WEBVTT - Symbols on the Brain 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:14.160 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:17.160 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:21.360 we were surrounded by symbols, like even right now, care 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:25.960 are symbols in our midst, on the recording equipment, on 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:29.600 on our shirt center clothing. We're not yours symbol cree 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:33.360 is about design. Well, I'm wearing black and you could 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:35.720 say that, Um, I'm sort of trying to communicate some 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:38.519 sort of message here. Yes, some absence of symbols, but 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.080 that's in itself is kind of a symbol exactly. You know, 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:44.000 I embraced the void and that's what I'm trying to 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:46.080 tell people with this. You have your Boards of Canada 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:48.120 shirt on, yeah, which kind of has a logo symbol 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:50.720 thing going on for sure, And just going through a 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:53.160 daily life, just think of how many symbols we encounter, 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:58.920 I mean, corporate logos, um, religious iconography, basic like male bathroom, 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:05.080 female bathroom, no parking, wheelchair accessible. I mean, the symbols 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:08.679 just completely crowd our world. And even though we don't 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:12.039 think about it, those symbols are constantly communicating with us, 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:15.360 our brain is in sync with all of them and uh. 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:17.960 And so in this episode, we'd like to really step 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:20.399 back and think about symbols, about what they are, how 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:24.040 they work, how our brain interfaces with them, and uh 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:27.720 and and really to what extent they control us? Yeah, 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:31.039 because we're essentially talking about the conceptual life of a 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:33.760 stand in for something else. It's how we make meaning 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.560 of our world. So even something as simple as say 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.760 me working on my computer and seeing a spinning rainbow 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:43.840 that looks like a mint, uh, this means something to me. 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.240 It means that I'm now in the dull droom dull 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.360 drooms of uncertainty here, and I'm going to get frustrated 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:51.800 pretty soon because an application isn't working. Right, of course, 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:55.120 I'm talking about the mac um hick No wheel of doom. Well, 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:59.080 the wheel as a symbol of endless cycle and of frustration. 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:00.600 I mean, that's all I mean. The Buddhist smol of 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.600 the wheel is about, uh, you know, being being trapped 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.440 in a cycle that won't end. And so so the 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:09.080 frustration on the wheel, even that is an old symbol 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:11.840 that takes on new meaning and our technological age, right, 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.480 that's that's really powerful. Right that this thing can communicate 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.480 this test um. So signs, as you say, they can 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:20.880 take all sorts of forms that can take or excuse me, 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:26.280 symbols can take all sorts of forms like signs, uh, words, letters, odors, 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.880 even flavors. All these things are a stand in for 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:33.280 some sort of experience or some sort of idea, and 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:37.000 they have no meaning unless we invest them with meaning 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.799 and they have context. In fact, some Otians generally say 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:44.840 that there are no pure icons. So you mentioned the 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.960 bathroom icons of the male and the female, the stick 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:51.560 figures one is wearing a skirt, one is not. But 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.640 if you are coming from a culture where say that 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:58.240 the men wear skirts or some sort of clothing mean 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.680 like a kilted culture, like I'm not so much Scotland 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:03.760 because I feel like they're they're in the now in 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:06.840 the West. About what those sort of icons mean. But 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:11.280 maybe let's say, uh, you were in an undiscovered tribe 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:13.120 and then all of a sudden, for some reason, you 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:17.720 were discovered and ferried into a um area where there 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:21.160 was a Western bathroom. Well, there's a lot that's gonna 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:23.679 there's gonna be so much that you're trying to take 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:26.280 in there. But those symbols aren't necessarily going to mean 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.280 something to you, particularly if the males wear a clothing 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.359 item that resemble a skirt, right, I mean, clearly that's 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:36.200 a person on that sign that one sign. Is it 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:37.680 a male? Is it female? I don't know. It must 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:39.640 mean humans go in here or this is where humans 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.680 come from. And then likewise there's another sort of mouth 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:46.600 shaped human. Yeah, and what is that supposed to mean? 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:48.880 Is it a human? Is it a monster of some 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:52.440 kind hybrid form? Yeah? And what is what is this 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.320 plumbing thing? This this machine I'm supposed to poop in? Yeah, 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:58.920 with the clean water, the drinking water in it, exactly. 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:01.400 So Yeah, there are a lot of different issues there, 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:05.040 but yeah, all these things are stand ins for experience. 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:06.800 And I wanted to bring up the Marble Man because 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.760 I feel like in the West, particularly during a certain 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:14.400 historical era, the marble Man was big. I mean, he 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:20.279 was like the symbol of rugged individualism reality. Um, just 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:23.520 like the male dominance. Yeah, he was, he was, he 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:28.000 was virile, he was, he was macho. He's a cowboy, 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:32.360 he's smoking, he's not Karen, He's he's he's everything he 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:34.479 would want to be. He's living off the land, and 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:36.280 of course now we see that and we think a 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.880 little bit more like a black and lung. It doesn't 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.359 quite have the same power that it used to. So 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:44.760 the symbol all the Marlboro Man has has kind of shifted, 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:46.240 at least for my interpretation, I think for a lot 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.440 of people's interpretation, based on the shift in our culture 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:51.640 right now. I don't think that's a surprise to say 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.960 that symbols are not static and that they change because 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:57.599 our language changes all of the time. It has to 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:00.080 be fluid, um. It has to in order to you 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.880 deliver those memes that we talked about, right these ideas 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.719 that rise to the surface and carry the symbol with 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:10.240 them to the greater culture out there. Yeah. Another big 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.760 example of a symbol that's meaning has changed is the swastika. 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.599 Swastikas of course is a very old image, and there 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:18.840 are various forms of the swastika, you know, and kind 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.400 of the there's of course the more modern um German 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:24.640 swastika that was used during the Second World War by 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:28.040 the Nazis that you have you have Hindu swastick as, 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.359 you have Buddhi swastikas. Uh. The dates back all the 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:33.920 way to the Indus Valley civilization and the if you 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:38.000 look back at Zoroastrian religion of Persia, uh, the swastick 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.520 was more symbol of a revolving son of Infinity, of 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:44.640 continuing creation. And if you weren't exposed to the twentieth century, 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:48.400 the swastika might still inspire that in your mind, because 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.120 I mean, that's the basic form of the thing, the 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:52.640 motif of the thing. There's a sense of of cycle 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.520 to it us and in a very sunlike imagery in it. 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:58.080 But we come into it with our knowledge of the 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:01.280 twentieth century, with our knowledge of the Natzi, these of 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.080 all the transpired during the Second World War and the Holocaust, 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:06.479 and so all of that gets factored into the image. 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:10.159 So an image that for the longest time just stood 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:15.360 for basic basically very positive ideas and powerful ideas becomes 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:18.600 this dark image of hatred. All right, it was appropriated 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:20.919 and it's now what is the stand in for what 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:24.280 it formerly was. So again this idea that it can change, 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:28.080 that it's fluid. And this made me think of the 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:32.279 Pioneer plaque, because this this is a great example of 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:36.920 not just um the changing ideas we have of what 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:40.920 the human species is or should be represented, but also 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.240 a great example of how powerful symbols are, because how 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:50.720 do you try to um to communicate with the universe. 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:54.960 You try to boil down the Earth and the human 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.000 experience with a couple of symbols, which is exactly what 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:02.440 happened when the Pioneer was put on the Pioneer probe 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.080 that was launched in nineteen seventy two. Yeah, I think 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:08.120 the idea here was, let's sum up who we are 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:10.920 where we are in an attempt to possibly communicate with 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:14.240 an extraterrestrial species, or at the very least to serve 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:16.600 as kind of a time capsule. To say, it's kind 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:19.800 of like, uh, the humans, the human race as a 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:22.520 pair of lovers carving their name into a tree. That's 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.080 kind of yea. And ultimately that's kind of how Sagan 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.320 solid too. The more of a time capsule and less 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:31.360 of an actual communication. But still it was created in 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:34.120 the name of communicating with another species. Yeah, and we're 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:36.720 talking about simple line drawings that are engraved in this plaque. 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.400 So it has diagrams of the Earth's location and drawings 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.240 of a nude man and a nude woman. Now very 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.960 simple and straightforward, right, But If you look at this 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:49.000 a little bit closer, you notice that the man has 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.200 his hand up as if he's waving, or as if 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:56.320 he has a question there's something he doesn't understand, yeah, 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:58.640 or if he's just checking the wind direction yeah yeah, 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:02.280 or he's uh, he's he's he's hailing a cab, or 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.800 he's stretching, or he's stretching yeah, or he's got some 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:06.800 sort of like a weird limb thing where his arm 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.760 just rises. Oh, alien hands syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. So he's 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:13.040 got his hand up and the female does not. And 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:15.720 if you look at this, you can start to say, Okay, 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:19.560 I can infer here that this man, he is this 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:23.280 signifier the form that an idea takes, and what is 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:27.040 being signified is the concept. So the concept here is 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:31.120 that the man is the representative for the human species, 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.120 that he is the person who is trying to communicate. 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.560 And if you really really start to look at this closely, 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:41.760 then you from the perspective of humans, of course, because 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:44.960 we can occupy no other perspective, you begin to understand 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.040 that there is a hierarchy involved here, even though we're 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:50.920 talking about very simple line drawings. Now, is this representative 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:55.480 of the culture right now because we were close now 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:58.520 like we did back then. Well, there might be a 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.000 different kind of plaque that is sent out to try 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:04.559 to communicate what we are who we are. I think 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.079 maybe the male and female would be a little more 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:09.960 equal in that now. Of course, the plaque involves some 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.080 other stuff to it. It showed the hyperfine transition of 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:16.160 neutral hydrogen. It showed a relative position of the Sun 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:18.880 to the center of the galaxy, and fourteen pulsars solar 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:22.880 systems spacecraft. You know. But but certainly the depictions of 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:25.679 us are central there. And uh, and there are a 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:29.240 number of criticisms to make. Obviously they're they're the the 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.840 cultural implications of the whole raising of the hand? What 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.560 does that mean? But would but would another culture understand that? 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:38.560 Would then would extraterrestrials who don't have arms, who say, 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.640 have tentacles instead, What would they make of this? Would they? 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:44.200 Would they understand the hand signified, or even if they 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:46.679 had hands, perhaps in their culture it's more of a 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.360 they might say, Oh, well, look, the man is clearly 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:54.040 the subservient of these two because he has to rush 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:56.640 forward and eat the food that the other creature is 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:58.160 going to eat later. You know, they might have some 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.800 sort of weird connotation that totally excuse it. Well, of course, 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.600 and that's where the context is everything, right, Like what 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:06.920 if raising your hand to another culture is the extent 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.000 is the equivalent of putting up the middle finger, Like 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:12.560 imagine the Pioneer plaque if he was if he was 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:15.839 flipping off the other other species. I mean, then you 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:18.360 can also into things like, for the error, arrows are 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:22.280 used on that on that plaque, and would the arrow 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:26.160 as a symbol makes sense to a species that never 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:28.920 used a bow and arrow, never used a javelin, they 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.240 didn't have some sort of hunter gatherer ancestry, or as 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.520 we were talking about earlier, you you said should we 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.000 should they have had a child on there? And that 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:39.839 made me think of the fossil record where we were 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.760 always running into these situations when we're looking at dinosaur bones, 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:46.000 where we say, now, is this a different creature or 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:50.080 is this the female of the species? Is this a 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:53.280 is this merely an infant of the species. So you 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:55.520 can imagine a situation where they might look and not 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:58.480 realize that they're dealing with two with two genders, because 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:00.560 what if the what if the aliens looking as blaque 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:02.720 did not have genders. What if they had five genders? 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:04.120 You know what, what would they make of this? How 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:06.800 would they interpret it? Right? So, I mean it's kind 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:10.000 of hard to try to to make something that would 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:12.160 really make sense unless you have an understanding of how 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:17.720 another culture or civilization or species would conceive of it. 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:21.240 So uh, but still it's a really it's a really 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:25.280 fine attempt to boil down a lot of information into 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:29.360 a very concise package. And that's ultimately what's so amazing symbols. Well, 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:31.680 but I also think that the Pioneer plaque is largely 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:34.240 for us as humans. Is the excitement of saying, guess what, 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:38.000 we're humans, We're we're cool. Here's our name written on 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.600 the on the tree. Here's our coordinates, right, here's some 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:42.320 of the stuff that's in our atmosphere. But yeah, that's 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:45.000 what I love about symbols is that a symbol can 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.880 be something very simple, like the at symbol or the 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.520 proposed the symbol, which looks like a ten an h 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:53.680 that where all you have is okay, you have some 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:55.800 letters that are symbols, and those symbols make a word 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:57.840 that is a symbol for something and then we have 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:01.520 a slightly smaller, more concise symbol just to represent that 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:04.200 word or that or in that concept. But then you 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:08.000 have again things like the swastika, things like the Marlboro man, 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.360 things like the Pioneer plaque, where the symbol instantly conveys 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:14.320 a lot of data. And if you had to to 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:17.559 describe even to even to to like in modern terms, 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:20.560 what a swastika means, what a crucifix means, what a 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.160 Marlboro Man means, you're talking like a whole essay. You 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:24.680 have to sit there and write it out. You have 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:26.920 to sit there and and use a verbal language to 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:30.040 describe it for you know, five minutes or so. Whereas 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.200 the symbol instantly, that's right, because you get it coded 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:35.120 in your brain and then you just bring it up 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:36.600 and up again. We'll talk about that a little bit 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.720 more when we talk about how our brain works on symbols. 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:42.920 Side note, Do we really need a symbol for the 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.400 that's th h? I mean, are we that lazy? We 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.040 just I mean it's one letter, well, just the It 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:53.640 would make tweets easier and texting easier. But but there 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:55.040 are a lot of people that argue that it is 0:12:55.120 --> 0:13:01.040 unnecessary but but you're losing one letter. That's that's it. 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.560 We'll see, I mean, and we can really go we 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.400 could go ahead and just reduce it to thh to 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:08.920 cut out one letter, or just reduce it to duh 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:11.280 d A. Okay, I have an idea about that, but 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:14.560 I want to save it until we talk about the brain. Okay, okay, alright, 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:18.120 So to make this case, we also wanted to talk 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:22.320 about Neanderthals and crows because they figure into this symbolic 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:26.600 representation as well. Yes, so Neanderthals of course, um our 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:29.839 hominid brethren who are no longer with us people before people. 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:34.200 We did an entire podcast episode about these ladies and 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:38.880 gentlemen uh and uh. And they're they're always endlessly fascinating 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.520 because they are before us. They are different from us. 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:45.080 They are in a sense as close as we can 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:48.200 get to an extraterrestrial being, you know, I mean, they're 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.560 terrestrial obviously, but they are like us, but unlike us. Well, 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.080 and we have some of their DNA we know this. 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.319 So we were looking at this particular study where archaeologist 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.640 gals How of being Verity of Bristol in England and 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:05.359 his colleagues found a fifty thousand year old uh perforated 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:09.200 painted seashells and pigment containers on the Iberian Peninsula in 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:12.240 southwestern Europe. And this was a region that was inhabited 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:15.319 solely by any der dolls at the time. Modern humans 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:18.000 who lived in Africa at the time these similar objects 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.720 as jewelry and for body painting, to symbolizing under various 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:24.240 social standing, etcetera. But this particular study, the particular to 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:27.920 find suggests that the brains of the common ancestor of 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:31.520 both species must have already had the biological basis for 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:36.280 symbolic thought. Uh So, way back then there are easingly shells, 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:40.080 there reason pigments as as a way to signify roles 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:44.920 and positions within their society. Yeah, I mean, Zelho is 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:48.560 saying that they had the biological basis for symbolic thought 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:51.680 dating back about half a million years ago, because he 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.560 says assigning specific meanings to arbitrary words and sounds is 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.080 symbolic thinking by definition. Yeah. So it really makes you 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:02.200 think about how this was the pre assessor for actual language. Yeah, 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:06.280 and it boils down to one of the hallmarks of 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.120 the human species. And and and to their point, some 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:13.080 some predecessors of humans as well about what makes us 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:17.200 so successful, and that's our ability to externalize internal processes 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:23.280 such as cooking of course is externalizing internal digestion, and 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:28.960 symbolic thought is essentially externalizing aspects of our thinking. That 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:32.200 that that free up our cognitive abilities so that we 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.360 can maximize what we're doing internally. Of course, all of 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.480 this is predicated on the idea that we have to survive. 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:40.240 In order to survive, we've got to be able to 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:42.840 suss out these symbols and figure out our universe. And 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.200 you have to look at crows as a as a 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:49.120 really good example of this. We're talking about crows capable 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.400 of distinguishing symbols. This was from a study led by 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:56.720 Choice Sugita who used eight jungle crows, relatives of the 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:00.800 American crow. By the way and the job In scientists 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:04.440 also found that the jungle crows were able to determine 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.760 which container that they had in front of The crows 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:11.240 held food in which did not, based on a symbol system. Yeah, 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:13.520 one of the content containers would have either two or 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.680 five Yeah. And they had a pretty like success rate. 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:22.200 And they did about twenty different experiments with food and symbols, 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:26.960 and eventually that the crows clocked in about seventy success 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:29.760 rate as they did this more and more matching food 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:31.960 the symbol. So we know that this is just a 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:39.840 very basic, uh rudimentary skill that all animals have, including humans, 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:42.400 in order to suss out how to get to what 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:44.600 we need. All right, Well, on that note, we're going 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:46.240 to take a quick break and when we come back, 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:48.800 we're going to discuss language. We're going to discuss symbols 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.840 some more, and we're gonna discuss how symbols interact with 0:16:52.000 --> 0:17:02.800 our brain. All right, we're back, and let's talk a 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:06.679 little bit about language. What what is language and uh 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:09.879 and and how it releases symbols. I mean, ultimately, as 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:13.800 we're talking about earlier, we're talking about externalizing internal processes, 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:16.240 we're talking about using them as h as kind of 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:21.360 footholds as we ascend it to uh more complicated topics. Uh. 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:23.280 I mean basically the use of words verbal were written 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:26.760 signifiers and symbols. They represent ideas and when they're combined 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:31.520 they allow us to build more complicated ideas. That's right. So, um, 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:33.800 it is basically the way that we navigate the world. 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:37.359 But just do not think of it that way, because language, 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.720 each letter is a symbol of right, each word, each phrase, 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:46.320 each paragraph has more and more meaning that's built upon it, 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:50.119 more and more symbols that become these shorthands. And you 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:52.840 begin to look around, you know, widen your scope a 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:54.919 little bit, and you see that the traffic signals that 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.639 direct you, um whether or not you're taking a train 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:00.399 or you're driving a car, there are all sorts of 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:04.200 navigational signals. They're telling you how to order your world. Yeah, 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:06.639 and we've discussed before the idea to that language is 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.320 essentially the operating system for the human brain that we 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:13.240 have all the hardware, and then language is what we 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:18.840 use to actually think about things and to actually tackle concepts. Yeah, 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:21.720 it's something like the periodic table of elements, right, This 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.720 is this is a good example of symbols and us 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:28.400 trying to make the invisible world visible to us, albeit 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:31.600 in this form where we can try to figure out 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.640 the properties of each element. Yeah, because at the periodic table, 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:37.280 obviously it's not a true map, it's not a place. 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:39.840 It's summing up a lot of things that are invisible 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.879 or are a lot more complicated and taking that boiling 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:47.159 it down into a version of reality that makes sense 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:49.119 even at a quick glance. You look at it the 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:52.560 periodic table, and you realize this is the scientific underpinning 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:56.520 of the substances that that to make up physical reality. Yeah. 0:18:56.600 --> 0:18:59.360 Even the coordinates on it have a meaning to them, right, 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:01.919 So if you'rely can at a certain vertical column, then 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:04.840 you know that they all share similar properties. Yeah. And 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:06.680 even even though it's not a true map, it is 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:09.879 a map of sorts. So and so that's just an 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.439 example of our outer universe that we are ordering, but 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.359 we also are ordering our inner universe. And I can't 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:21.199 help but bring up Karl Hung. Yes, of course, the 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:25.320 Swiss psychoanalysts, because you're a union. I don't know that. 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:29.679 I mean, I'm I appreciate Young and I have the 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.080 Red Book, which is a bunch of his drawings of 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:37.680 the unconscious via symbols, and it's fascinating and beautiful and 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:41.040 and also kind of horrific too, because he's using this 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:45.440 these archetypes, these symbols to try to delve into the mind, 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.840 into the unconscious. And so what he was doing is 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:53.600 trying to use this universality of symbols to suss out 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:57.160 the human experience the inner world. Yeah, and we've all 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.440 looked at like dream interpretation guides before, whether talk about 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:02.840 what these different symbols mean, what these like, what does 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:04.840 it mean if you're falling, And if you're falling in 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:08.320 a dream, then it means that that bad stuff may 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:11.040 happen during the daylight. If you're being chased through streets, 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:12.919 the same thing if you're if you're turning, if your 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:15.520 flesh is turning into a tree roots, then it means 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:17.639 you're gonna get disease. You know, people look for all 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:21.359 sorts of portance in in this kind of imagery. But 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:23.719 but but it boils down to the idea that symbols 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.280 are that powerful. They connect with the subconscious and if 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:29.000 you want to apply supernatural thinking to it, you might 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:33.200 think that that symbols also connect us to hidden knowledge 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:36.320 outside of ourselves. And you should also look at it 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:39.520 like dreams, they don't come to you in a highly 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:43.600 realistic way. They come to you fully symbolically packaged. Right. 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:47.000 You don't necessarily read a book in your dream, right, 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:49.400 Or I've tried to actually in my dreams, but it's 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.840 always blurry or something. Um. You know, you you get 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.800 pounded over the head with all these different archetypes, and 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:59.080 so it's very clear that this is important to the 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.600 operating system of our brains in a way, it's to 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:04.479 try to figure out what's been going on. I mean, 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:08.720 I think it's fascinating that's represented to us in that way. Ye. Now, 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:11.840 another area of symbolic use that has always fascinating me, 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.960 and going back to the idea of adding supernatural elements 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.480 to it, is the use of sickles uh symbolic representations 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.280 of demons or a wizard's desired outcome, and then you 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:27.280 also have hyper sickles uh such as this is popularized 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:31.000 by Grant Morrison, the writer of graphic novels who saw 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:33.560 a hypercyle is an extended work of art with magical 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:36.720 meaning and willpower. So like a comic book or a 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:40.119 novel or a movie where it's a bunch of symbols 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:42.240 that are put together in a way to where the 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:46.560 symbols kind of overlap to form some greater symbol uh. 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:49.240