There are two areas of human endeavour where symbolic communications take place. Typically, we are aware – vicariously if just from films and cultural products, whilst sadly if due to direct experience – that illegal mafias impose their currently un-auditable wills on their members and targets, using the language of signs known to everyone who needs to know.
In one part of Liverpool, for example, a pair of tied-together trainers hanging from a telephone line means drug-dealers nearby. In another part, it’s that someone’ll be getting a thrashing. But right now, you can’t take someone to court for hanging up their trainers thus.
There’s another field of human endeavour which is anything but illegal: politics. It’s clear that established political parties have often had their roots in initially illegal, at the very least grey, counter-movements. In the early days, codified messaging was required to avoid possible detection by the state. The members of such movements learnt how to communicate in such ways. They never forgot these skills.
When you’re fighting a war, and politics often will be, you need to defend AND offend, without running too great a risk of curtailment.
But such communication is also anti-democratic. I want democracy, above all.
Why ivepics.com.
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