Shedding New LIght on Western Civilization, in a Corolla

Daniel and I always have interesting exchanges of ideas, especially in the car.  I think one big reason why things are so interesting is because we have very similar intellects.  In the case of Ian, like many firstborn offspring, ideas are focused around facts, concrete knowledge, and linear progression.   Ideas for Daniel and me take on more of a swirl than a march.  And of course, you never know what will come next.

On the way back from his baseball game today, Daniel was opining that perhaps the colors of the American flag all relate to blood.  These colors, which happen to be blue, white and red, for those unfamiliar with our national banner, turn out to have an uncanny connection to blood, according to Daniel Jr.  Red, because blood is red once oxygen hits it.  White, because blood is white inside the human body.  (I challenged this idea, but Daniel asserts that Ian says that this is the case, and I'm certainly not in a position to challenge the Authority of Ian.)  And blue, of course, because "blue" begins with "b," and so does "blood."  Also, Daniel remarked, "body" starts with "b."

I told Ian that the colors of the French flag - also blue, white and red - correspond to freedom, equality and brotherhood (we had to depart from the quaint alliteration of the French nouns and their English cognates, because stuff like "fraternity" wouldn't really register with Daniel).  In the middle of trying to explain it, I got a bit disoriented and said that red stood for freedom - Daniel quickly corrected me, instinctively recognizing that blue was more of a free color than red.

But then I went on to say that, although I don't know exactly how these ended up being the colors of the American flag as well, I'm not sure what they signify in our own semiotics.  I said my best guess is that the American flag has these colors because the English flag does, and the English were ruling us long before Americans were.  But just to make sure that he didn't think that his own life coincided with the colonial period, I added that the English ruled America "a long time before you and I were born."

Daniel took a guess at what "a long time ago" actually meant:

"How long ago - when God was here?"

No.  I explained that Christ walked the earth 2,000 years ago, and the U.S. gained independence about 200 years ago (I'm still trapped in some time around 1976, when the bicentennial celebration of our nation's freedom crystallized my sense of the course of human history).  Daniel did the math, arriving at the conclusion that the incarnation of Christ occurred roughly 1,800 years before the American revolution.

We arrive at the same data as The  Experts, much of the time, but we get there completely our own way, and rather enjoy the scenic route along the way.

(October 12, 2013)