The visceral power of symbols
The following events and reactions take place over the course of five seconds...
The streets of Hoi An were adorned with decorations for the Lunar New Year. Red celebratory banners were mounted on every light pole, the colour red being the lucky colour of the New Year.
I was surprised by the visceral response I felt when I first saw this red banner.
I felt... I don't know how to describe it... Threatened? In a dangerous place? Somewhere I should not be!
What power did this symbol have over me? After all, it's only an icon representing Vietnam's national pride, much like the yellow star on the banner in the background, or like the red maple leaf on my nation's flag.
Still. I felt something... uncomfortable.
Why did the outline of a hammer overlapping a sickle make me feel that I had to heighten vigilance? I should have been more concerned about the children symbolized in the school-crossing sign and – if you'd seen the intersection ahead – by the sharp-right-turn sign.
But now I remember: I am a child of "duck and cover."
"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System.
This is only a test.
Doooooooooooo.
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an actual emergency..."
...the authorities would have told us how to kiss our asses goodbye.
I lived in the US for a year when I was seven. While there, I participated in civil defence drills, heading into the fallout shelter in my school's basement.
I remember important lessons from that era.
Did you know that when opening a can of food in the fallout shelter, you should turn the can upside down and wipe the bottom with a clean paper towel before removing the bottom lid? You see, the top of the can is likely contaminated with dust from the fallout. By inverting the can, you limit the amount of radioactive material you might ingest.
Another remembered lesson: the three defences against radiation are: physical barriers, distance and time.
While still in New Haven, a plumber came to repair a leak in our apartment. When he saw the newly-minted Maple Leaf Flag (the year was 1965) mounted on my bedroom wall, he asked, "You all Canadian?" When informed that we were, he wanted to know if I, a seven year-old, would be there to fight the Commies when they came pouring over the polar ice cap.
I remember years later when Ronald Reagan came to power, the rhetoric of the Cold War really started to heat up. Peacemaker, MX missile, SS-20, Jonathan Schell, and Overkill were used in common parlance when making small-talk. My fellow university students and I were convinced we were living Apocalypse Nigh, and we marched for "peace," whatever that meant.
In the mid Eighties, when I moved to Ottawa, there was an air-raid siren standing at the ready at the south west corner of the Experimental Farm just outside my office window. And the Deifenbunker in Carp was still in service.
But look at us today.
Who could have known that Ronald Reagan's economic assault against the Evil Empire would be so successful? No shots fired; not a single MIRV'd missile sent on a sortie.
And that air-raid siren outside of my Ottawa office? I'll bet it was already derelict when I assumed my post. That corner of Baseline and Merivale hasn't seen that siren for at least a decade. It is my understanding that we are already losing our Cold War heritage to everyone's enemy – time. (See, for example news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/3086483.stm.) I believe Carp is fortunate to have an air raid siren to display, as these artifacts are evaporating into history.
It's ironic, but Mutual Assured Destruction actually seems to have worked. I haven't been threatened by Communists for decades, but I still possess an autonomic reaction when I am presented with their symbols. I caught a fleeting glance of a Hammer and Sickle, and I immediately felt like I was an exposed intruder in a dangerous place. And yet I was in a country full of friendly people who were more than welcoming.
It’s interesting how we are conditioned to automatically respond to symbols. I can’t imagine why we have evolved this way, developing such an abstract, compact, automatic means of communicating deeply emotional concepts of belonging and allegiance. It must be totemic.
Once my evolved brain resumed its normal duties, the feeling of being at-risk quickly subsided. But it left me marvelling at a feature of humanity I have always known about and have sometimes exploited: symbols are powerful tools in the hands of demagogues.
Symbols – be they the Hammer and Sickle, the Cross, the Star and Crescent, the Swastika, or the emblems on a nation’s flag – seem to effortlessly place us in an us-and-them mode that overrides our higher brain functions. While symbols can marshal a common cause, what evil have we unthinkingly committed while under their influence?
Yeah, that Hammer and Sickle still means something to me. Want to really get me going? Combine that symbol with an atom icon or a mushroom cloud.
I wonder if younger people – those born after 1989 – feel the same way?
I should ask the kids.
© 2011 K W Hadley
The visceral power of symbols
The following events and reactions take place over the course of five seconds...
The streets of Hoi An were adorned with decorations for the Lunar New Year. Red celebratory banners were mounted on every light pole, the colour red being the lucky colour of the New Year.
I was surprised by the visceral response I felt when I first saw this red banner.
I felt... I don't know how to describe it... Threatened? In a dangerous place? Somewhere I should not be!
What power did this symbol have over me? After all, it's only an icon representing Vietnam's national pride, much like the yellow star on the banner in the background, or like the red maple leaf on my nation's flag.
Still. I felt something... uncomfortable.
Why did the outline of a hammer overlapping a sickle make me feel that I had to heighten vigilance? I should have been more concerned about the children symbolized in the school-crossing sign and – if you'd seen the intersection ahead – by the sharp-right-turn sign.
But now I remember: I am a child of "duck and cover."
"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System.
This is only a test.
Doooooooooooo.
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an actual emergency..."
...the authorities would have told us how to kiss our asses goodbye.
I lived in the US for a year when I was seven. While there, I participated in civil defence drills, heading into the fallout shelter in my school's basement.
I remember important lessons from that era.
Did you know that when opening a can of food in the fallout shelter, you should turn the can upside down and wipe the bottom with a clean paper towel before removing the bottom lid? You see, the top of the can is likely contaminated with dust from the fallout. By inverting the can, you limit the amount of radioactive material you might ingest.
Another remembered lesson: the three defences against radiation are: physical barriers, distance and time.
While still in New Haven, a plumber came to repair a leak in our apartment. When he saw the newly-minted Maple Leaf Flag (the year was 1965) mounted on my bedroom wall, he asked, "You all Canadian?" When informed that we were, he wanted to know if I, a seven year-old, would be there to fight the Commies when they came pouring over the polar ice cap.
I remember years later when Ronald Reagan came to power, the rhetoric of the Cold War really started to heat up. Peacemaker, MX missile, SS-20, Jonathan Schell, and Overkill were used in common parlance when making small-talk. My fellow university students and I were convinced we were living Apocalypse Nigh, and we marched for "peace," whatever that meant.
In the mid Eighties, when I moved to Ottawa, there was an air-raid siren standing at the ready at the south west corner of the Experimental Farm just outside my office window. And the Deifenbunker in Carp was still in service.
But look at us today.
Who could have known that Ronald Reagan's economic assault against the Evil Empire would be so successful? No shots fired; not a single MIRV'd missile sent on a sortie.
And that air-raid siren outside of my Ottawa office? I'll bet it was already derelict when I assumed my post. That corner of Baseline and Merivale hasn't seen that siren for at least a decade. It is my understanding that we are already losing our Cold War heritage to everyone's enemy – time. (See, for example news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/3086483.stm.) I believe Carp is fortunate to have an air raid siren to display, as these artifacts are evaporating into history.
It's ironic, but Mutual Assured Destruction actually seems to have worked. I haven't been threatened by Communists for decades, but I still possess an autonomic reaction when I am presented with their symbols. I caught a fleeting glance of a Hammer and Sickle, and I immediately felt like I was an exposed intruder in a dangerous place. And yet I was in a country full of friendly people who were more than welcoming.
It’s interesting how we are conditioned to automatically respond to symbols. I can’t imagine why we have evolved this way, developing such an abstract, compact, automatic means of communicating deeply emotional concepts of belonging and allegiance. It must be totemic.
Once my evolved brain resumed its normal duties, the feeling of being at-risk quickly subsided. But it left me marvelling at a feature of humanity I have always known about and have sometimes exploited: symbols are powerful tools in the hands of demagogues.
Symbols – be they the Hammer and Sickle, the Cross, the Star and Crescent, the Swastika, or the emblems on a nation’s flag – seem to effortlessly place us in an us-and-them mode that overrides our higher brain functions. While symbols can marshal a common cause, what evil have we unthinkingly committed while under their influence?
Yeah, that Hammer and Sickle still means something to me. Want to really get me going? Combine that symbol with an atom icon or a mushroom cloud.
I wonder if younger people – those born after 1989 – feel the same way?
I should ask the kids.
© 2011 K W Hadley