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Images and Voices of Hope: A Question of Choice
by Judy Rodgers
from Heart & Soul magazine, issue 14
The tendency to produce conflict has come from our thought, from
how it has evolved over the whole period of civilization. In fact,
almost everything we see around us in the world was created from
thought. It is a very powerful instrument, but if we don't notice how
it works, it can also do great harm. —David Bohm,
1991
Each word we speak and action we take begins first with a thought.
It is the collection of human thoughts over time that has created the
world as we know it. So, to create the world we want, we must first be
able to think of the world we want, and to see it as a real
possibility.
One of the main influences on thought is what we see. Some
scientists have suggested that 80% of our thinking is influenced by
what we see and another 15% by what we hear. Scenes played out around
us, images on the newsstands, stories recounted on the evening news,
films we watch in theaters all trigger thoughts.
Dr. David Cooperrider of Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland Ohio has written extensively about the impact of positive
images on a culture. He tells a story about being in Moscow in 1991
and watching workmen carefully removing every image of Lenin and
Stalin from public view. He asked them what they were doing – why
they were removing all of these important images of history. They
responded that these images did not support the future they were
trying to create.
In his sweeping study of Western civilization, the Dutch
sociologist Fred Polak (1973) argues essentially the same point. For
him the positive image of the future is the single most important
dynamic and explanatory variable for understanding cultural evolution:
“The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies
the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's image is
positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once
the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture
does not long survive.” (1973, p. 19) For Polak, the primary
question then is not how to explain the growth and decay of cultures,
but how to explain the successful emergence or decay of positive
images. When a culture's Utopian aspirations die out, the culture
dies: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs
29:18).
In the early 1960’s, a group of psychologists and social
researchers under the direction of David McClelland from Harvard set
out to explore the relationship between stories and the cultures they
foster. They looked at narratives from ancient as well as more modern
cultures and, when available, at children's stories. They were looking
for a correlation between the narratives told by a society and the
culture subsequently created by those who listened to those stories.
The results confirmed their hypothesis – not just in one society,
but in cultures from ancient Greece, from Tudor England, and from the
United States, between 1800 and 1950. They empirically demonstrated
that thoughts of a certain type (for example ambition) create a
certain type of action (for example accomplishment). They proved that
if you have a different vision and a high level of aspiration for your
children, that will translate into the actions you take and the
stories you tell in raising them, and that they will in turn behave
differently. (The Achieving Society by David McClelland, © 1961 D.
Van Nostrand Co., Inc.)
America as a Creator and Exporter of Images and
Stories
If, as this research suggest, there is a direct and powerful
relationship between the images and stories a culture generates and
the future it creates, then America's role as the world's
premier creator and exporter of images and stories may be more
significant than its role as a military power. Every day a flood of
advertisements, news broadcasts, radio programs, television
series, books, music, software and films pour into American homes and
into homes in countries all over the world. Embedded in each image are
values, interpretations of the world and a sense of our possible
future. Over the past decade the sheer volume of images has exploded:
families add a second television set for the children and computers
that play CD ROM games and surf the internet. Cable companies add
bandwidth. Movie theaters sell ad space to local businesses. We are
all inundated with images, voices and stories – each one freighted
with messages about the world and our future.
The ‘system’ that has evolved to generate and distribute images
and stories to society has three components: the artists –
photojournalists, writers, directors, musicians, et al. — who create
them; the distributors — the media companies, publishers, and news
agencies — who disseminate them; and us, the men, women, and
children who acquire them — who turn on a television program or buy
a movie ticket, a book or a magazine. In each case there are choice
points, moments of decision about which image or story to select. The
choices made in these moments have enormous consequences for the ‘mood’
of the society and for our sense of possibilities for the
future.
It is these choice points that contain the leverage for change.
What are our criteria for selection? What questions do we ask
ourselves as we make these choices? Do we only ask, “Will this sell?”
or “Will we be entertained?” If so, we become part of the vast
ubiquitous media system that seems to roll forward oblivious to what
it is creating in its wake. When we aren't conscious of the
consequences of our choices, the choice points become transparent and
we lose our opportunity to select images and stories that instill the
thoughts and ideas we say we want most.
Each of Us is Responsible to All of Us
At a recent forum in Miami, Florida, this subject was put before a
distinguished panel of media representatives. The overarching question
being asked was, “What are the opportunities that accrue to the
media in serving humanity?” The forum looked at violence in local
news, the Monica Lewinsky transcripts and the stereotyping of
minorities, among other things. As the session concluded, one of
the guests on the panel suggested that they are just giving the public
what they want – that the real leverage is with those who consume
images and stories. In effect, he said that the media has no
responsibility to serve humanity – just a responsibility to sate the
seemingly endless appetite of the public to be aroused, terrified or
entertained.
There is a widely held belief that “good news doesn't sell”.
Clearly this is not the case. Stephen Spielberg’s film on the
Holocaust, Schindler’s List, was extremely successful and spawned
the ambitious Shoah Project which successfully captured on videotape
the stories of over 50,000 Holocaust survivors. Jack Canfield and Mark
Victor Hanson’s book ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ has turned into
a series that has sold 40 million copies to date. Oprah Winfrey
has consistently demonstrated that talk show hosts can claim the moral
high ground as well as the top ratings.
Even the reporting of straight news can appeal to what is best in
us and most hopeful. BBC’s main anchor Martyn Lewis has formulated
Lewis’s Laws for journalists, which would create the kind of
reporting and programming he seeks:
- Try to report negative stories at least partly through the eyes
of those who are seeking solutions to them.
- Don't automatically dismiss stories of success and achievement
as the products of public relations teams.
- Consider success as worthy of news analysis and explanation, as
failure is.
- Editors should challenge and encourage young journalists to
write up positive stories in as interesting a way as negative
ones.
As Mr. Lewis observed, “Where there is disaster, there are people
trying to recover from it. Where there is suffering, there are people
trying to help. Where there is conflict, there are people trying to
end it.”
Images and stories have immediate and personal consequences, and
they also have consequences for the entire society and the world. They
affect our thoughts and our collective sense of the future. They have
the potential to expand our horizon of possibilities.
No one part of the ‘media system’ can hand off responsibility
to another. Each of us is responsible to all of us. When we're making
a choice about an image, message or story to send out to others or to
bring into our homes, we need to ask ourselves, “Will this expand
our sense of possibilities or constrict it?”
Launching a National Conversation
Clearly every one of us is touched by the images that surround us
– whether we are a politician or a parent. To heighten awareness
about the effect that images, voices and stories have in shaping a
society and its culture, three organizations with a deep commitment to
the power of thought and the importance of images have come together
to launch a national conversation. This conversation will invite
people from all sectors to begin a serious exploration of the power of
the images in our media. During a rolling series of dialogues through
the USA, politicians, teachers, leaders, parents, psychologists,
social commentators, artists and media executives will be
invited to dialogue.
They will consider questions with a bearing on the relationship
between public images and the sense of possibilities experienced by
the society:
- What are the most powerful images, voices, and stories extant in
media today?
- What examples do we have of times when media have had a
significant impact on the way the world understood what was
possible?
- What is the scope of possibilities created by images and
messages of hope?
- What opportunities accrue to the media through presenting
humanity in a more positive light – as a more enlightened,
elevated, and evolved species?
Parents and educators, because they are involved with the
culturalization of children, may consider the particular impact of
children's television, films, and video games on the perceptions of
children. Here the relevant questions aren't just about
appropriateness of material that may contain images that are violent
or , but whether the values embedded in the image or story are
consistent with the highest values of the society, and whether they
describe a world that is essentially safe and a future that is full of
hope or one that is unsafe and unpromising. What makes the case of
children so important here is that it is through our children that the
culture is conserved generation after generation.
The highly regarded Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana has
observed, “Cultures are closed networks of conversations conserved
generation after generation through the learning of the children that
live in the culture. As such, cultures change if the closed network of
conversations that the children learn as they live in them
changes. When that happens a new closed network of conversations
begins to be conserved generation after generation.” (‘Metadesign’
1998)
We can change the culture. We do it when we change the network of
conversations. When we introduce images and narratives into the
network of conversations that constitute the culture, we change
the way we and others see the world and see the future.
Judy Rodgers is a communications and media consultant in Boston,
Massachusetts. She is a writer and executive producer of
non-theatrical programs for broadcast and non-broadcast markets in the
US. She is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards for her
work.
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