On Images

I grew up in a very religious household. We went to church every Wednesday night and often twice on Sunday. My parents didn’t belong to a certain denomination despite my mother being raised in the Lutheran Church. She would say things like "I believe in the Bible." This often meant hearing things quoted directly from the Bible, and I would find myself looking up passages to make sure that I heard things correctly because even at a young age I understood what was said and what was meant could be 2 different things. This is also likely related to how I would fall asleep reading the dictionary to understand the meaning and etymology of words—not just their causal usage.

One passage, Exodus 20:4, really stuck with me. Largely because it is the 2nd of the 10 commandments that I heard at nauseam growing up, but also because it is specifically called out as a separate command from the 1st commandment—which is basically a strongly worded statement saying you can’t have other gods.

The 2nd commandment from the NIV Bible in it’s entirety is as follows:

You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

As a child I always understood this to mean “Don’t create any images of false gods.” because that would be heresy and you’ll get in trouble. This one and the 4th commandment, about only working 6 days and resting on the 7th day because that's what god did, are the most wordy of all the commandments. The rest are 1-2 sentenses.

As I’ve aged my perspective on this “commandment” has started to shift. First off, I should be clear that I am an aethist. I was raised religious, but I don’t believe in anything that would resemble a “god” in traditional sense of the word. Also, I find religion to be the source of most of the suffering in the world—why would I want to be a part of that?

An image, by definition, is the represenation of the external form of a person or thing. One could even view the idea of an image in this sense as a sort of nudging of thought. A meme, in its original meaning, is very similar and because of this the image has real power. Thought and the act of thinking are the machinery of the world. Without them we would be lost in the chaos; adrift in the flux.

You see, to make an image is to create a form from thought as it is perceived through inputs; to fabriate a reality that is devoid of influences outside of those impressed upon. It is a reflection; an echo back into the void where it can be picked up by consciousness.

This is one reason art is so powerful.

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Published 2024-06-23
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