Why Symbols Aren’t Forever | Hacker News Reader

Why Symbols Aren’t Forever

sapiens.org

On mobile so can’t really link decent links. But years ago I read a good fiction book by Stel Pavlou (Decipher) and there was a story in it about how symbols maintaining their meanings over generations was a pointless exercise but that creating a religion was the only way to do it. Belief systems etc. The example given was about radioactive waste being buried.

Pointless comment. The article just reminded me of the book.

Edit: I searched my kindle app. The book referenced the below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sebeok

“In the early 1980s, Sebeok composed a report for the US Office of Nuclear Waste Management titled Communication Measures To Bridge Ten Millennia,[9] discussing solutions to the problem of nuclear semiotics, a system of signs aimed at warning future civilizations from entering geographic areas contaminated by nuclear waste.[10] The report proposed a "folkloric relay system" and the establishment of an "atomic priesthood" of physicists, anthropologists, semioticians to preserve the true nature of hazardous site.[11]”

If all goes well humanity will be way more advanced in 10k years, to the point that they will find our warnings laughable.

If we want to put up warnings it should be for whatever remains of a failed society because they are the only ones who would need one.

A series of increasingly more dangerous traps should make sure only advanced people can access it. Death is a language all understand.

It's interesting to ponder pyramids from this point of view. With their preservation of bodies, gifts for the afterlife and traps. Maybe we are their Gods and they want us to revive them.

> If we want to put up warnings it should be for whatever remains of a failed society because they are the only ones who would need one.

That was the point of the exercise, yes. It was about trying to protect future humans from nuclear waste even if continuity of civilization had been interrupted by nuclear war.

> A series of increasingly more dangerous traps should make sure only advanced people can access it. Death is a language all understand.

Congratulations, you've now made it appear that what the traps are guarding is valuable and worth the risk to get to.

This was an interesting article, but it does seem to be on the side of excusing things many people dislike, such as the removal of historical landmarks.

I think a key detail this article failed to follow on was all of the violence that has occurred to preserve symbols. It only seemed to focus on violence around destroying symbols, which seems like an implicit suggestion that one shouldn't try to preserve things.

> Removing symbols that have a dark history doesn’t erase past wrongs, but it does acknowledge those harms and open the door for a better future: concepts that are understood by our local middle schoolers who have pushed to remove the name Stapleton from their school.

Oh come on. Removing symbols isn't always as simple as a spray painted swastika and the average middle schooler most certainly does not grasp the concept of historical memory.

EDIT: I'm not advocating for the proud display of offense symbols. I just find the author's implication of her dissenters being less developed than middle schoolers in bad taste.

Personally I am not a fan of monuments in general, though the modern minimalist ones such as the Vietnam memorial seem okay. There are better resources to learn about this topic than the OP. [0]

[0]: http://npshistory.com/publications/savage.pdf

"History, Memory, and Monuments: An Overview of the Scholarly Literature on Commemoration" a solid 17 page entry point.

Of course you can not mention Trump.

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