A picture is worth…
Posted by josh on January 7, 2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/3904152560/
What are symbols? What do they mean? Why are they made? And why are they so important?
<—- See that? What does that mean? Sure it’s a smiley face, but what does that mean? What does that piece of abstract punctuation represent? What is it a symbol of?
Symbols are created to represent a feeling, cause or action. For example when Obama was elected president of the United States he became a representation of our country and what we stand for. He became the image in our heads that we associate with freedom rights liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He became a symbol.
Human beings are visual creatures. Our strongest of our five senses is eyesight. It’s a scientific fact. Therefor it is only natural that we associate words with images. Maybe if our strongest was smell our symbol wouldn’t be a vision but a smell. Maybe instead of an american flag we would use the smell of eagles and american soil to represent our country. If we had amazing hearing instead of great eyesight the Star Spangled Banner would have a lot more meaning. But since we see best it is a picture that we choose to represent us. Our brain can process images 80,000 times faster than a word. A picture is worth 80,000 words.