We can hear the dragons roar as the wind passes through the branches of the trees. We can hear them if we are still. If we have dropped off our body and mind and listen wholeheartedly — not half way, not distracted, not dutifully trying to hear a dragon roar, but openly, with our work complete and our mind present, stable and clear in all directions. If we try to select a piece of the sound, we will have nothing. How can we select a piece and separate it from its reality? But we will always be tempted to do it if we have not put our concerns down and let our disturbances subside.

 

If we separate ourselves from the natural world and live in a mediated and constructed world, (city and highway, office and apartment, car and computer and phone) we receive fragments of experience extracted from the context from which they actually arose.  We believe we are able to interpret this flow of images and language and understand it accurately. The condition of our mind and its mechanized environment will not permit it.

 

We are misled. We mislead ourselves. The dragons roar becomes inaudible.

 

From the safety of their homes, to feel tough, people seek violent images.  From the solitude of their homes, to feel connected, people seek sexual images. This is taken for granted as natural and good. It is neither. It is a source of suffering.

 

The insidious decontextualization of the images of war, which misleads armchair combatants and pacifists, is identical to the insidious effect of the decontextualization of pornographic images as absorbed by armchair studs.

 

When a young man is placed in a situation of physical jeopardy, he will change to adapt to it and to accommodate it.

 

In the schoolyard or on the street, he will become attuned to danger, and he will become stronger and tougher and faster to meet the challenge. Competitive sports mimic this challenge and mimic the result.  In a healthy environment, he will win the respect of the other people in the neighborhood, not by killing all opponents, but by resolving to meet the challenge with courage and accept the difficulty without shrinking.

 

In warfare, in taking on the responsibility of common defense, whether as a volunteer or draftee, a young man will also rise to the challenge. Whether to meet the ideal of defending his country or defending other people’s lives, or to meet the practical challenge of keeping himself and his friends alive under threat, he will be presented with the opportunity to become stronger, more skillful, more courageous, and more vigilant.

 

This ideal is not always met, on the battlefield, on the ball field or in our neighborhoods, but the possibility is there. And the ideal is often met. The ideal will never be met by people observing images of these scenes from the safe remove of a living room, classroom or boardroom. When these images are decontextualized, and especially when they are removed from the time and place where they occurred, the images will not place any demand on the viewer, or give them any chance to change. They do not acknowledge the will or life of the viewer, but demand that the viewer passively accept the image as it passes.

 

These images do provide a feeling in the mind of the viewer, but that feeling is based in the viewer’s limited experience.  It is a projection of the viewer’s experience, not refreshed by the reality from which the image was extracted.

 

If life decisions, cultural judgments or public policy are based on this misunderstanding, the resulting action will diverge from reality. Negative consequences will be inevitable. Pretenders to toughness will live a fantasy life, and make fantasy decisions, based on this error.

 

When a strong person, with battlefield or street experience, looks at an image of violence, it is possible for him to understand it in a way that no armchair observer or moviegoer ever can. When a person who was present at an incident observes the image taken there, he can understand it with even more precision.

 

Yet most of us are subject to a torrent of impressions that have been elided from their context. Most TV viewers do not know Afghanistan or Oprah, and most seem to think they do.

 

When a handsome, accomplished, high status male looks at an image of a sexy female, he can respond to that image in an informed way. Real women, with the degree of attractiveness and personal power depicted in the image, have often looked at him this way in real life, and may have responded to him in real life the way they are responding in the pornographic depiction.

 

There are very few such people in the audience.

 

Most viewers have less physical attractiveness and lower status than would be necessary to attract the enduring positive attention of the series of women they see depicted in this imagery. They can imagine how the interaction might go based on what they see depicted, but their reality does not go like that. By turning to representation of sexual activity for pleasure they, among other things, delete the motivation they might otherwise have to go to the gym, work hard, increase their status, be faithful – inwardly and outwardly – to their families, and to turn their attention to an arena of action which can provide them not only with lasting emotional satisfaction, but with sexual satisfaction as well.

 

They become attached to the depiction of sexual activity and, like drug addicts, they turn away from other kinds of human contact, and seek more pleasure.

 

Decontextualixed images of violence and decontextualized images of sex are false and harmful.

 

We can avoid the disorientation that comes from relentless exposure to reproduced music, reproduced images, reproduced human action; the confusion that comes from immersion in reality made of encoding, recording, photography and architecture.

 

As a result we can regain the opportunity to connect face to face with the reality of our own lives.

 

To practice honestly.

 

To live vigorously and deeply.

 

To hear the dragons roar with our own ears.