The Images in our Minds

In my blog today, I want to ruminate around  the images which have been imprinted on our minds  over the last half century.   For some of us who lived through the 60s, such as myself, there are strange similarities.  The two most relevant to this topic, to my mind, are the advent, in mid-20th Century, of Television and, at the onset of the 21st, the introduction of computers.  the current omnipresent aspects of the Internet.

As to TV, for me, the primary change TV made in our collective lives at that time was the way TV took over peoples private lives.  Instead of people reading and/or hearing about events happening in the world on the radio or from newspapers/news magazines, there began the siting around the TV as a common family experience.  Thus began the, unrecognized, implanting of viewed images in our minds.  This was a major change--going from a private intellectual experience to a shared visual one.

For most people, I think, the real advent of TV began with shows such as, I Love Lucy and the Ed Sullivan Show;  therefore, in actuality, what TV represented became a commonality of experiencing. 

Later, with the beginning of the Vietnam War, images from the War became common.  Images which remain in my mind from that time were: a young girl, burning with napalm, running naked down a road in Vietnam, and the in-the-moment shooting of a prisoner, by someone in uniform.  Perhaps as a result of such images, there began to be shown images of people protesting the Vietnam War, being beaten by police officers in Chicago, where the demonstrators, seeing the cameras, started chanting, "The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching,..."

Two of the many mottoes of the younger people of the 60s were, "Make Love Not War!," and  "Power to the People!"  Eventually, the war in Vietnam ended, no one really knows how much seeing those actual images of war, as well as the suppression of dissent, instead of just hearing about them, played a part in its ending.  The amazing decade of the 60s ended as those, formerly, young people, settled down to becoming part of the social order which resulted.  (Many of them are now our Senior Citizens with other things on their minds.) 

About a quarter-century later we had a new event/images to digest, that being the Oklahoma City Bombing, in 1995.  Along with those images came, I believe for the first time, the story that it was a terrorist act, (carried out by a lone domestic terrorist.)  In spite of all the questions that still surround that event, we have been left with the images and the word--terrorist-implanted in our minds.  (I have not seen, or read of, any studies being made regarding the power of images to influence human behavior, although I expect there are some out there). 

I believe that this event marks the beginning of a new reality in this Country that being the implanting of a state of fear; along with those images we were also given a story.  (Despite the many questions surrounding that story, anyone who questions the official version is usually labeled as, "some kind of conspiracy nut.")  Then in 2001, at the very beginning of the 21st Century, again through the mass-media--television--the people of this Country and World were presented with new, horrific, images and another terrorist story. this time International Terrorism, in the form of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City.

While there are still many legitimate questions, and more being added regularly, regarding the images and the story we have been given regarding it, the International Terrorism Story is still the official truth regarding that event which has shaped the World we live in today.

Along with that event, there is not only the international reality of the Internet, but instant communication through Smart Phones, and other devices, as well as the ability of people to photograph and, "share" almost anything anywhere.  Now, through the power of the Internet, we have been exposed to real-time individual and group beheading's, and the burning of someone who is alive in a cage, by those who adhere to followers of a school of thought--religion--with roots in the 7th century, who have the audacity to challenge those in the World who are moving into the 21st!

The power of images and how they can influence human behavior, I think, was understood by those who are interested in swaying people in various directions, back in the 60s.  While those images turned people against the War in Vietnam, the later images of the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York moved people of this country to support a war against the Middle East.

It, also, seems to me that those in the Middle East, who wish the downfall of the Western World, also learned the lesson of the power of images.  For better-or-worse, TV is now morphing into the Internet, and we-the-people will, I expect, increasingly be exposed to grim, in-your-face images of World events. 

Unfortunately, (for us) we in the Western World are now reaping what was sewn with 911.  Now the Western World is having to deal with IS--The Islamic State.  As the IS raises the anti, apparently in hopes of destroying the Western World, or causing a War-to-end-all-Wars, (whichever comes first), the leaders of the Western World now seem unable to actually end this, without getting sucked into another World War or a War that ends our World.

The most bizarre aspect of all this, is that, instead of a younger generation protesting War, as in the 60s, today there are young people who are doing their best to join the IS group, even young women!  And, adding to the conundrum is the problem of people from the Middle East, who immigrated to the West, going back to their old homelands to learn how to wreck havoc on their adopted countries.

I now end this blog.

Shirley Gallup