Prince Willem-Alexander, Prime Minister Balkenende, Thom Hoffman and other Dutch notables have set a good example. Now it's up to us, the Dutch people, to start wearing orange wristbands, too. No need to let the money stop us. For one euro you can buy a new national symbol that stands for the highest good: Tolerance, Dialogue, Coexistence, Hope. The text that's printed on it also expresses, in an informal way, a sense of connection with the Dutch nation and the rest of the world in all its diversity: "Respect2All." We needed something like this. If even the Greens are appealing to the queen to act as the Mother of the Country, as they did shortly after the murder of Theo van Gogh, there must be a great general symbolic vacuum that has to be filled. The question is whether a rubber wristband can fill it for longer than the hype lasts.

No one can live without symbols. Symbols inject structure into the way we experience ourselves and reality in general. It's no different for society. "Every culture," wrote the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, "is an aggregate of symbolic systems in which language, marriage, economic relations, art, science and religion are most prominent." Those symbolic systems impose order in our inner lives, condense what for us is complex and extreme, form a bridge between the personal and the social, the conscious and the unconscious, the everyday and the unfathomable. A symbol can unify, comfort and strengthen. It can also have an explosive impact on the heart of our imaginary world.

A great deal has already been written about the September 11th terrorists and their sense of the symbolic, and the ways that the US undertook a search for symbolic answers. We've seen how that country, in an effort to allay fear, restore pride and confirm unity, fell back on its old patriotic symbols: the Flag, the Eagle, the Statue of Liberty. And we know that in order to bring about that national resurrection, the government turned to the Hollywood symbol machine for advice: the national psyche had to be directed on so many different levels. Since then, the superpower's entire political life has been brimming with symbolism, and the success of this effort has certainly not escaped the notice of the rest of the world. The American historian and market research John Fraim even predicts that in the future symbols will dominate all of world politics. Just as Samuel P. Huntington announced a "clash" of civilizations, Fraim, in his book "Battle of Symbols: Emerging Global Dynamics" anticipates a world war of symbols.

If that's true, what exactly will those symbols stand for? And who will design them?

Before the formidable declaration of war declared by Islamic fundamentalism, we in the West lived mainly in the symbolic world of brand names, status objects, pop and porno stars and TV personalities. These symbols were brought to us by means of advertisements, fashion and the mass media, who also kept a close eye on the interests of big business. It didn't bother us that those symbols were just as thin and volatile as the world of illusion they represented. In fact, we enjoyed the subtle creativity that went into renewing them, over and over again. But that's not enough any more. The murder of Theo van Gogh and the fear that has been lurking around ever since have created a longing in us, too, for symbols that represent the values of a free and open society. We want weighty, long-lasting symbols that can stand up to the tyrannical symbolism of terror. But we haven't got them, which is why we're stuck with the cheap sentiment of an orange wristband.

How did this happen? Why are symbols no longer being created with the power of "Devastated City," the monument that Ossip Zadkine made for Rotterdam in 1953? Or Picasso's "Guernica"? Just compare that with the "Citizens' Monument to European Unity" soon to be erected in a village between Erfurt and Weimar, thanks to the patronage of Romano Prodi and a subsidy from the European Parliament. It's a joint design produced by nine artists from different countries (two from the Netherlands) and roughly consists of an underground clay chamber covered by a glass dome through which colored light enters. This light is directed through four colored, heliocentric mirrors that catch the daylight on the outside from the four points of the compass. On the inside, an inverted pyramid consisting of four mirrors absorbs the colored rays of light and breaks it down in such a way that the colors fuse together in the point of the pyramid to produce white sunlight.

It's a complex construction that (once again) is supposed to express respect for Human Dignity, Individual Differences and Cultural Freedom. But if the folder had provided an entirely different interpretation I would have believed that as well. That's because the monument is not a solid image but fluid. It doesn't imprint itself on our minds like a powerful sign but slides away in every direction in a pre-programmed sense of elevation. We used to call this sort of thing kitsch.

The Monument to Europe reminds me of what the Belgian art historian Francis Smets said in his book "Sophia's return: The religious crisis and the rise of modern art," published in 1988 but still of interest. "The modern artist," he wrote, "no longer expresses the symbols of his culture because the culture no longer supplies him with symbols." It's true. Our culture is no longer a breeding-ground for heroic symbols like the "Rodina," a mythical figure one hundred and two meters tall, made of tons of steel and rising from a hill in Kiev, Ukrain. Like a feminine archangel, sentinel, warrior, she's been standing there since the late 1940s, watching over city and homeland with raised sword and shield. Our contemporary heroes don't live on Olympus but on the stage of the mass media. And the values they stand for have nothing to do with concepts such as Love of Country, Unity and Nobility. They're mayflies that often do all they can to stay alive, even if it means having to spend their last hours on a rotten apple. In a climate like this, artists are not quick to generate symbols of Truth, Courage and Morality.

But we do feel the loss. And it's only increasing now that "others" have started attacking our culture, both symbolically and very concretely. This is why there's been such a conveyor belt of debates and conferences at which speakers grapple with the question of what our values actually entail, with particular stress on the limits of those values. How far does Freedom of Speech go? And Freedom of Religion, and Freedom of School Choice? When does Democracy become a threat to itself? In all this discussion, the idea of Europe is often a rewarding point of departure because it's still vague enough to relate to everything.

"Europe: A Beautiful Idea?" was that kind of conference, organized by the Nexus Institute in the Netherlands. During one of the debates, in which prominent thinkers, writers and politicians from East and West took part, the Syrian islamologist Bassam Tibi made the statement that Europe does not offer Muslims a model of integration. What values does Europe really want to spread to the non-Western world? he asked. Is there a Europe that consists of more than a market and a currency? Does Europe have a soul?

Not one artist in the hall stood up. (Were there any there?) Such an artist might have told Tibi that the soul of Europe is undoubtedly rich, many-colored and sensitive, weighted down with visions of a better world that can be shaped and controlled, permeated by a sense of adventure and a passion for experimentation, prepared to make room by throwing traditions overboard and exposing moral dilemmas. And that this brilliant soul can be found in Europe's art, the same art that the politicians in the first row are brutally pinching off to benefit the market and the currency. But no one moved. The Prime Minister did proudly announce that a symbolic "European Culture Wall" would be erected around the sculpture museum in Scheveningen, with inscriptions from famous texts from the twenty-five member states. "To bring European ideas to the public."

A wall. As a symbol of an open society. Tibi was too polite to slap his thighs and burst out laughing.

What is always striking about the symbols that are now being created is how soft and saccharine they are. They go so far out of their way to radiate good intentions and a positive attitude that you want to run out and hug everyone you see, both man and beast. But the beautiful feeling doesn't last. As soon as you turn around it's gone, because there's nothing in it to latch onto. Respect for human dignity: splendid! But it's only a slogan if we don't know what that dignity entails. We don't think much of what our political leaders, top managers and opinion makers have to offer, that's for sure.

But what do we think much of? Where can we find models of noble, human qualities? The art of the fascists and communists knew. They depicted a proud, high-spirited and industrious humanity: chin out and arm extended into the future. That ideal individual was buried with the ideologies. No more heroes is what the eighties wrote on its tombstone. Understandable, because we now know that one man's hero is another man's enemy. That's a bad basis for a better world. It's also not part of the notion of modern man that's been developed over the last hundred years by philosophers and artists: the idea of an individual who takes responsibility for himself, finds his own truth and becomes his own hero.

Is this too great an ideal? Or is it not idealistic enough? In any case what we see in the visual arts, the theatre and literature is the reflection of a man being torn apart by existential uncertainty, moral quandaries and doubt. Nowhere can he find a place to satisfy his deep longing for harmony, relationship and security. Well, perhaps briefly in the dual world of gleaming gadgets, lively sex and sunny cocktails. But then ordinary reality strikes again and he feels the urge to ask every passer-by who and where he is.

That kind of art has us brooding over the contents of the values themselves. It offers us no symbols that we can cling to, certainly no rose-colored symbols. What it wants is to rid itself of existing, familiar meanings in order to arrive at new insights. And the route it has chosen to do this runs by way of the means that turned it into art in the first place. This is why we look at paintings that point to the deceptive character of paint, at theater that points to the artificiality of theater, at films whose form, as in literature, constitutes a substantial part of the story itself.

But this is not enough anymore. Art is now being reproached for having isolated itself from society with all this self-reflection. Dutch film director Jos de Putter made the following relevant comment: "Art has created its own domain next to the domain of society." This, he said, has enabled art to screen itself off from social developments and to create its own freedom, but such isolation has also made it innocuous: "Art is no longer relevant to the social debate."

De Putter is right, and art should take this problem seriously. It shouldn't have to keep hiding behind a haughty, academic discourse whenever it throws a stone in the audience's face, as with Theo van Gogh's film "Submission." No one believes in the pretext of shock therapy anymore anyway. Today the stone is experienced as a real stone, and that's the way people react to it. So the artist today who exhibits a gilded revolver in the Stedelijk Museum shouldn't be indignant if the police decide to confiscate it. The symbolism of that police action is just as adolescent as the symbolism of his own work. But it does show that art can no longer be careless with its freedom. Without having been aware of it, art has changed from being a symbol of total freedom to being a social factor that can be held accountable for its own responsibility. And perhaps that's not such a bad thing. Perhaps art is drawing its own imposed borders, right in the heart of our society. For we're yearning for symbols that are authentic, meaningful and inspiring. Only then a war of symbols can be won..

Published in the NRC-Handelsblad on 17 December 2004

Translation from Dutch: Nancy Forest-Flier