revolution, the abolitionsit and civil rights movements, even the Protestant Reformation, were all grassroots reforms movements, i.e. “fads” that challenged the traditions that kept certain elites in power.
And this is turning out to be a very valuable excercise, so all comments are appreciated. This is a shorter draft than before, since I’m trying to avoid rambling on while still covering all the ground I want to cover. I’ll keep trying.
You should look into General Semantics by Korzybski. His concept of “The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing defined” seems to fit right in with your idea here. (It’s too bad it got picked up by some real loons back in the day. There’s something there, just not as much as they think. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is particularly suspect, and particularly well-loved by a certain species of rather intense ranter.)
Looking up E-Prime, or English without the verb ‘to be’, might also be fruitful. (Instead of saying “John is foolish”, think in terms of “John does foolish things” or “John looks like a total git” and get at the core of the issue.)
However, and this is important, Korzybski also emphasized the concept of time binding, or passing complex information on down through the generations. Time binding is how Shakespeare talks to us and how we know the majority of what we know as humans. Time binding is utterly dependent on symbols. Without symbolic communication, time binding is impossible. It is also impossible to ‘neuter’ symbols in the way you seem to want, if only because of pre-existing Pavlovian reactions to some of them ingrained in a large number of the populace. More importantly, humans are complex beasts and human communication reflects that complexity.
Sure. But people can learn to becom more immune to the manipulative power of symbols, to recognize when they are needlessly divisive, and to not become so upset when they are perceived them as being misused.
Don’t you wish Muslims would be a little more immune and a little less hypersensitive about certain symbols? The money spent on the Iraq war could have been used to build the Palestinians a gleaming new city to use as their capital, but that still wouldn’t be enough for Hamas to give up terrorism because of Muslims’ symbolic attachment–mutually exclusive to that of the Jews–to Jerusalem. Racially, Jews and Arabs are nearly identical, but because they derive their identity from different sets of symbols, there will never be peace in the world.
9/11 happened because of symbols. The satisfaction the Osama bin Laden derived from the symbolic holy place in Saudia Arabia was upset by the symbolic presence elsewhere in that country of US troops*.
You mean like the satisfaction you’d get from beating the crap out of a flag burner or seeing him thrown in jail? Or bombing the Danish embassy? Or abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts? Or waving a Confederate flag in a black person’s face (or beating the crap out of someone for waving a Confederate flag in your face)?
Your motivation is to not qualify as an evil person as a result of attacking someone for not showing the same deference toward a symbol that you expect.
“The Troops”, of course, being a symbol exploited by Iraq war supporters to deflect criticizm from Bush’s foreign policy.
That last post was simply immature and insulting. Plainly Eonwe was not advocating, so you only look desperate when you accuse him of doing so. Implying that anyone who disagrees with you must support terrorism and racism is a pathetic line of attack. One might as well say that since Osama bin Laden eats food, all food-eaters must be evil.
You also completely fail to address the points Eonwe made.
Nonsense. I was illustrating how Eonwe was completely missing the point, which is that symbols are problematic in the realm of politics given the reality-distorting influence they can have on large numbers of people.
One person’s relationship with a favorite symbol is perfectly fine, just so long as they’re capable of seeing the difference between it and reality when the time comes.
To clarify my snarky rant a little more, if Eonwe does not resort to violence or other heavy-handed tactics in defense of a symbol, then Eonwe already is immune to symbols in that sense.
And my second point was that “deriving satisfaction” from a symbol does not negate my thesis. Just because something is sometimes good–or harmless–doesn’t mean it’s never bad. Like religion.
Firstly, post 28 was more inflammatory than I intended, so I apologize for that.
As for the rest of the thread, I think the debate has wound to a close. You started off with “Symbols are the enemy of truth”. From there you seem to have retreated step by step to saying (paraphrased) “Symbols are fine, as long as no one gets beat up.” No one here will dispute that, so there’s nothing left to discuss.
Most of the time a symbol has a straightforward meaning, and symbols with straightforward meanings for the building blocks of communication. But symbols are often powerful and therefore dangerous.
I still trying to find the right words–symbols–to get it straight. No, symbols aren’t fine. They can be divisive, can be used to manipulate people, and often get in the way the development of a reality-based viewpoint.
But another thing I need to be clearer about is that on the one hand, there are those familiar, traditional symbols like flags, crosses, and Korans that can be the source controversy when some people show less reverence toward one than other people demand. On the other hand, we have situations where well-known incidents become symbols. I mentioned Rodney King earlier as one example. Of course 9/11 is a hugely powerful symbol. And so on.
Heh. I take issue with that. All symbols derive their meaning from their relationship to other symbols, and all symbols have multiple meanings that shift and change as context changes.
Consider the Boston Tea Party. It was a symbolic act, intended to convey to the crown the colonists rejection of the tax on tea. They could have merely sent a letter, or refused to pay, but the symbolism of dumping the tea in the harbor sent a much more powerful message.
Or consider the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The founding fathers could have merely announced"We want to be independent and so we say we are." But they felt that that was insufficient. They felt as though they needed to justify their actions by appealing to abstract ideals like Rights and Liberties.
Abstraction and symbolism isn’t merely a part of culture. It IS culture. So you can’t say “relying on symbols is bad” without rejecting almost all aspects of human culture. Is it bad that the United States has a symbol of the idea of libery sitting on an island in New York Harbor? Is the Statue of Liberty an “enemy of truth”?
It’s a central tenet of Structuralism, which is the basis for most 20th century thought on how art, fiction, and language are used to construct meaning. You might want to check out the work of Ferdinand de Saussure.
The point is that that sentence could have been lifted from my essay, or a previous, wordier draft of it.
Sure it was powerful. And divisive. To the Americans it symbolized patriotic defaince and to the British it symbolized treason. But it was substantive not just due to the value of the tea, but because it threatened that additional acts of vandalism could be forthcoming. If shipments of tea are no longer safe, and the people are no longer obeying the law, then that’s a substantive problem.
Of course the DoI contains symbolic concepts. And the Decalration itself was a symbolic act and the signatures on it are symbols, etc. But liberty, equality before the law, no taxation without representation, etc. are substantive concepts.
Sure. I’m saying that people should hold on to culture a little more loosely and spend more time addressing the real-world problems that affect us all. (I might as well link to my CULTURE essay. Whole lotta fun issued in there: http://www.squeakywheelsblog.com/culture)
The point is not to get rid of it but to remind people that we’d be just as free without it. Our freedom doesn’t come from flags or the SoL or the DoI, it comes from the victory in the Revolutionary War and the laws contained in the Constitution.
Now then, I’m getting rid of my “symbols are the enemies of truth” grabber line because, ironically enough, it’s just the kind of symbol I’ve been decrying. It’s the only bit of text left over from the original version of the essay and I had become beholden to it because I felt it would manipulate people into reading my shit. But it’s misleading people by conveying a meaning that diverges from the more complex and subtle set of points I’m trying to develop. I don’t mean to be so absolute, so out it goes.