There has been substantial discussion of late regarding flags, statues and other emblems that is itself emblematic of a larger issue — that of confusing and conflating ideals, ideas and symbols.
Ideals are the goals towards which humans strive, with ideas being the methods conceived of to pursue those goals. Ideals are ends which should not be expected to be reached, towards which progress should be continuously sought after by way of the continuous testing, evaluating and evolving of means.
Safety, happiness, the pursuit and fulfillment of “purpose” — these are ideals. We have and will constantly pursue these goals without ever reaching them. The definition of these ends as goals worthy of pursuit bonds those doing the pursuing.
(Random aside — I guess that core ideals are genetically driven, with ideas memetically evolved — received, mutated and dispersed — in response to the ever-changing hurdles preventing the realization of ever-present goals.)
In the course of their striving, humans in these communities create ideas for how they might inch towards their goals. Societies are organized around such ideas — norms and laws that reflect (in theory) the best available ideas in an ever-progressing experiment to determine means to ever-sought-after ends.
In this way, shared ideals, ideas for pursuing them and the pursuit itself define tribes and religions, political parties and nations. They are the basis for non-familial communities.
Symbols are used to represent the intangible ideals and ideas, and to identify and organize the communities that share desired ends or believe the same means will enable progress towards shared ends.
Humans seem to have a hardwired penchant for symbols. With a minute set of letters, numbers and simple pictures, our species has developed the means for the representation of infinite abstract concepts.
I believe we have become too attached to the symbols, have gotten all confused about what it is that we are reacting to when symbols, themselves inherently valueless, evoke emotions.
Symbols are nothing more than representations of ideas. These ideas are valuable only insomuch as they inform on the efficacy of means to progress our society towards desired ends, which we presume to share with our social peers. These methods and the symbols representing them have received too much weight in our social discourse, have been distorted into sources of extreme division amongst men.
(I guess that our egos are to blame — that the fear of exclusion, desire for reassurance of self-identity, and uncertainty of purpose lead to a polarizing environment in which ideas, rather than the ends that they serve as theoretical methods of achieving, provide a handhold for divisive forces.)
I believe that shared ideals provide the basis for society. If we lose sight of the ideals that unite us, distracted by the methods employed (or, worse, the symbols of those methods) in pursuit of those goals, we lose our ability to progress towards them.
America was founded on the basis that ideals are universal (which, at the time, came with a bunch of asterisks), with a set of ideas for how to make the pursuit of those ends more inclusive (***) central to the design of the nation. One of the most important characteristics of this set of ideas was that of governing systems, which are flexible and dynamic (specifically NOT referring to our current governing BODIES, but the systems themselves), as opposed to governing rules, which are far more brittle and static.
These systems have allowed an underlying set of ideas to evolve, adapting in response to knowledge of mankind and his place in an increasingly understood natural world. In this manner we have progressed through an evolution of the idea that all humans are endowed with certain unalienable rights, an evolution resulting in fewer and fewer humans deemed alien and thus included as rightful owners of such rights.
A process of critique and conjecture — encouraged, open-minded creativity — is responsible for this evolution. It is this process that is responsible for progress. The symbols representing the ideas and groups experimenting with various ideas have adapted apace the broader progress, a process of far less significance.
We cannot today find ourselves placated by the moderate progress that the ideas of the day have generated. We cannot bind ourselves to these ideas and spurn further progress, nor find ourselves attached to the symbols that represent them in such a way as to impede the evolution of ideas in pursuit of ideals.
An emblem is neither ideal nor idea. It merely represents a group that has united around an ideal or around ideas for how to achieve a broadly desired ideal. A nation, a political system, an ideological party — these are means that we might employ to progress towards ends, the ideas tested in our pursuit of ideals.
A symbol of any of these is nothing more than a reminder of the methods we have tested, the ideals we strive for. If we respect symbols, it is in reverence for the ideals they remind us of and the ideas that have been proven capable of propelling us towards them.
Equal rights for all is such an idea. Freedom of religion and expression are such ideas. We should value these ideas for the progress they have yielded and embrace the symbols that serve as a reminder of our commitment to these ideas in the pursuit of liberty and happiness.
The US flag, the Confederate flag, pirate flags — there is no reason to care about these representations as symbols alone. There is every reason to care about the ideas that the symbols stand for, the ideas that were tried and tested under these banners, the lessons learned in pursuit of shared ideals.
To hold sacred the symbols that represent ideas over the ideas themselves is to demean and dismiss these ideas and the knowledge gained in their implementation as pivotal in progressing towards the shared ideals of Western civilization.
It is to effectively cease the pursuit of progress altogether. It is to give in to the forces that do not desire progress, who seek the division of man for fear of the future that unified societies, striving for shared ideals, have the potential to realize.
The deliberate impedance of progress is a means of control. In a nation founded upon systems designed to evolve in pursuit of ideals, in which stasis benefits the few entrenched in power at the cost of progress for the many, such control is effective oligarchy.
In this age of influence, the greatest threat to democratic ideals is not a strong man consolidating power but a distracted and divided citizenry failing to demand progress. We must investigate the ideals that are fundamental to this nation, Western civilization and humanity writ large and pursue these goals guided by the knowledge of past errors and uninhibited by present, relative successes.
