A World Of Mental Pictures

“We see what our minds are trained to see.” ~ Journal Note, 1991

Most of what we know comes to us indirectly. We accept what we read in books, what we see on television and in the movies. We read newspapers and make assumptions about the veracity of what is called news. Astute readers may occasionally notice a little spin within the writing but we usually assume the reported facts have actually occurred.

Yesterday’s headlines included a story about a murder. A man stabbed a man outside a bar in Hermantown. We generally believe that in point of fact, the murder not only took place but occurred outside a bar and not across the street at the auto parts store. It was purportedly the first murder in Hermantown history. Most of us accept that as a matter of fact even without knowing the history of Hermantown.

Things are dicier when it comes to news broadcast from overseas. Walter Lippman, in his 1921 book Public Opinion analyzes in depth the problems associated with our pictures of reality. He begins with the story from Plato’s Republic of the men in the cave who can only see each others’ shadows but believe they are perceiving reality.

How do we understand what is really going on in the world if our minds have been filled with pictures that are interpretations, not realities? Lippman points out that our images of the world do not come from direct experience. As a consequence, our behavior is not derived from what we know but rather from what we are led to believe."The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do," Lippman writes.

The book appeared shortly after World War I, and is peppered with examples of how the American public often had a distorted view of events at that time. Lippman’s book outlines “how opinions are crystallized into what is called Public Opinion, how a National Will, a Group Mind, a Social Purpose, or whatever you choose to call it, is formed.”

During the Viet Nam War, falsified skirmishes from the battlefield were sometimes leaked to the media in order to make it look like the Viet Cong were attacking a U.S. outpost. The news stories helped legislators in Washington D.C. win key votes to help escalate the war effort. Those votes were based on events that were non-existent.

We have an image inside our heads of our world & universe that’s more comprehensive than any generation in history… TV, magazine, Nova, Discovery, talk radio, the internet. Does all this flood of information make us wiser and smarter than any generation? Or are we now so overwhelmed that we’re even more easily manipulated?

Tomorrow night is our Philosophy Club and we just happen to be discussing Descartes. Descartes, as you may recall, was the one who presented us with that famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am.”

The point he was making is not that he exists because he is a thinking person. Rather, he was wrestling with this very same issue that we’re discussing here. What is true? What can I be sure of? What a reliable basis for behavior? I need a tool to help sort through all these sensory perceptions and miscellaneous anecdotal messages regarding what I should be. What do I know innately as opposed to what I have been told from outside myself?

We like to believe we have reliable pictures in our heads. Capitalism is good. Government needs to be handcuffed. Business people are good because they provide jobs. Unions are bad. Muslims are dangerous fanatics. Or maybe we have alternate pictures. The compartmentalization of everything into black and white is likewise a picture many people have. It resolves a lot of things, makes some choices less complicated.

But what is true? What is reliable?

My suggestion -- and it’s sort of the place Descartes ended up -- is to separate what you know to be certain from what is grey and uncertain. When we hear a new idea, we shouldn’t just swallow it whole without examining it. Put it on the shelf for a little bit and see how it stacks up or fits with everything else you’ve tested and accepted… or rejected.

Even the apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, did not demand that his hearers accept what he himself was saying. He commended those who checked things out first before acting on Paul’s teaching.

I have high regard for those who are able to hold new ideas with a loose grasp until they’ve fully investigated and verified them, if able. Sometimes it may even stay on that shelf till it gets cobwebs. Eventually, as the saying goes, the truth will out.

In the meantime, things aren't always what they seem.

So Many Books, So Little Time

Today... a few gathered quotes on books. There are few greater joys than reading. This week I started Walter Lippman's Public Opinion, a 1921 discussion of propaganda and mass manipulation that preceded the Bernays book I discussed yesterday. Reading is a great way to meet thinkers who live outside the sphere of our social relations. Books are a wonderful thing.

For this reason, I share a few quotes about books here, and will make a few comments to go along with them.

"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends." ~ Dawn Adams

It is possible to love a book on many levels. Sometimes for the beauty of the language. Sometimes for the richness of the ideas it conveys. Sometimes one is impressed by the power or magical mastery of language, as in Hemingway's collection of short stories In Our Time. Without books we would be paupers.

"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors." ~ Joseph Addison

So true. About ten years ago I began listening to books during my commute to and from the office, and on trips to the Cities. I remember listening to Michener's Mexico during a trip to Lake Geneva many years ago. Currently I am finishing A History of England, Volume 3 from 1750 to 2000. Churchill, Orwell, the Irish potato famine, the French Revolution, the descent from world power to has been... it is a history of people and places that speaks much to us today, if we would hear. What a contrast to the repetitive fluff that passes itself off as entertainment or content on the usual airwaves.

"Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life." ~ Mortimer J. Adler

When the internet first emerged, I created a project to help raise funds for a youth center computer room. I named the project Dandy Yankee Doodles, hoping to obtain doodles from celebrities and other famous folk which could be made into collectibles of some kind. Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, sent a doodle. A couple others also contributed as well. And Mortimer Adler's secretary sent a note saying that Mr. Adler did not doodle. I appreciated its thoughtful warmth. When I read this quote, it is likewise unembellished, true and straight, from a logical, good man.

"To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry." ~ Gaston Bachelard

Speaking of poetry, last night I learned that the poem that begins, "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree" was not written by a woman. Joyce Kilmer, the author of these memorable lines, was a man who ended up being killed in the trench warfare of World War I. Journalist, literary critic, lecturer and poet... Kilmer died at age 31 in the Second Battle of Marne. I think of Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."

"He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes." ~ Barrow

Words good and true. Who has not experienced the comforted of a good book at some point in their lives?

"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors." ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Similar sentiments from yet another space in time.

"Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable." ~ Augustine Birrell

This quote seems directed to the writers of this world. Remember, writer, that readers are only human. If you are writing to be read, keep it in mind that you've got to keep the customer satisfied. Make it worth our while. Please don't think you're so important that whatever you say is something we need to hear whether we like it or not.

"It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything." ~ Lord Henry P. Brougham

I like this quote because it speaks of a vastness which many people are tempted to disregard. There is value in understanding what a Marx or Nietzsche or even a Hitler has written. I've read Mein Kampf. If you read National Review, try a little Mother Jones or Harper's. If you're reading Rick Warren or Billy Graham, how about tackling Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian for something to chew on. If you like postmodern deconstruction, take a stab at Kreeft's Refutation of Modern Relativism.

"After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books." ~ Thomas Carlyle

Carlyle was a Scots Presbyterian Calvinist who lost his faith, but continued to have keen insights about life and the Brit world in which he found himself. Any serious reader can't help but come across a pithy Carlyle maxim now and then. Seems like I came across quite a few over the years, but never knew who he was till reading this third volume of the history of Britain. Carlyle figures prominently in the section dealing with the Victorian era. I half considered a full blog of Carlyle quotes last week, and will probably save them for a snowy day in the near future.

"A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ Marcus T. Cicero

Yes, there should be books in every room. My office has a wall of books. But it pales in comparison to the walls of books my grandmother had. Alas...

"The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring." ~ Warren Chappell

The same probably applies now to blogging and electronic media..

"The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing." ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Ah yes.... Chesterton weighs in with a vivid image that tells all. What lover of books hasn't felt this kind of pleasure?