TOWARDS A FAMILIAR RELATIONSHIP WITH SYMBOLS

Social relations are not mechanic and requires continuous attention for maintenance

(Brown, 2013)

I love to conceive a relationship (in its widest meaning) as en encounter, an acquaintance that engenders a constance of presence: a rite, a rituality, expressed in forms of behaviors, common references and quotations, all mixed and summarized in mutual listening, mutual help (materially and psychologically) that naturally entails conviviality, laughing, genuineness. That “rituality”, if it’s built on core positive and universal values, it enhances the maintaining process of social relationships, without compelling to a strenuous over-attention. Furthermore, far from becoming a self-controlled system automatically repelling errors or oddities, it would naturally control itself and naturally accept mistakes, which are endemic parts of the system, of the system’s process of ideation and application. Rituality and symbols here must be seen in a necessary flexible and changing form, in order not to be absorbed and perceived as idols. They must be included in a context of natural time, that involves patience, change of opinion, enthusiasm, apathy, crisis, incident.

we agree that a “symbol” must have a “surplus of meaning” — as opposed to an ordinary item. A symbol must be an expression of something (Saussure) and it must be recognizable (Peirce).

(Christensen & Warburton, 2003)

Symbols are originally “tokens used in comparisons to determine if something is genuine”. Etymologically meaning “throwing things together” to “contrasting” to “comparing”, we can infer that a symbol is an “outward sign” of something. Going beyond we could also define it as “a thing belonged in relation to its owner”. To “belong” etymologically means to “go along with”, to “be along” a way, your way with the other in the “face to face situation” and hence in the we-relation in the world of everyday life (Luckmann, 2012).

For that, we underline the importance and the effective social leverage of the process of belonging and recognition, by analyzing symbols of every kind in their social role to distinguish everyone and making everyone (or every group or nation) different from another and, super alia, aware of his/her/their own diversity. The mistake (concrete fallacy, or cognitive bias?) consisting in viewing symbols as mere idolic and material ways to superficially distinguish ourselves as superior above others so perniciously resembles the imposition of authoritarian and despotic governments which want people to be all the same, to look and think the same way, like a unique harmonious organism (that’d be a Fascism, according to Umberto Eco). In fact, here’s nothing dealing with harmony or unicity. The latter are values of the individual human being first, which the State cannot and must not absolutely alienate.

Symbolicity is also the crucial paradox point of every association, organization or party, especially in the dynamics and respective interactions between them. Promoting a symbol is too often associated with propaganda as a one-way tyrannical view, while, on the contrary, is the only means to affirm an identity, a rightful need to show who we are compared to others. Especially when the latter want us to disappear, just because we are different, or stranger, or we’ve got our own peculiar culture, habits and opinions. There are two main dynamics in which people relate with symbols:

1. they are scared by them: so they reject, ignore them as things not to be seen or considered too frequently. The cultural explanation for this behavior could be multi-faceted: unconscious religious heritages, personal idiosyncrasy to them (or part of them), or a more or less aware political decision: symbols (for their intrinsic nature) distorce reality, bring to idolatry, they are evil.
2. they are obsessively intrigued by them: so they search for them, seeing them everywhere. They start reasoning in a way that’s potentially dangerous: even small events, passing people, the slightest details become symbols of something bigger. That’s wrong because it brings to perceive and consider people and fact (hence humanity) as mere instruments to access to a higher (but always indefinite) truth. Consequence: a lack of trust in humanity, or even loathing of it.

We could here reel off the whole anthropological topic of fetish and ex-votes, but we won’t as it, tough giving us the historical proof of the power images have always had on us as humans, might divert us to a religious discussion. No doubt that symbolic thinking is strictly related and rooted in religion. But we’ll try to focus on the role symbols have today, framed in a context of relations among individuals (or groups of individuals) in a sociological, linguistic, and semiotic field in where rituality and everyday habits find their ultimate importance. If we start comprehending the way we see symbols, the effect they have on us (how and why), we’ll have a wider idea of how human society works.

In times when verbal expression often suffer from a lack of meaningfulness, due to the linguistic abuse of words of today’s communication, revaluation and rehab of the role of symbols and symbolicity could be ways to contribute filling an important social gap. I mean the one between the need of identity and the difficulty to accept that need of identity in others (basically, we could say the problem to recognize diversity, and what diversity is about).

That is no matter of hierarchy or degree of importance, but it’s a cultural identity fact. Symbols may ease reinforcing this concept of cultural identity. Analyzed through semiotic and anthropological methods, employed with consciousness, symbols may become complementing tools for protecting and valuing cultural diversities. Familiarity could be (for instance) a criterion of choosing symbols. The more an image, a shape is familiar to us the more we are moved to choose and join it, because it’s close to us; we know it well and it cannot be of any harm. In a family individuals are supposed to be naturally connected and to know each other very well, so they have an identity, and their need for symbols to enhance that identity is natural.

Maybe if we try to relate to symbols more naturally, we’ll manage to create (and maintain) more lasting, joyful and natural relationships.

Silvio Magnolo