Our Daily Experiences Ruled by Symbols

Ms. Haiku

I was planning on putting this in AET, but with race and religion in my question I guess it goes here.

What are parts of our daily lives that are ruled by arbitrary standards, rituals and/or symbols? The ones I thought of so far are:

Time

Language

Weather

Race

Religion

Anything else? I'm figuring this out for poetry exercises.

TY!

mickeyrat

as a professional driver , road signs.

Go Beavers

One standard I find interesting is how physical distance communicates a lot if information about the relationship between people. This also includes posture. You can observe two people together and start to make pretty accurate judgments on their relationship: is this work related, they’re friends, they’re a couple, they’re a parent and child, they’re strangers making small talk. In a busy city, you can tell when two people walking side by side are together, and when two people side by side aren’t. We don’t always consciously note the cues that tell us this, but our brain makes the call just from repetition of patterns. 

And to add, it’s a lot of subtle non verbals that include, eye contact, angle of lean with the body, squaring the shoulders vs angling out a little, facial expressions, smiling, reciprocation of expressions, head angles up, straight or down a little, amount of physical touching and where also gives a lot of info about the relationship. 

cblock4life

Go Beavers said:

One standard I find interesting is how physical distance communicates a lot if information about the relationship between people. This also includes posture. You can observe two people together and start to make pretty accurate judgments on their relationship: is this work related, they’re friends, they’re a couple, they’re a parent and child, they’re strangers making small talk. In a busy city, you can tell when two people walking side by side are together, and when two people side by side aren’t. We don’t always consciously note the cues that tell us this, but our brain makes the call just from repetition of patterns. 

And to add, it’s a lot of subtle non verbals that include, eye contact, angle of lean with the body, squaring the shoulders vs angling out a little, facial expressions, smiling, reciprocation of expressions, head angles up, straight or down a little, amount of physical touching and where also gives a lot of info about the relationship. 

Excellent observations.  You’ve described this very well. 

Ms. Haiku

mickeyrat said:

as a professional driver , road signs.

That works!

Ms. Haiku

Go Beavers said:

One standard I find interesting is how physical distance communicates a lot if information about the relationship between people. This also includes posture. You can observe two people together and start to make pretty accurate judgments on their relationship: is this work related, they’re friends, they’re a couple, they’re a parent and child, they’re strangers making small talk. In a busy city, you can tell when two people walking side by side are together, and when two people side by side aren’t. We don’t always consciously note the cues that tell us this, but our brain makes the call just from repetition of patterns. 

And to add, it’s a lot of subtle non verbals that include, eye contact, angle of lean with the body, squaring the shoulders vs angling out a little, facial expressions, smiling, reciprocation of expressions, head angles up, straight or down a little, amount of physical touching and where also gives a lot of info about the relationship. 

Very cool!

GlowGirl

Go Beavers said:

One standard I find interesting is how physical distance communicates a lot if information about the relationship between people. This also includes posture. You can observe two people together and start to make pretty accurate judgments on their relationship: is this work related, they’re friends, they’re a couple, they’re a parent and child, they’re strangers making small talk. In a busy city, you can tell when two people walking side by side are together, and when two people side by side aren’t. We don’t always consciously note the cues that tell us this, but our brain makes the call just from repetition of patterns. 

And to add, it’s a lot of subtle non verbals that include, eye contact, angle of lean with the body, squaring the shoulders vs angling out a little, facial expressions, smiling, reciprocation of expressions, head angles up, straight or down a little, amount of physical touching and where also gives a lot of info about the relationship. 

What you are describing is called proxemics and it is part of our ways of communicating non-verbally. However, it is very cultural. If you go to another culture you may not be able to decipher some of these behaviors as readily as you would in your own culture. It’s really interesting. 

Hobbes

Consumerism.

brianlux

Interesting question!

How about this, perhaps as something that directs how we stand and move: