THE G4P BETWEEN WH4T WE THINK 4ND WH4T M4KES SENSE
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It is no surprise that you reason through words, images, gestures, and symbols. Reason does not hover over things like some kind of omniscient drone; the ground it treads is semiotic.
Without symbols, there are no concepts; without concepts, there is no comparison; without comparison, there are no choices. And without choices, what we call ‘reason’ becomes just a reflex, a reaction.
In this article, we'll talk a little about the B side of the mind — when symbols interpreted without the action of reason become mere superstition — something that can be costly.
You know that course that promises to ‘unlock your mind’ based on a certain archetype? Well.
Let's say that these ‘solutions’ are the gourmet versions of astrology and high-risk decisions. Because the problem is not, and never has been, not knowing how to interpret symbols, signs, synchronicities...
These things are loose, there are no ‘tests’ inserted in them, there is no need to ‘unlock’ them. They do not confront objective reality.
Therefore, those who cannot differentiate between metaphor and model, ritual and method, poetry and proof, become easy—and cheap—prey to the pedagogy of miracles.
Reason treads on Symbols: the obvious that we pretend not to see
Human reason has a need to name, compare and infer. And all of this requires representations: words, numbers, diagrams, icons, maps...
The brain does not access the ‘real’ in 4K, it models the stimuli it receives. Symbols are part of these modelled stimuli, they are useful simplifications that allow us to operate without collapsing.
Words, in turn, cut the idea of continuity of these symbols into categories: ‘tree’, ‘injustice’, ‘risk’, “good”, ‘evil’, etc.
Numbers store the proportions and rates of these categories. Thus, it is always good not to confuse ‘10%’ with ‘always works.’
Metaphors, on the other hand, create a bridge between the unknown and the known: ‘time is money,’ ‘the mind is a machine’...
Without all of this, there is no logic, and without logic, there is no verification, and without verification, there is no learning – only a highly valued opinion.
Symbols without the use of Reason: when the map hijacks the territory
Now, when the reverse occurs, when the symbol becomes idolatry, reasoning decides to take a holiday.
The mind becomes the realm of ‘everything is a symbol’ – a slogan that seems profound, but serves as a knife that cuts and separates statements from evidence. This is when metaphors become dogmas, myths become operating manuals, and ‘insights’ become excuses to skip the energy expenditure, leading the mind to seek validation.
Some everyday examples of this:
Popular sayings and jargon that anaesthetise thinking: ‘quantum synergy of the mindset’. Translation: no one has measured anything, but the information is sold as scientific fact.
Courses with an archetypal stamp: a handful of myths rearranged to look like a method.
Guru language: ‘it's not about understanding, it's about feeling.’ Great for the arts, but terrible for contracts, surgeries, and real public policies — those that are, in fact, pro-people and not pro-candidate/party.
The result of these examples? People deciding where to go with their eyes closed and their hands on the wheel.
The necessary marriage: symbols as hypothesis, reason as test
Symbols propose and reason exposes. The former creates analogies, the latter questions them: ‘Does this really work when I get out of my head and go out into the world?’
This is how theories find ground: the symbol formulates, reason measures, and reality, consequently, responds.
In science, a model is a mathematical symbol. It is valid as long as it predicts.
In law, principles are normative symbols, valid when they are coherent and consistent with cases.
In everyday practical life, someone's ‘good vibe’ is a symbol of the accumulation of experiences – which, yes, are fallible – so it is always a good idea to check and question.
If you only have symbols, you end up living in an eternal theatre. If you only have reason – without symbols – you end up becoming a conceptual autistic, just technicalities that don't talk to anyone.
A safe form of interaction between symbols and reason would be:
Metaphor → hypothesis → test → revision of the metaphor.
Beliefs shape behaviour: why your mind pulls the rug out from under your judgement
Deterministic beliefs (such as ‘I was born this way’), unrealistic beliefs (‘the universe conspires for me’) and illusory beliefs (‘if I visualise it, it exists’) guide what you do, avoid and see. The filter always precedes the fact.
Confirmation bias: you look for symbols, signs that confirm your beliefs and ignore the rest.
Illusion of depth: vague phrases and popular sayings seem wise. ‘Reality is energy’ – OK, so what? Just repeating these phrases does not make us really understand them.
Motivational fatalism: ideas of a fixed destiny, ‘it was written,’ make nothing your responsibility. Comfortable? Without a doubt! Unproductive? Also.
This does not mean that we have to become sceptics, cynics, or nihilists, but rather recognise that the way we name the world changes the world we perceive — and how we act in it.
When ‘everything is a symbol’ becomes an excuse
This phrase is elegant, Instagrammable and... relatively dangerous. Why?
It slips through the cracks: if everything is subjective interpretation, then nothing can be verifiable.
It sells shortcuts: ‘interpreted it right, solved life.’
It rewards charismatic authorities: whoever decides what the symbol ‘really’ means becomes an oracle, an expert...
This is how myth-hijacking methods are born, tools that promise transcendence in 7 steps and narratives that confuse ritual with results.
->Symbol without reason = staging.
->Reason without symbol = alienation.
Adults who think for themselves need both.
Language pulls thought and thought returns the favour
Metaphors are not embellishments, they are cognitive infrastructures.
->‘War on drugs’ calls for tanks and highlights the first word.
->‘Public health’ calls for more nurses, professionals, and improvements in healthcare systems—which often do not occur in practice but have been promised for years.
->‘Cutting costs’ and ‘optimising expenses’ may point to the same table, but they lead to different decisions and interpretive views.
To name is to frame.
->Framing, which means the way in which the presentation or ‘frame’ of information affects how we perceive and interpret that information. It changes the perceived risk.
->Metaphor, when coherent, can suggest a solution before the problem is seen.
->Jargon creates a tribe and, with it, often blind loyalty and ignorance.
If you do not consciously choose the vocabulary you think with, someone else will certainly do it for you.
Map, compass and terrain
Think about the following: symbols are maps, reason is the compass, reality is the terrain.
->The map gives you the macro view (metaphors, numbers, words, diagrams, thoughts...).
->The compass prevents you from going around in circles (knowledge, logical consistency, questioning, analysis, testing, review, action...).
->The terrain teaches you what the map does not show – the map is not the territory – (friction, problems, inconsistencies, injustices, atrocities, real people acting...).
Adult and conscious navigation works in a triangular manner. This means that:
->Using only the map causes you to crash into a tree.
->Using only the compass causes you to walk in a straight line until you fall into an abyss.
->Using only the terrain causes you to merely survive in a random, unadapted manner.
The fetish for the ‘ineffable’: when the veil becomes a product
‘You can't explain it, you just have to feel it.’
Have you heard that phrase? Yeah, me too.
The aesthetic experience may indeed be ineffable, but decisions that affect the lives of others cannot be. What is beautiful to feel must be translatable to the minimum necessary so that it can be communicated, debated, audited... Otherwise, we would not have a complex vocal apparatus and vocabulary.
If something cannot be explained in simple language, we can come up with three possible hypotheses:
1. The phenomenon is complex and you have not yet understood what it means;
2. The phenomenon is simple and you are complicating it to make it seem profound;
3. You do not understand what ineffable means but pretend that you do.
In all cases, the responsibility is to facilitate understanding and be sincere, not to mystify it.
The maze of promises
In recent years, in particular, we have seen the constant growth of the lucrative market for ‘pocket symbols,’ books and courses that ‘reprogram beliefs in 72 hours,’ tools for ‘consciousness that manifest abundance,’ methods that ‘break your limits’ with a handful of archetypes and a few analogies.
This works – very well – for selling, because it reduces internal work by replacing it with heroic slogans. However, real and practical life requires comparing explanations, measuring effects, accepting mistakes... Without this, the symbol becomes performative self-help: cathartic, motivating, and sterile when it comes to predicting possible problems, correcting behaviours, and acting accordingly.
Productive paradoxes: the refined interplay between myth and method
->A coherent myth used with the ‘wrong’ method can inspire, but it will not deliver anything.
->A coherent method used with the ‘wrong’ myth works, but no one follows it.
->When method and myth are in harmony, meaning mobilises and verification improves them.
Real ideas, serious science, and the arts live in this friction, but in a constructive way: meaning is used to instigate and encourage, and metrics are used to correct in order to achieve better results.
Tribes, symbols, and the separatist syndrome
Symbols bring people together. They are great for generating a sense of belonging, but terrible when they become weapons of segregation. The algorithm loves this drama because outrage keeps your attention. And your attention is profitable, moving millions.
Is there a defence for this? Yes, intellectual humility.
Be aware that the symbol you love may be your favourite, but it is only a snippet, a tiny piece of the macro and not the real thing – it is what you accept as such.
People who do not know how to deal with or sustain nuances different from their own become mere supporters, pawns in the big game. And supporters and pawns do not debate, they just defend ideas – even if illusory and unfair – like human shields.
Sanity – without miracles and absolutism
Translate the metaphor itself: What operational hypothesis does it suggest?
Question the predictions: what, specifically, should happen if the idea is coherent? Can this idea be considered true?
Look for flaws: in what context might this not work?
Separate aesthetics from effectiveness: something can be beautiful but inefficient, ugly but effective...
Update your information without drama: if the data changes, so does your opinion.
Simple.
None of this will turn you into a robot. It will prevent you from becoming an extra in other people's narratives.
Take the anti-deception vaccine
Laughing at our own certainties is detoxifying. Irony is not gratuitous cruelty, it is just cognitive hygiene. It bursts bubbles without asking permission, exposing empty ideas, reminding us that these ideas do not always have dignity – but people do.
If your most absolute truth, your favourite thesis/explanation/certainty can withstand a joke, that is a great sign.
Synthesis
We think with words and images. This helps us ‘enter’ the social world, but sometimes we believe in ideas that seem beautiful and forget to see if they actually work in practice. It would be best to use both: reasoning and testing. That way, we learn not to fall for tricks.
A metaphorical slap in the face
If you are the type who hides behind metaphors so you don't have to face facts, that's fine, but know that this is not depth, it is laziness.
If you are one of those who despise symbols, who think that only ‘data and facts count,’ that's fine too, but it is interesting that you are aware that you are flirting with inhumanity.
Grow cognitively – symbols serve reason, and reason disciplines symbols. Those who sell symbolic shortcuts without measuring anything are selling you fantasies – and you are buying them. Those who sell meaningless numbers are also selling cruelty – even if unconsciously.
In my opinion, it is preferable to choose to be an adult.
After all, reason needs symbols to represent, and symbols need reason to be accountable. Between the myth that inspires and the method that corrects, there is a tough but fertile dialogue – the only one that transforms belief into applicable knowledge, intention into results, and rhetoric into responsibility.
There are no miracles, there is work: thinking, formulating, questioning, testing, adjusting, believing, acting...
The rest? It's just a smokescreen.
So, if this content has usefully challenged your certainties – or not – feel free to treat us to a coffee on the Buy Me a Coffee platform. And if you want more texts and content like this, direct, unsweetened, unadorned and explicit, just stay here at UN4RT.
‘The illusion fades when we question reality’ – UN4RT
Recommended sources:
Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man.
Umberto Eco, Treatise on general Semiotics.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics.
Charles S. Peirce, Selected Writings On Semiotics.
Ludwig Wittegenstein, Philosophical Investigations.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error.
Michael Polanyi, Tacit Knowledge.
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method.
