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| Yes | 84% | 298 votes | Total: 354 votes | |
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Add to FavoritesApart from the letters of the Alphabet, Religious Images, National flags and those images that resonate to each of us personally? No effect at all.
A piece of cloth with coloured designs printed on it, depending upon the nature of those designs, can have a profound effect upon each of us. A National flag can affect citizens of that country strongly in a positive manner, yet the flag of another nation can cause a strongly negative reaction.
Politicians are said to "wrap themselves in the flag": we know instinctively that the national flag is implied. The symbology is both implicit and explicit, identifying the politician with the best that the country has to offer, with an implication of patriotism.
The correct symbols must be used in the correct place at the correct time: failure to do this can have disastrous consequences. It must never be forgotten that symbols are rarely responded to rationally; the responses evoked tend to be instinctive, unthinking and often irrational. It would thus be political (and perhaps actual) suicide for an Israeli politician to fly the Blutfahne, as it would for an Iranian to fly the Israeli flag.
Symbols such as the Swastika or the Calvary cross carry an enormous power to sway individuals emotionally, often beyond their control. This response may have significant regional variations depending upon the local culture and mores; knowing which symbol is potent and the local reaction to that symbol are essential skills in international marketing as well as in politics.
For example a certain coffee producing nation used a peasant with a donkey to promote their coffee exports. This spoke to western consumers of individual peasant farmers with pride in their crop, hand selecting only the ripest beans. The fact that this was not an accurate depiction is an irrelevancy: in symbology, perception is reality.
The most common form of symbol, and one of the most malleable, is the alphabet: each letter signifies a sound, and specific groupings symbolize more concrete phenomena. For example, C-A-T, provides a description of a member of the genus felis catus. Consider that it does not look in the slightest like the animal it represents, yet the identification is instantaneous, and evokes any feeling that we may have for cats in general.
The use of symbols has shaped the world, influencing elections, fomenting revolution and swaying opinion in every facet of daily life the world over. This is as true today as it was centuries ago or even more so. It is part of our heritage that we impart importance and power to symbols as we mature, and those symbols then have power to sway us, despite our best attempts to be impartial.
Learn more about this author, Richard Sprigg.
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No
The vulnerability we have to be swayed by symbols has more to do with our views of the issue before being met with the symbol.
Being a clairvoyant personality I do my readings using only my third eye's perception. I am faced regularly with people who ask if I use tarot cards. When my response is no, they question if I could. They already have it in their minds that when a proper reading is conducted tarot cards are read. They also tie magic into the cards, even though the cards themselves hold no value without the reader. The symbols those others find so captivating are meaningless to me because I don't use them to do what people come to me for, I go without.
A lack of need for validation allows symbols to be powerless to those who would be potentially influenced.
A supermodel advertising a diet product to a woman who struggles to put on weight has little impact because the woman is not looking for a thinner body. She is not striving for what is being shown. Show the same advertisement to a woman struggling with her weight and that supermodel is then seen as a goal or target. The supermodel is then a symbol of a greater than my own body.
Marketing is designed to show us our shortcomings and then give us the product that will diminish our new problem, the one they have convinced us we have. They will then give us a polished symbol that we can relate to, but are not able to achieve to keep us reaching for our desire.
Symbols are only effective if you understand them. A wish made on a shooting star or shinny penny casts into a well are only symbols if you believe they bring you luck. Otherwise they are falling stars and wasted pennies. A black wedding dress in our society implicates negativity and death but in other cultures white is the symbol of death and black is the sign of love and family.
The power of a symbol is only as powerful as we allow them to be. It is through our superstitions and stereotypes that symbols evolve. We allow them access into our minds when we reveal our basic desires and fears. We grab on to what we can when we are down on our luck or our hope.
God is only a symbol to many who believe that Buddha is the real God. Others who revere animals as Gods find the symbols we use as laughable. Symbols materialize from our own desire to make things a reality. We are in love so to make it last forever we wear wedding rings. To prove our faith we wear certain attire in the name of our religions.
Babies and those who do not understand society symbols don't turn to manufacture beliefs to validate realities. They determine fact from fiction based on tangible results, trial and error. It is only as grow older in a society that insists on showcasing our dreams and desires through a daily wave of symbolism. It is then only the people who give their power over to the ads and hype that give symbols their magic, in my opinion.
Learn more about this author, Joanne Smith.
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