I reject your reality and substitute my own - Icons

All things are in essence symbolic. The quantum waveforms collapse into "recognizable things" when we observe those things. They are more than the "things" which we recognize...a blue pen being the sum of many parts which are the sum of many more, smaller parts ad infinitum. And the blue is all the visible color that the pen didn't absorb, not to mention all the radiation that we don't perceive from reflected ultraviolet and infrared to the minute, radioactive radiance from the weak force. For convenience, we round off and use symbols. It would take altogether too long to write out Pi every time we had to describe a circle being the number is probably infinite. Or we just say cat rather than describing the animal's physio-psycho-social nature with a full relevant history.

With that, there are a several metaphors for higher ideas that have a significant impact on what is seen by observers as Blank Snag, or whatever label of convenience I or someone else assigns this entity, an image which is a metaphor for some composite of experience of direct and indirect history and a confluence of time lines and decisions that bring us all to this point...oops...this point...wait...this point...damn...wait...now!

Reality is what you can get away with. - RAW
I know this quote in my bones. My head doesn't always agree, but at the core I know reality is malleable. It's just the who decides to mold it part that's at issue? You or some advertising jerk in marketing land, pimping death in a burger promising comfort and salvation at the hands of their friendly but homicidal clown?
I keep icons that represent who I am, who I want to be, and what I stand for before me to keep me from getting sucked into complete mediocrity. If you look on the lower right of this blog, you will see an incomplete list of the characters that populate my imagination and support the amalgamation of experience known as Blank Snag. I've also been known as other labels to other people in other relationships as well.

What are the fictional icons that have contributed to Blank Snag? Again, I keep a list on the side to remind me of those things I use to communicate with myself and others. I keep metaphors before me, not as a substitute for any specific aspect of being, but as a summarization for convenient discourse. Icons are also an exchange between the external and the internal, educating us on one hand as a representation of an external idea and reminding us of important lessons on the other as we shape those icons to fit our identity. It's a busy world and sometimes we get caught up worshiping false icons; the icon of not being late for work, the icon of that asshole who took your parking place, the icon of the jerk who bumped you on the subway.
Icons can be a powerful tool for meditation and focus, yet can be abused and be the source of restricting and limiting one's knowledge of the world. The question is, do you absorb the icon or does the icon absorb you?
We all group and categorize information into systems that we understand whether we're conscious of it or not. Some folks compartmentalize in sections that they might not have names for while others hold information like spreadsheets with clearly defined row and column headers. Short term memory tend to be more compartmentalized than long term. Symbolic association helps remind one of important facts and features.

I'll stop there for now. Discussion of symbols continues deep into tangents that I'd like to address at a later time in more detail. I want to touch on the use of icon for control (Mohamed, Jesus, "Bob") and the use of icon for understanding, communication of ideas, and focus (Mohamed, Jesus, "Bob"). Also Quantum Sorcery, Chaos Magic, and other magic systems uses the idea of icon or "sigil" as a tool for influencing events through will. Icon's in marketing and social control, from Britney Spears, to Mickey Mouse. Also, icon's in semantics and the use of semantics in systems of control.

The nice thing about having a robust pantheon of archetypes, it's a lot easier to detect other people's bullshit when they throw up their own totems of control. Small penis, talk about guns. Xenophobic, talk about welfare mothers and terrorists. Uncertain about moral/ethical values, talk about heathens, infidels, and criminals.

Icon's in more or less tangible forms than I use, shape us all. What we remember about our past is selective. We choose to remember, consciously or subconsciously that which we want to remember and shape our understanding of reality based on those memories. It is an impossibility to remember all things, so we remember select things. We create images of who our parents were, who our influential teachers were, what movie characters we like, and so on. The truth is, the value of things in our past is largely based on the value we assign it.

Like a remote TV control, take the unit out of Their hands and take charge of the icons in your own life.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." - Adam Savage (MythBusters)

Just remember when using icons..."the map is not the territory." (A. Korzybski)