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Chaos & Convergence Symbols
Here’s one for all you budding symbologists out there: I received an iPod shuffle for my birthday, but that’s not actually what I want to talk about here. What I want to talk about is this really cool symbol I found on the last page of the User’s Guide included in the package. It’s on a page which in English says “Apple and the Environment.” But the symbol itself is listed underneath a section labelled “Taiwan” and above a section labelled “Nederlands.” You can view the symbol at right below (the one labelled “convergence.”
Ever since I first laid eyes on this symbol, I’ve been really into it. I’m guessing it’s nothing more than a recycling symbol for another country (incidentally, if anybody can verify this for sure, I’d appreciate it), but to me it seems to crystallize something greater than that.
I like it because the symbol seems to be about purpose - about disparate elements coming together in a common middle ground. I realized too that it’s pretty much the antithesis of the symbol used by chaos magickians (the “chaos star” pictured above). In addition to the concept of convergence or confluence, we could also possibly apply it to conceptual areas such as emergent or self-organizing systems, or the mystical negentropy (roughly: increasing order) that Philip K. Dick talked about. We could even apply it to metaphysical areas like the “manifesting current” or to something like Stage 3 in our nascent chart of spiritual development.
Anyway, I think I’ll have a great deal more to say about this symbol in the future, but I just wanted to get the ball rolling as I think it’s a neat direction for further development. Maybe putting this symbol and concept out there will itself serve to help cause a convergence of energy around it. I’ll also try later to come up with some variations on the symbol for people to download and play with if they want.
PS. If anybody has seen or knows what this symbol means in a more mundane “official” way, please drop it into the comments below. Thanks!
January 10th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Let me be the first to obnoxiously point out that this “emergence symbol” is not dissimilar in form from a swastika.
There. Now nobody else can do so without copying me! Nyah nyah!
January 10th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
ooh, yeah, max has a point . . . .
i do love the symbol, though. it’d look nice on a
nifty red armbandt-shirt.January 10th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
It’s cool that it also forms arrows pointing outwards, like energy spiralling in and then being released again.
January 10th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Yeah, swastika blah blah blah. I was waiting for that. Maybe there’s a way to un-swastikulize it. I don’t know. Any ideas?
Oh, you mean in the negative space, with white arrows? I totally missed that. Good eyes.
January 10th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
well, i was kinda kidding, the swastika is a very basic archetypal form, its inevitable that a lot of cool symbols would resemble it - it is a pretty cool symbol itself IMHO
that’s why i provided the link to http://www.manwomen.net, he is trying to “reclaim” the swastika, I agree thats something important that needs to get done
if the nazis had used a spiral or a triangle instead would those be off limits now? I sure hope not.
January 10th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
happy to oblige
BTW above link is wrong make that http://www.manwoman.net instead
January 10th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Oh yeah, I know. But its something taht would obviously come up for other people. Just thought I’d put it out there and see how long it took to come up. Obviously not long.
Anyway, my re-created version of it is a little different from the size and relationships of the symbol I copied it from. It might make sense if it is from Taiwan, because they probably wouldn’t have the same cultural association with the swastika as us.
January 10th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Well the swastika is an ancient indian or middleasian symbol. The Nazis took it as a reminder of their supposedly arian culture.
January 10th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I like the two symbols next to each other. They seem to go well together.
January 11th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
OT but funny:
January 11th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
A little research turned up the following:
http://docs.hp.com/en/A7027-96024-en/ch01s10.html
The Taiwan EPA requires that imported dry batteries display “recovery marks” to indicate the necessity of proper disposal.
January 11th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Oh awesome! Thank you for finding that. Kind of funny how it has such a “dry” meaning officially, but that it sparked such a rich meaning in my head…
January 11th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
mmm… possibly can’t be done. Not quite the best analogy.. but that’s like trying to reassociate the cross with roman-style justice, and not christianity or the idea of a certain type of sacrifice.
It would probably take a very long time before that’d be erased from the collective consciousness. Nobody wants to even be standing next to that symbol(or anything that looks like it for that matter) on a street corner, for fear someone may think that they are somehow associated with it, or approve of it being there… or even just don’t mind it. It also doesn’t help that the neo nazis are still using it.
January 11th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
I wonder if what you like, Tim, is the sense of organization - the convergence from the four corners to the center… the four directions. In the chaos symbol the movement is outward, and in the convergence it’s inward. The four corners offer stability as well.
You sure come up with some interesting topics here!
September 18th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
[…] Created and sent to me by Elena, as a response to an older article I wrote which couldn’t be more appropriate right now, actually. Thanks Elena! […]