Symbolismology
I watched my toddler, now just a little over one year old, dealing with language. She can say mono and duosyllabic things like "hello", "Daddy", "Mommy", and the string of "nonono..." Then I saw her checking out a fruity cheerio very closely. She was feeling it, smelling it, seeing it, and eventually tasting it. She was bringing the fruity cheerio into her world experience. She was interacting with that cheerio like she never will be able to again, because soon she will be equipped with a symbolic representation, the word, cheerio. The symbol will separate her from the quintessence. She will thereafter have to translate the object into the symbolic representation in order to process it intellectually. She will judge other cheerios by the standard cheerio in her experience- honey nut will be the cheerio without colors, etc. Our ability to effectively use these symbols elevates us as a species, but may detract from our individual life experiences. As symbols separate artifice and archetype, so do they separate our consciousness from the numinous. And when she can read, and reads this, she will know, intellectually, that her dad is a weirdo.
posted by Traveler at 8:05 PM
2 Comments:
This is phenomenal! This is a huge part of my own philosophical exploration lately, as well. There is something wonderful about the ability to communicate, but symbols become a prison, and ultimately betray the real experience.
They do this by failing to properly capture the entirety of the "real" experience. They become the closest thing we can use to describe it and have it mutually understood. There are acceptable levels of error, because the gist of what we are saying is maintained. However, as we get used to this it ultimately redefines the infinite possibilities of real experience according to the plastic symbols we have grown used to using to represent it.
Now, we no longer rely upon the instincts and subtle, overlapping powers of senses, emotion and intellect. Instead, we are happy to get the expression 99% right, somehow relegating the 1% to a classification of unreality (undefinable through symbol, unexpressable, ineffable, and thus easier to accept as non-existent, unimportant, and potentially distracting). We are left with a world which grows exponentially more digital, reducing every real thought, emotion and physical object into a stream of binary code which can represent reality more accurately than the real thing. Why? because it removes all the grey area and leaves us with a crisp, easy to understand picture.
Cheerio A is every cheerio. Science replaces both religion and magic. It is infinitely more predictable, which makes it easier to understand, to express, and to turn a profit on. Original participation is lost in the acceptance of words and hypothesis, with all their promise of comfort and order, as truth.
Sorry to be so self indulgent here, but I was shocked by how closely your observation echoed some of my recent thoughts. Have you read Saving the Appearances, by Owen Barfield?
Philosophical discourse is never, or always, self indulgent. I haven't read Barfield, but I will look him up. I am interested to see what the organized thinking is on this. Thanks!
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