Primary Symbols

What is the mind? A series of symbols, networked together making different paths. Each path the route of electrical impulses across neurons. But what of these symbols and the greater self. If all constructs, memecomplexes of our thick knowledge can be said to be the accumulation of these symbols then aren't their composition highly important in our ability to think new thoughts?

How could we add a new primary symbol to our current record? What would it look like to us, and how could educators recognize them? Finally, are all primary symbols devoid of a proclivity toward any particular set or categories of constructs? If so, would there be some primary symbols that we would want to avoid?

Think of when you were a passerby, without any need or expectation in your immediate surroundings, and caught a scent which sent you on an internal journey. You were suddenly in another time for a fraction of a second, then for several moments consciously fascinated at this gift of revisiting the past. Could we not say that this scent is a primary symbol? It maybe a the primary symbol for one memecomplex, or possibly there is only one that it is strongly linked to, but could be used for others.

The human obsession with symmetry is a curious commonality. Could it be that all of our sight is a shuffling of primary shapes and colors? There are objects which have a most definite round shape, another rectilinear. Then there are irregularities of such minute complexity we see them as a whole and find shape in the larger swath. A crack in the plaster with all of its texture, the vertical climbs and long troughs, are but a crooked line, in totality. The bumps and ridges of a course surface become out of focus as we step back until a more symmetrical structure is identified.

(C) Michael Mosher 2010