As we progress in technological advancements, we become more heavily reliant on technology and lose our sense of nature. In today’s modern, tech-savvy society, the internet assists us with most of our informational demands/needs. Social media presence isn’t an accurate portrayal of who people really are. People can make themselves appear however they please as they can selectively choose what to display for the public. Because of this, one may have a preconceived image of a person based off of their social media that can be completely different from who the person truly is in real life.
This concept ties to Walker Percy’s idea of the symbolic complex. With having images of Paris or the Grand Canyon only a click away as a Google search or scroll on Instagram, people can experience such picturesque sights in the comforts of their homes before seeing it firsthand for themselves. We spend so much time on social media that we begin to see the world through the screen of our phones rather than the lens of our own eyes. People experience the entire thrill through a fractured prism of preconceived notions, constructed by digital imagery, second hand experiences, and other’s opinions.
I see technology as efficient but it makes us lazy and less intelligent. In his essay, “Artificial,” Mark Doty states that in this society, one’s natural state has become obsolete. He believes that new forms of technology (such as music streaming, digital beauty, the ability to replicate texts and songs) are more detrimental than good. He believes that these technologies have our perceptions of the world skewed and we see things as “artificial” hence the title of the essay. Is technology setting us back and if so, how could we put an end to it in such a tech sawy society?
Dotty states, “… An ad for the eye’s ability to extend itself into a faceted, encompassing, and strangely intimate version of the world?.. These parts, no matter how small (blinking, a few strands of mane), arise from the same field; together they make some more complicated whole than a single pair of human eyes could ever achieve. Face to face with the herd in that beaten field, whatever it is. ” Here, he is suggesting that the screens offer a new, more detailed perception of the world one in which the human eye isn’t capable of grasping.
He places an emphasis on the fact that each screen focuses on such a minute detail and no matter how small the detail is, it all comes together to make the whole image. The whole image of the digitized herd of horses is a metaphor for how we humans perceive the world; on the whole scale, lacking depth. I believe through the symbolism of the tv screens, Mark Doty concludes that without technology, which is skewing our perception, we would be able to perceive things in a more in depth, “natural” way, similar to that of the tv screens.
This is further proven when he says, ‘What would be the consequences, if our artifice turned out to be a means of opening the doors of perception?… “. The preserving of the memory in itself is not necessarily bad idea, as Cole states in his essay; photography is”, nonetheless, it is the focus on taking pictures and videos above the actual experience (such as the viewing of the canyon) that is the root cause of all evils. If one spends the entire trip taking pictures to save memories, but doesn’t stop to enjoy them, they are not fully experiencing a moment, yet still document and preserve the moment.
It’s as though people become more concerned with saving a memory than living and enjoying it nowadays. Percy hypothesized that if the value P, represented all that was to be experienced at the Grand Canyon, and a million sightseers visit the Grand Canyon on that day; the experience would be diminished and divided amongst the population of tourist present; so that “a single sightseer does not receive value P, but a millionth part of value P” (Percy, 469).
In Teju Cole’s essay, “Memories of Things Unseen f Photography,” the words photography and memorial are used predominantly. It is inevitable these two words are used so much as they even appear in the title, showing that is Cole’s central theme/focus. Cole’s takes this idea and discusses whether or not it is beneficial or detrimental to us that we have permanent documentation of things that are mortal. He ties a connection to Instagram and Snapchat where one app is used for posting pictures that permanently stay there unless manually deleted and the other where documentation lasts no longer than 10 seconds.
He said that Snapchat was preferable because having no evidence of one’s every move for once was relieving. Although photography is important for capturing special moments, it has become so prevalent that every one move is documented to the point where it serves more as “surveillance” as though our every move is being watched. It has become almost more of an instinct to take out your phone and get a picture of your food than to indulge in it once a plate is in front of you. In his essay, “The Loss of the Creature” Walker Percy expresses his vision of the world in a different way.
He makes an argument about how having a pre perceived idea about something can create a “symbolic complex” in one’s mind, which inevitably causes them to lose the true meaning behind it. The symbolic complex is caused by outside sources influencing opinions. When people succumb to the symbolic complex, they no longer have the ability to make decisions for themselves. Percy argues that in order to understand something, one must have their own experience of it. John Berger’s essay, “Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible” completes Percy’s idea of the “symbolic complex”.
In his essay, Berger focuses on the apparent versus the existent. He argues that we have lost our sense of “necessity”. To recover from the symbolic complex, people should stay away from the apparent (what is given from tour guides, advertisements, pictures and videos on social media), which gives a false sense of what they want to experience. By avoiding the apparent, people will have their own true experiences and see existing things more clearly. A good example of the symbolic complex is Yelp.
Yelp is an app that people go to to read up on reviews on places. However, by reading about other people’s experiences at a specific restaurant, it warps people’s views and gives them expectations on a similar experience to others although their experience at the restaurant may be completely different. While one person might have written a review about how terrible a waiter was for them, this may give someone a negative outlook on the restaurant although they could’ve went to the same restaurant themselves and received great customer service.
The issue with apps such as Yelp is that by the time people go to the restaurant themselves, they have already virtually experienced it through the mosaic of other people’s words, opinions, stories, pictures, and videos. Instead of experiencing genuine shock at what’s around the bend, they are anticipating it- which is the main idea Walker Percy gets at in his essay. To summarize, people pull out their camera without paying attention to what it is they are photographing, almost as though taking a picture of the sight is more important than the experience itself.
A study, in fact, proved that people performed worse on memory recognition tasks in objects they had photographed, compared to objects they had observed with their eyes only. They seemed to remember less details about what they photographed, compared to the ones that they had only seen. The seemingly eternal life if digital pictures adds caveats and complexities, along with its blessing. Any negative experience captured by its unrelenting, immortal clutches can continue to haunt you, potentially for eternity.
Normally a negative, embarrassing, or traumatic experience will fade with time. Depending on the severity of the situation, you make a conscious effort to forget, or even erase it from history. For example, it may just try to not think about it, avoid those who were aware or involved or even physically move away from it such as changing job, school; locality (town, state, country). You can move to Australia for 15 years, yet if the image rears its ugly head, it’s just as vivid as the day it was taken, and all the negative emotion, thoughts, and trauma resurface.
