What do you mean by "just a symbol"? A symbol stands for something, but it is not the thing it stands for. That doesn't mean that a symbol is unimportant.
Wall Street, for example, is a street, and streets are important, but what it stands for is even more important. It stands for the New York Stock Exchange and other important financial institutions that are in that neighborhood -- for example, the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
But those institutions are also symbols -- they symbolize American free enterprise and wealth. A stock certificate is just a piece of paper, which is a symbol, but it symbolizes ownership rights in a large corporation, which is a form of wealth. Paper money is also a symbol, but that doesn't make it trash.
When someone says something is a symbol, they don't mean "it's trash, throw it away." They mean, it is not the thing it stands for. |
