Symbols, reality, and context

These are just some thoughts emerging from my research into cognitive archaeology.

Culture is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom and that culture is based on the use of symbols. Symbols only have meaning in the context of a shared reality: symbol (X) = thing (Y) in (Z) context. The word (a symbol) “cow” has no meaning to someone who has never seen one, nor to someone who has not previously assigned “that thing” the value of “cow”; they must understand that  (X) = cow. The phonetic sound which is “cow” in English also has different meanings in other languages so it only works if the (Z) context = (English speakers who know what a cow is).

We also assign different types and levels of value to various things; the easiest example being gold and silver. What gives these metals value and what makes something a cow? There are things rarer than gold and we could just as easily call small furry creatures that squeak a cow, and in India some still view cows as sacred animals. The symbols, their value, and the context in which they make sense are completely invented and for all intents and purposes arbitrarily so. Yet they become what archeologist Colin Renfrew calls “institutional facts”. They become a reality, even though they are not. This objectively unreal reality is, however, what human culture is built on and it is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is, therefore, in fact very real and it is a linking of the internal universe of the human being with the external physical universe. Furthermore, it took these invented institutional facts to create the “individual”. To create “me” and “you”, “this” and “that”, “us” and “them”. These symbols separated the earth and the sky as well as the light and the dark. The universe was brought into existence through arbitrary symbols being accepted by a group of individuals. A human said “light” and there was light.

How do symbols become real? How do things inherit intrinsic value? If the symbols and value assigned to things are arbitrary, how could the nation of Spain colonize the Americas and enslave Natives and Africans in order to extract silver from dangerous mines after they had already annihilated the Inca and Aztec cultures in pursuit of their gold? That is pretty brutal stuff to do just for arbitrary symbolic values!

Is it really just collective experiences that can be identified, labeled, and incorporated into the collective reality of a culture? The same would hold true then for spiritual experiences. If there is not an experience (X) that everyone understands, then it cannot be represented by symbol (Y) and incorporated into context (Z). There must be something there to assign a value to. Ergo, the concept “spiritual” exists because it was experienced enough to be assigned value with a symbol. We can then extend this to the those things which populate the spiritual realm and the various experiences of this realm. Something has to exist to be labeled.

Some things to think about:

Does the spiritual only exist and operate when its value is recognized and its symbols are known?

What has value; the thing, the symbol, the context, or something else?

What would we dream about if there were no symbols with inherent value?

What value does ANYTHING have without symbols and ascribed values within cultural contexts?

Does any value exist outside of symbolic contexts?