Reading is fundamental

So, at work, I have been mailing checks. Thousands of them, actually. While doing so, I see the US Flag-on-a-stamp literally thousands of times. Tends to make me ruminate over it, you know what I mean? It's the Brand logo for this country, and I don't really read too much more into it. I realize that for some people any manifestation of the Stars n Bars is a deeply resonant symbol of all that is good. I just see as The US's version of the Nike swoosh. So,this got me thinking about brands and logos, and how we "read" them. I think we read them in a very primal fashion. They say that children know the Burger King logo before they know the letters of the Alphabet and that the Coca Cola logo is seen more times by more people than the sun, and maybe that's true, and maybe we're forgetting something even more primal, but ultimately, it seems to me like peasants in the middle ages getting their religion from stained glass, because they cannot read the book. Maybe that kind of visual representation is just as valid as the abstract process of words, as it predates the word: they're cave drawings, not cave poems. Maybe we're still evolving, and learning to "read" in a different way. I honestly don't know, but it's interesting to me that we embue anything with meaning at all.

On the other hand, clearly something has changed. I mean, have you see the flickr photos of the Detroit book repository? While I find the photos distressing, I cannot say they shock me. Maybe the kind of reading I prefer, the one with words and books is the aberration, after all....