This article discusses some educational and general social aspects of western society.
In the meantime, most “Educated” people cannot tell the difference between a fact and an idea, the most common confusion of symbol and thing.
The more you do it, the quicker you recognize that consumer products are symbols masquerading as things.
The reality of a human relationship between people of opposite sexes is quite different from the packaged perception called up by the word “Marriage,” to the degree that people often forget that they will have to build the thing after achieving the symbol for the thing.
By virtue of having taken on a life of its own, is in its turn a symbol for something more basic: We live in a time where symbols for things have largely replaced the things themselves , and this tendency exists in direct proportion to people’s inability to distinguish between symbols and things.
People must learn the difference between a symbol and a thing, and they must come to believe in themselves and the natural value of individual experience.
In a larger sense, religion’s power to conceal this fact shows the power of symbols to conceal the very things they are meant to reveal.
This problem arises from the determinism of the present educational system — we are teaching people what to think instead of how to think.
Originally published at Cogly.
