| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Uncle Buck" |
| Date: |
21 May 2006 10:14:57 PM |
| Object: |
Religiosymbology |
Watching religious people in the throes of their mystical euphoria is a
bit like watching an actor on a stage, or a character in a book. Sometimes
they're bad actors and you can tell they really don't believe what they're
saying, sometimes they're good actors and you can tell they really -do- believe
what they're saying. All the while, you can recognize that there is some part
of their mind that has stepped back, that is not attached to what they are
doing. Some part of their psyches to which their religious observances mean
nothing. It sits idly by as they go about the business of being religious, most
often done by decorating one's self in a manner alleged to be pleasing to one's
lord (wearing the right clothes, jewelry, makeup, hairstyle, etc....).
People seem to want to turn themselves into living symbols. We've
become so symbol-soaked that such appears to be our fate. Religious rituals and
observances are symbols embodied in flesh, blood and bone. The really freaky
thing is that as humans, we are prone to misinterpreting a symbol of a thing for
the actual thing itself. We have also somehow seem to have evolved with the
expectation that by issuing a symbol of a thing, that thing itself will either
appear or in some other way be affected.
Take the written symbol for "God", for instance. I remember the power
of that word in my religion-entrenched youth. It had a kind of pull on the eyes
so that if it appeared anywhere on a page of something you were reading, your
gaze at some point or another would be involuntarily drawn straight to it. When
I looked at the mere word "God", I felt as if I were seeing "God", himself,
within the ink of the letters. And so seeing the word "God" in negative
contexts was a horror - it was "offensive" and, as we've all plainly seen in
recent decades, even cause for going to war. At one point in my childhood, the
symbolism even had me believing dogs were the arch-nemesis of God because they
were his name spelled backwards.
Also the cross. Another symbol. People seem to believe that the symbol
invokes the real thing. Form a cross with your pointer fingers, and suddenly
it's as if you should expect to see Satanists squirming suddenly from out of the
woodwork, backing away, hissing, promising with their forked tongues to bring
about your imminently painful demise.
It's not just religion that's that way, of course. If we weren't so
symbol-dependant, we would have no cash system. Money would mean nothing
because money in and of itself has no inherent value. You can't obtain
nourishment by eating a $5 bill or even swallowing a copper penny. And you
can't kill prey by throwing quarters at it (in spite of what all the arcades
might have you believe...). I suppose if you were up a high enough tree with a
sack full of coinage, you could kill some ground-dwelling thing to eat by
dropping said coinage on its head. And maybe sacks full of coins would make
decent "sandbags" of sorts for the next time the river's running a little high.
But aside from stuff like that, money has no "real" value. It has symbolic
value, however, but even -that- is a symbol.
Here in the U.S., at least, our cash is allegedly backed by gold, which
we consider valuable because it is a rare earth metal. It also happens to
possess some properties which are useful to science and technology - but then
again, so does everything else. Even if we traded with the actual gold, there
is no real reason for wanting it unless you actually have a need for the metal
in order to perform some real-world task. Otherwise, exchanging coinage - it's
just a mental exercise for us, a way of making agreements and taking action
without actually having to say or do anything. It might be weird, but you could
walk into a store, pick up a pack of gum, leave behind two little pieces of
alloyed metal (nickel/copper/silver/zinc) and walk out without saying a single
word or even necessarily making eye contact.
...and, oddly enough, with time, our money has come to be a symbol of
our selves. What are we worth? We measure it in money. Why? I don't know.
We are not flakes of mechanically digested and regurgitated trees (paper) or
face-bearing metal disks (coin). So why does this "machine vomit" and metal
define us so thoroughly?
Because. It's all a symbol.
<sigh>
Symbology got us to where we are, but it appears to be like a drain
trap. Why? Because we are so reliant upon the symbology that we have begun to
lose the ability to distinguish between the symbology and the reality which
underlies it. We are blurring too many lines, losing sight of too many
distinctions.
And that, my friends, is why the smiley emoticon works. ;-)
--
L8r,
Uncle Buck
************************************************
The true mark of a civilized society is when its
citizens know how to hate each other peacefully.
************************************************
"A disappearance is when someone has vanished.
A tragedy is when they were photogenic."
- a.t-c's Bo Raxo, paraphrased.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If you look at the whole life of the planet,
man has only been around for a few blinks of an
eye. So if the infection wipes us all out,
that _is_ a return to normality..."
- Sergeant Farrell, "28 Days Later"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
.
|
|
|
