I distinctly remember one of my high school English teachers having a copy of Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" on his wall. We never discussed it, and I never understood what it meant until now. Magritte is focusing on the different representations of a material object and the multiplicity of meanings. It is easy to conclude that both the word "pipe" and a drawing of a pipe both represent the pipe itself. However, what if someone were to just talk about a pipe? You would instantly have an image of a pipe in your head but your image of a pipe will never be the same as the person describing the pipe to you.
There are so many different meanings that one could take from a certain word or even a certain object. For example, there is a piece of furniture. When placed in the middle of a room, it functions as a coffee table. However, if placed against a wall, it functions as a bench. So, is this piece of furniture a table or a bench? And even now, when I try to describe this table/bench, I know that whoever is reading this blog will be thinking of an object completely different than the one I am imagining in my head. And furthermore, if I say chair, maybe I am thinking of a desk chair, but you, on the other hand are thinking of an arm chair. Or, if someone showed a picture of a waste receptacle who is from England, he or she might call it a bin while I call it a trashcan.
Words and symbols will always fail to represent true meaning. There is no way to describe an idea accurately in words. If the definition of an umbrella is a device that provides protection from the rain, what would you call an umbrella that is broken? This object no longer protects its owner from the rain, so could you still call this object an umbrella even if it falls short of its definition? Would you have to create an entirely new word for this object?
I find this to be extremely frustrating. Even when we try to convey same meaning, there are too many different ways that the meaning can be understood. Meaning is increasingly important with the growing age of technology. It is imperative that we second guess everything what we see. It seems that we cannot trust anything that we see in pictures or the media. Even the news is easy to manipulate. When will the time come when we cannot even believe what we see with our own eyes?
