A barrage of images
by Bob on May 8, 2007
We are bombarded in modern life with images. Many not natural, and not of our own making. Many religions and cultures forbid false man-made images. One wonders about that.
And this bombardment of images takes place everywhere. In magazines, newspapers, all print media except for possibly written books, and also on TV and in films and now on computers pop-up advertisements, junk snail mail, and now computer spam mail.
One especially looks at this phenomenon on TV and in print media.
On TV it is very, very psychologically tricky. Images are very quickly but consistently put in our minds, which reminds one of subliminal messaging. It's fair game in the field of the psychology of consumer behaviour which is quite devilish by design and implementation. These images, which visually transmit a pre-fabricated message, are of very short duration so we don't take obvious notice of them, but consistently repeated so it sinks in. And one like winds up with one's thinking and perception altered and also behaviour. Suddenly one runs out to buy toothpaste one doesn't need for fear of teeth not being as white as the image of the model's whose teeth were un-naturally bleached or air-brushed anyway.
That would all be okay if it didn't affect people's behaviour or one's expectations in life.
Not everyone should be as skinny as a model. It's just not healthy to be as skinny as a model, but people emulate them since their images are in their eyes all the time. Without even knowing why they are to be emulated. Just because they're there and on the golden platform.
And the result of those untra-white smiles is that almost everyone has beautiful white, un-naturally looking bleached teeth. Time to watch the 1972 film "Deliverance" again. It's all about real teeth.
Image manipulation and placement dictate so much of our modern life it's a bit scary. One wonders whether to turn to Pavlov or Skinner for the inspiration. Or to the Binet test for intelligence. Wise people know true intelligence is multi-dimensional, not a scalar, single value as Alfred Binet had made it. And Binet likely knew it too. But one needed an expedient way of sorting people out for the armed forces and other practical tasks, like coping with the school system.
In our time, in 1981, if that is our time anymore as we may have eclipsed it by now, the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a critique of this measuring in a book of his called "The Mismeasure of Man". It's not a perfect argument, but one can learn a lesson from his conclusions.
Some argue that certain images might have been worthwhile. Such as stained glass windows in a Gothic cathedral which according to architects and art historians were a huge illustrated book for the common man, who was likely illiterate, to understand, see, and remember the important messages of scripture. But that's a slippery road, too. For, clearly, oral tradition and erudition could be argued as superior. One might argue that fancy buildings and cathedrals with any ornamentation is a bit manipulative. But that's just the way it was. Cathedrals were huge public works projects and considered a blessing by the townspeople.
One wonders if writing is imagery. That's hard to figure out. Clearly heavily stylised writing can be a bit manipulative. That's now akin to the seeming lost art of writing personal paper letters by hand and perfumes.
Ultimately, we have to remember that real estate in our brain is valuable and that we must take care as to what is occupying main street in it. And also to take care to get proper rest and dreaming since it is purported that dreaming sorts things out and perhaps triages them. Another theory says that whatever we ever see is in us forever. Yet another theory thread, if we go with Dr. C.G. Jung is that the images come from the collective being.
And we must also remember that to many cultures and societies, the word "to imagine" is more powerful than reality itself, however twisted we get in those concepts. We can imagine people as they are not, and never will be. But we are then stuck in that perception of them regardless of what their real presence is. That is the tragedy of trapping someone in our perception of them rather than what they really are.
Images are powerful indeed. And need tempering.
So it goes.