The cycle seems to be 'we need these symbols to clarify what types of things we're referring to!' followed by 'wait, it turns out words already do that.'

"Sigil Cycle", by Randall Munroe, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License

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The cycle seems to be 'we need these symbols to clarify what types of things we're referring to!' followed by 'wait, it turns out words already do that.'