# 10 Images or the basic principle of almost everything.
Images and paradigms are the basic principles that govern our mind, our interactions, our societies.
Our last issue asked how consciousness evolves. This time, we will ask how consciousness operates. We’ll travel from our brains deeply into society and backward to find some striking similarities. These similarities might be a clue to how we shape our consciousness.
The one and only: images
If you look beyond all the different words used in various models about consciousness and society, you can find an unexpected similarity. At all levels, from the brain to language to social fabric, we can discover ‚Images‘ as something that carries information. They don’t do this in the limited sense of pictures but as something much more complex and holistic, integrating all our senses. They are not only describing something; they have at least three functions: describing, guiding, and focusing.
Take our brain. We can call it image machinery if we don’t misunderstand ‚machinery‘ as mechanical, as our brain is highly dynamic. In every moment, the brain distills everything we experience and achieve through our senses and transforms it into an image. If it is relevant, this ‚image‘ is stored in our memory, combined with our emotions. Those images carry the same three functions:
They describe by representing a world model, putting all these experiences in one coherent story and connecting them to other experiences, like in „Surprisingly, it was a pleasant time with my mother-in-law.“
The world model itself includes guidelines on how to deal with the situation. For example, I can enjoy dinner now that her presence does not threaten me.
They filter all impressions and input from the senses, ignore what is irrelevant to the world model, and stress what is important. For example, we talk about my mother-in-law but not about that old lady next to us in the restaurant.
We experience all this through our feelings, a fast way to govern our perception and act simultaneously. Imagine arguing with your spouse; words are escalating, and anger arises in your body. You feel this anger, and maybe more, you are this anger. This feeling of ‚anger‘ not only indicates an interpretation of the situation (‚she is so ugly to me, like always, I’m so threatened’). A cocktail of hormones helps the body be in a wakeful, focused state so that we can immediately take action if needed. Your spouse makes an unexpected move, touches you lightly, and gives you a broad smile. Immediately, your anger slows down, and a wave of relief goes through your body. This feeling, too, carries both information: the interpretation of the situation (‚oh, nothing to worry about) and how to govern it (‚I can relax.‘)
What do we talk about if we talk?
Let's return to the word ‚image machinery‘ that we used before to explain the function of our brain. This word doesn’t describe the reality of our brain; it is a metaphor. Our language is built upon metaphors; they are the key element.
What we say about the images our mind produces also applies to metaphors. They are describing, guiding, and focusing: „The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.“1
At their best, metaphors are direct and accessible, and that's their inherent power. Now, in the argument you have with your spouse, if you call her ‚overly obsessive‘, everyone has an understanding of the situation, even if that might differ from yours. And surely it does. The same is true, if you would say ‚she's generous and warm hearted’ after her sudden move and broad smile.
Metaphors, like emotions, carry a manual with them. With the picture of an overly obsessive spouse, you will act differently than the picture that she’s generous and warm-hearted. In this sense, they are guiding your action. And they are focusing. They are like a spotlight, to use the next metaphor. They are focusing the light on one place off the stage of your life and leaving the rest in darkness. Maybe she was already warm-hearted and smiling when you did come home. But you were so occupied with the things you carry from your working day that you didn’t recognize her warmth. Instead, you only focused on what was wrong and didn’t fit your expectations. Only later, after you relax, you will remember this.
Let’s take this one step further and look at our social interactions. Our Images on this level are called paradigms; we change the metaphor, not the principle. We can understand paradigms as underlying principles and beliefs that guide dynamics, decisions, and interpretations in personal and societal situations. They guide individual behavior and simultaneously create social patterns. Their effect is much broader than personal metaphors, as they work as a social decision framework. That’s their power.
Let’s use "crisis“ as an example. Etymologically, it has two roots. It's borrowed from the Latin ‚ crisis‘ as a judgment or critical stage and from the Greek word ‚krísis, ‘which means separating and deciding, judgment, outcome, turning point, or sudden change.2 Originally, it was used in a medical context and denoted the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever. But during the last centuries, there has been a great shift in the use of the word, and we apply it in a much broader context. It commonly means a difficult or dangerous situation that needs serious attention. „A crisis is a situation in which someone or something is affected by one or more very serious problems, “as another definition states.3
What you can see in this semantic shift is not only a shift in the understanding of the word itself but a change in the world model that ‚crisis‘ describes: To see something as a ‚turning point for better or worse’ differs from seeing it ‚as a difficult and dangerous situation that needs serious attention.‘
Paradigms like crisis work on all societal levels. At its individual level, crisis is a personal experience, a state of mind and body with a set of feelings, emotions, experiences, worldviews, and thoughts. If it is long-lasting, it will negatively affect mental and physical health, strengthening the experience of a crisis.
There is also a social concept behind the word "crisis,“ a way of understanding, defining, and acting in a given social situation. There’s a strong interrelationship between your personal experience and a social state described as a ‚crisis’. Take, as an example, the ‚refuge crisis’, which wasn't a crisis at all. It was created by right-wing parties in the 80s and 90s of the last century to gain attraction and voters. They were successful, not because there was a real experience of ‚ refugees as a threat in the daily lives of their voters. They created this perception out of nothing, simply by coining the word ‚refuge crisis‘, putting the spotlight on the life of their votes and taking no account of the complexity of the whole situation. They suppressed the fact that people were living in dangerous conditions, like hunger or war, that let them leave their homes behind and flee. They suppress the fact that in times of war or natural catastrophes, the pressure off people seeking refuge was not on countries far away in Europe or America but on the neighboring countries. They deliberately wrote out of the story the fact that wars and hunger have their root causes in Western capitalism and colonialism.
The crisis with ‚crisis‘
The not-so-obvious part of paradigms is that they are so widely accepted that they are overseen and taken as natural. But they aren’t natural; they are man-made. Also, in this case, it isn’t that the world shapes the consciousness; it’s the other way around: What we carry inside, we will create on the outside:
a) If we see something as a ‚Crisis‘, it isn’t a crisis. It becomes a crisis after perception and especially interpretation. We can have a boundless number of perspectives on any given situation. And out of this endless variety, we choose ‚crisis’. And if not only me but you and our neighbors and a lot more people perceive a situation as a ‘crisis,‘ then and only then do we create the ‘crisis.‘
b) Because a paradigm is always personal and social simultaneously, it immediately affects our well-being and behavior. That means if we are constantly told that we are in a crisis, we feel it, and this experience reinforces our perception of the situation: We will more likely look for signs of a crisis.
c) ‚Crisis‘ comes with actions or guidelines to deal with the situation. As a ‚crisis‘ is an aggravated situation, short-term actions are more important than long-term, and action by itself is more important than reflection. That means, instead of analyzing a problem, understanding it, and finding ways to - if necessary - change it from its roots, we tend to short-term actions that might have a short-time effect and give us the impression of being able to act and deal with the situation but will have negative effects long-term, often unseen. Take as an example the ‚corona‘-crisis. Most of the social ‚ Corona’s measures of contact avoidance harm the social coherence of communities and the mental health, especially of children and youngsters, effects that we only see in the long term. And if they show up, we won't reconnect them to their origin: the coronavirus crisis.
No way out
There’s no way out of metaphors, paradigms, world views, and beliefs. It’s how our mind is physically built and how human life works in all its complexity. From the beginning of our life, we create those world views. We take them from our parents and the social web in which we are embedded; we carry them with us and maintain them. And as parents, whether we like it or not, from the moment of perception, we are shaping the consciousness of our children. The modeling a child does during its interaction with the world happens unconsciously. The results define how this one life will unfold. If the child perceives the world as a lovely and caring place, it will embrace its life daily. If it perceives the world as hostile, it will live in danger, anxiety, and stress. We can't get rid of metaphors, paradigms, and beliefs. We only can bring them into our presence and work deliberately with them.
I started something new: the economic letters:
Next week we will talk about trauma and what a special gift this is.
If you enjoy my reading, share it. And if you have a question, just let me know.
Thank you for your precious being.
Warmly,
Gabriel
Lakoff, G., Johnson, Mark. (2003) Metaphors We Live By.
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Crisis. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved October 8, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crisis
CRISIS definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary_ (2024). Available at: <https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/crisis>](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/crisis)