Fly the Flag Modestly

This is a short one.

The fourteenth of June is Flag Day in the United States. On this day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted Betsy Ross's homespun stars and stripes. Many other countries celebrate flag days, but America's is today. (Denmark's is tomorrow.)

Eddie Izzard has a good bit about flags. Here it is set to a Lego animation.

Symbols attract attention either to themselves or to what they represent. In one sense this is good. The invisible is difficult to understand without visible symbols. But the problem arises when the symbols start to take on a life of their own and outshine what they symbolize.

Numerals are just symbols for numbers, and language is comprised of symbols for thought. But sudoku is not high level mathematics, and sesquipedalianism is not intelligence. Ideally, we'd all follow the words of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein when we communicated: "Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." In this way, symbols (read: words) would point directly to their parent thoughts. We discover this truth every time we get wrapped up in a book. The words on the page fall away, and we become part of the author's internal world.

But we love conspicuous symbols. Platinum credit cards, sports cars, big homes, and high fashion make us seem wealthy and powerful. Our own insecurities, shortcomings, and mounting debt are brushed under the rug.

This occurs on a larger scale, too. Skyscrapers make our cities seem more important, and they’re often built at great expense. But both the Empire State Building and the Burj Khalifa struggled to find tenants once completed. Magnificent as both buildings are, they overreached.

Dubai: the objectively greatest city in the world. Does your city have a taller building?

"Wealthy people and architects are stupid. I don't let my symbols run wild. In fact, I don't think I have any symbols." Facebook profiles are our own boastful PR. Emblazoned with the personal symbols of our own names, our Facebook profiles say only the best things about us. (Emos are still stuck on Myspace and LiveJournal.) There is no "dislike" button on Facebook for a reason. Activity must be overwhelmingly, if artificially, positive for the site to remain healthy. People don't become addicted to websites that insult them.

Modest symbols, ones that don't attract undue attention to themselves, tend to stand for the most powerful forces. Nazis don't get that. At the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, one Nazi mistakenly assumed the Holy Grail would look like the cup of a king. Here's what happened to him:

In fact, the grail was a simple, carpenter's cup.

Many people wear symbols all the time in the form of wedding rings. What kind of ring would a blue-collar laborer be able to buy his wife? Now, what kind of ring would an aging millionaire be able to buy his new, young wife? Which ring better represents love?

Ultimately, the best symbols are impossibly simple. Communion is just food and drink, but it's everything more. And any child can draw a cross, but the wisest sage can never fully understand what it means.

So, as far as symbols go, the American flag is all right. It has some meaning and isn't unduly flashy. It can make people think about the United States if it isn't completely overused. But, whether the flag attracts attention to itself or to the nation it represents, it's not about the symbol. What matters is what's behind the symbol.

Futurama is a source of great social commentary.