This is an author's blog written by Pico Triano. 'Pico's Profile' will tell you a little about me. 'Pico's Stuff' will lead you to links and information on how you can access all my publicly available writing. 'Friends and Family' advertises websites on behalf of family and friends. The 'Friend Book Reviews' page is where I review materials written by the many friends I have made as a writer. Finally I recently added a review page for general reviews.

Saturday 31 August 2013

Symbolism Has No Real Value - What?!

This came up as an argument by some in favor of doing away with a lot of doctrines during a major religious upheaval in a church I once attended. I get that there are a lot of different points of view and I'm tolerant to those ideas but the notion that anything with purely symbolic meaning has no value to me is an idiotic argument. 

This isn't my point of view as a religious person. It's what I think as a civilized human being and a writer. My point here isn't religious at all. It's about the real value of symbols.

Without symbols I couldn't write this and you couldn't read it. Language is all symbols. We have assigned meaning to certain patterns of sound and written patterns to be able to communicate with each other. If I changed the symbols I'm using to another language, you might not be able to understand my meaning. How important are symbols? (It's important enough that Bubblews made a rule about language on the site).

If you have a job, your boss gives you money representing the work you do for him or her. You can use that money to buy things you need like food. Money is a medium of exchange. It has symbolic meaning. If everyone decided tomorrow that the Canadian dollar was worthless, it would be worthless. It would look the same, but have no meaning. How important are symbols?

The truth is we are surrounded by symbols everyday, everywhere all the time. As a married man it is really easy to accidentally do something to symbolically offend my wife, or a friend or anyone. Symbols and symbolism are huge.

If you consider yourself a serious writer, you discount symbolism at your peril. Your personal writing is full of symbols both consciously put on the page and unconsciously. You may pick up a book and not be aware of it but it is there. One of the things I do as a writer is first be aware of the symbols I'm creating and working with and then deliberately develop and deepen them as the story goes. It makes my writing better. 

For me throwing something away because it has only symbolic meaning is incomprehensible. You don't have to believe like I do, but give me a better reason than that or don't give me a reason at all. 

*This article was first written on Bubblews. If you are interested in participating on that site my referral link is: http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=51f5bbc90f3fe9.59547344

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