Not a symbol, but a fraud

The point to be made is that the symbols we rely on to navigate daily life, do not necessarily allow us to navigate public debates with integrity or even dignity. Much public debate merely expresses symbols of allegiance, compliance or fashionable acceptance, not reducible to the reality they supposedly symbolise.

The elusive nature of the problem is its weakness, we must use symbols within the public arena. Yet fashionable symbols of allegiance are far too powerful to be demolished merely by confrontation with more honest symbols, For those prosperous people dominating the public arena, their reality is too benign to threaten the fraudulent symbols they use to maintain their dominance.

When this diversity between the truest theory and the simplest fact, between potential generalities and actual particulars, has been thoroughly appreciated, it becomes clear that much of what is valued in science and religion is not lodged in the miscellany underlying these creations of reason, but is lodged rather in the rational activity itself, and in the intrinsic beauty of all symbols bred in a genial mind. Of course, if these symbols had no real points of reference, if they were symbols of nothing, they could have no great claim to consideration and no rational character; at most they would be agreeable sensations.

George Santayana – The Life of Reason (1905 – 1906)

This is the problem – much of what is valued in science and religion is not lodged in the miscellany underlying these creations of reason, but is lodged rather in the rational activity itself.

If important arenas of rational activity are not rational, but fraudulent, then they are valued fraudulently, being based on nothing more substantial than agreeable sensations. That is to say, agreeable to a certain social class. This seems to be one underlying theme of the malaise – fraudulent symbols.