The mind is pliable, and the brain will alter its function, even change its shape, trying to keep up. Images flood in through the eyes, go shifting through registers, the turnstiles of habit and security check of pet prejudices, to assemble the world we live in somewhere in back. Look it up. We all live in a virtual reality we construct, more or less, by what we choose to look at -- that is when we get to choose.
Gone is that simple way of life in which the oak down by the creek was the same, only bigger, in a lifetime. People back then might have heard the wind, noticed the moonrise, been comfortable with their own identities, seeing much the same tableau everyday. We live in such a flood of images our attention span stands on its tip toes gasping for breath. In many ways our national consciousness is being shaped, might say manipulated, on a meta-scale -- what’s funny, what’s sexy, what’s an acceptable level of mayhem, and if you choose to stay you play.
Is it really radical to suggest that the visual aspect of an assemblage of fast food outlets, out along some belt-line somewhere, is as soulless and lacking in nutrition for the mind as their food is for the body? Now it’s possible to survive exclusively on big macs, as some seeker after world-record fame has shown, but only with heavy reliance on supplements via capsule every morning. Same goes for the rest of us, really. That action-packed orgy of demolition at the Imax goes somewhere, just like the sugar in that coke you’re drinking.
Suppose the images and thoughts encountered in a normal day determined the limits of what a person could think about. What’s the supplemental compensation for urban traffic, the florescent-lit cubical, the rude debasing appeal for attention blasting from all directions? That big museum on donated land at the top of the hill might offer some relief, if you happen to live near a city. People visit art museums to counteract the banality of mass production, the sensationalism of mass communication, the sameness of day to day. Couple of years back the historic Grand Palais in Paris remained open twenty four hours a day for the last two weeks of an exhibit, people standing on the sidewalk under umbrellas way after midnight to see the paintings of american Ed Hopper.
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