URBAN COMMUNICATION | SIGNS AND SIGNALS | STADTGESPRÄCHE
What do we believe?
The performance of our brains makes us not only happy. We can get confused and depressed and may become headache by the scope and complexity of our experiences. Therefore opportunities to focus on a section of life are very popular. Religions satisfy these needs. Belief systems enable us to filter, organize and evaluate our experiences.
The idea that there exists some kind of central perspective, that allows to understand the world in a unmistakable way, has proved to be a mistake. Every change of perspective from which we perceive our surroundings, may lead to different interpretations. We only believe that we know how the world is constituted. The feeling to understand something alone does not satisfy us. We ask for meaning. Meaning is created by those relationships which can be constructed out of various aspects to a superordinate context. Once such relationships are not self-evident and can not be seen by itself, it means we need rituals and materializations to make the world perceptible and visible in the desired form. We create signs to give meaning to our life.
Many people don’t experience themselves as part of the modern capitalistic world and are searching for orientation in traditional religious systems.
Once something has become visible and understandable for everyone, it always runs again into the risk of critical reflections. Signs may always be changed or destroyed. This is why certain signs need a special protection by law or regulation.
Belief systems will prove to be particularly successful if it is possible to develop a system of signs that, although it appears evident and obvious, in all its facets remains unfathomable and mysterious.
We have learned to trust, especially those phenomena that we encounter most often. That is why those institutions that understand it as their task to spread certain beliefs, try to occupy the environment with impressive signs.
Who can we trust?
Phenomena such as industrialization, capitalization, rational reification and functional differentiation led us into the modern age. Reason and emotion come into conflict. Scientific thinking has detached from the immediate perception, it is abstract. General education can not keep up with scientific progress. Once again, we are left with no alternative to faith.
Metaphors open our minds to certain ways of thinking. However, metaphors are not depictions of "reality." If transferred meanings are taken literally, sometimes dangerous misunderstandings arise. The possibility of confusion grows with the increasing use of images in communication. Although we are aware that we are able to manipulate images, deceptive maneuvers sometimes have a surprising effect. However, it is also not the case that every trial to manipulate us is successful. It is our decision what we believe. We do adopt those ideologies that promise us the greatest advantage.
We often make the experience that a certain promises only have the goal to direct our behavior in a certain direction. We have become suspicious. But our desire for reliability and the hope for credible informations make us observant for signs in which we may put our trust.
If we neither believe in God nor in the promises of our exploratory mind, we can still rely on the omnipotence of money. In the intoxication of power that the possession of money promises, it is often forgotten that money is worthless if it does not circulate. Who only accumulates money, puts the fountain dry, from which his wealth derives.
