The True Meaning of The Symbol Swastika

By: Jian-Hian Chen

What is a symbol? A symbol is things or behaviors to which people give meaning. Symbol can also be something such as a particular mark that represents some piece of information. One symbol that everyone seen before that thinks they know the meaning to it is the Swastika.

What do you think when you see this?

Yes, this is the symbol that Adolf Hitler used known as the Nazism. The Nazi believed that they were the supremacy of an Aryan master race and claimed that Germans represented the purest Aryan nation. The Jews people were affect the most because the Nazi claimed that they were the greatest threat to the Aryan race and the German nation. The symbol has been forbidden in several countries and especially in Germany. In some areas public display of the Swastika may be fined or even jailed.

This video shows the true meaning of the symbol Swastika. This symbol has appeared around the country in ancient artifact from Japan, China, and India for 5,000 years. The Swastika symbol represents good luck, love, light, and life. What a peaceful symbol but, because of one person it is only remember as a symbol of hatred, death, and evil.

At the end of the blog I hope everyone understand a little more about the meaning and what the Swastika symbol represents. The Swastika symbol represents Good, Love, Light, and, Life. This symbol is mostly in the Asian culture it appears in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Mithraism.

Osama Bin Lden!..........Devil or Saint ? Is he really a symbol of Muslim ?

By Khanh Nguyen.

A symbol of a culture can be a thing, an action or activity as well as a person.  In the case of Osama Bin Laden, he is definitely a symbol of a culture but depend on each individual or group of people, he could be a saint or a devil.

For most of American and people around the world who had their relatives died in terrorist attacks that related to AL-Qaeda.  He is always a devil who took many innocent people away from their families.  Osama Bin Laden in this case is a symbol of an angry and cruelty religious in specific and Muslim culture in general which always consider infidel people as its enemies. For those who are Muslim and do not support his ideas, Osama Bin Laden is not a symbol of their religious, their culture. In fact, he is a counter culture symbol of Muslim.

In another hand, for those who support him in specific and terrorism in general, Osama Bin Laden has become one of their saints.  He is a hero among them.  He was the one who brought up the idea of sweeping all infidel people out of their holy land throughout Middle East region. All his ideas are now dogmas for them. In this case he is more to be a subculture symbol of Muslim.

In conclusion, Osama Bin Laden is a symbol of Muslim culture or not all depend on the way each individual’s thinking of him and how everything he did impact each of us. In my opinion, Osama Bin Laden is more to be counter culture symbol of Muslim culture.

Cultural Symbols & Their Repercussion

By Desiree Raucci

The human mind associates cultural symbols as a visual, verbal or written representation of reality. Sybolism is everywhere around us, we associate deeper meaning to symbols every day and most of us do not even realize. 

Visual Cultural Symbols can be seen everywhere, we brand ourselves with tattoos to make a statement, we wear brand name clothing, listen to music on our ipods and drink grande skim lattes from Starbucks. Every one of those things I just mentioned are a form of symbolism. We associate the bitten apple icon to all Macintosh products, as we also do with the swoosh created by Nike. Many of us, including myself have tattoos, perhaps to show our rebellion yet still grouping ourselves with the rest of the inked nation. A tattoo is a form of symbolism, they mean something deeper than the ink resting in your skin. Married couples wear wedding bands to show their status of being taken and to show their loyalty to their other half. Most of the world, when you see the bright, yellow arches while driving down a highway you know a McDonalds will be coming up in the near future. In short, visual symbols are everywhere around us.

Written Cultural Symbols are used everyday in one of the most popular things to do, texting. Texting has created a completely new language in recent years. Everything is abbreviated to make sending your message easier. Every language in the world is written symbolism, it shows our culture by another just by scanning the pages of a foreign book or magazine.

Spoken Cultural Symbols also show who we are as a culture. Many languages have created sub languages, such as ebonics, slang and accents. I was born and raised in South Philadelphia and hearing me speak, anyone could guess that is where I am from. A southern accent shows the cultural twang of the persons home, and the New York accent may be the most heard accent on television and in movies. 

In the world today symbolism can show the social status of a person, how educated they might be, the age and even the culutural background. The symbols around us, make us. Throughout the decades symbols have been born and buried, and then brought back to life. The peace sign was very popular in the 1960's and 1970's as a sign of freedom and love often used to protest the war in Vietnam. In recent years it has been reborn, yet used more lightly perhaps more of a fashion statement these days. It kind of has lost its powerful aura it once had in earlier times. Even the crucifix symbol associated with religion has been re vamped in society as a symbol, many stars and musicians wear the rosary around their neck. A cultural symbol has now changed into a fashion statement. Cultural symbolism keeps evolving and will never stop until humans cease to exist. In the end my main point I trying to make is if there is a culture, there is symbolism.