Two Ducks Flying Over Marshland

My Irish father, a teller of tall tales I discovered, told how a century and so ago, the law in Ireland prohibited a Fair from staying in a town more than three days. Otherwise, the game table hucksters, fancy-foot entertainers, and peddlers of wares and bobbles would clean out the local economy. This has at least a ring of truth. Put a dangling, colourful mobile in a baby’s crib and see what delight it affords. 

We don’t grow out of that attraction to sparkling, shiny, tantalizing things. It’s a large part of what makes us human. Festivities and celebrations. Dressing up. Gorging on a feast. Playing games. Laughing, dancing, singing, romping about. The swill of a drink. Bobbles and fancies. A ribbon in our hair, a blush of the cheek.

When snack food was invented and brought to market, the expectation was that people would consume snack food a couple of times a month. Of course, investors in the industry realized if they could get us in the habit of eating snack food once a week, they would double their profits. Recently an ad suggested keeping enough coffee flavoured chocolate in one’s workplace desk, so, without fail, every single day, one could have a sweet snack at 4PM. The idea is presented as a prudent choice: a little pick me up at the end of the workday. Why wouldn’t one? And why not twice a day? Why not?  No law against it, no law sending the snack purveyors on their way.

Sixty percent of the North American’s diet is ultra-processed food or what critics better describe as industrial edible product. Is it healthy? In his book Ultra-Processed People, Chris van Tulleken, an Oxford trained doctor and PhD in molecular virology, gives his answer. You can probably guess what the answer is, though perhaps not how disturbing it is.

None of this is news. The fact is we have known for some time, known it ourselves, yet we keep eating this manufactured product which, other than a quick hit of pleasure in the moment it’s tasted, doesn’t make us feel all that well for having eaten it and provides no nourishment for our body. But now it’s 60% of our diet. How is that?

What has any of this to do with the image of two ducks flying across marshland? -That’s coming.

Salt, sugar and fat isn’t the only bobble at the Fair. For a large majority of people in the developed world, their primary activity of choice, yes, what they spend far more time doing than any other activity outside of work, day in and out, hours at a time, the number one activity, yes: staring at a screen. All that sparkle. Watching all these people have amazing experiences, do crazy things, make outrageous comments…. We can’t get enough of it. 

The Fair was forced to leave town in three days because there’d be no end to the appetite for amusement. Step up to the table. Knock over those pegs with this ball, here I’ll show you how easy it is, and that huge, stuffed, white rabbit is yours, free.

Like theatre, amusement requires a suspension of disbelief: the hucksters’ claims don’t actually make a lot of sense. 

Coke ran a very successful campaign with so many of us buying in, sales increasing. ‘Open happiness,’ said Coke. Open a can of coke and open happiness. And we did, buy the coke that is. But did we open up happiness, our lives become happy for having bought a coke? Of course not, that’s absurd, a huckster’s game. But it works. Why? Because we want happiness, desperately want to be happy. Coke knows that. And Coke knows that their cola will not make any of us happy.

Two points. First point: the sales mongers know how to tap into our deep desires. Second point: some of them are quite aware that what they offer is not particularly good for us. But they don’t really care. It’s good for their bottom line.

It should be that we have a good laugh with the hucksters, a bit of fun, and then ask them to move on in three days, take their ridiculous claims with them. Should they persist, our response would be logical and sensible: ‘Really?’ we should scoff, ‘Buy happiness?’ HaHa.  Instead, we’ve let them run the show, take the throne. Rah! Rah! we chant. Give us more!

What has this to do with an image of two ducks flying over marshland?

The photo is an image just as much as any ad; it also inhabits our imagination, taps into desire just as all the other bobbles and shiny bits. Any photo, or painting, or sculpture has an intentional shape, just as a crib mobile or the design of a social media platform. Like all things attractive, we are drawn to the form. You hold this image in your hands because you -something in you- found it attractive; you took a copy for yourself.  Wanted it.

We seek our desires. That’s natural. We want what is best for us. Reward and punishment. So how do some of us end up entwined in a life pursuit of things that damage us?

One of the most integral professions in the social media company is the highly educated neural scientist. More than the rest of us, the neural scientists know as best they can know, how the brain works.

There is a problem for us. The brain can be fooled, short-circuited. Stimulants, for example caffeine, can make the brain think the activity we are doing is more meaningful than it is. 

Another example is our experience at the end of some movies. Some movies are a battering of non-stop visual and aural stimulation. Our brain feels something important must have happened when simply our senses have been way overstimulated, and by nothing of much account. 

The chemical scientists, learning from the neural scientists, can target areas of the brain with the colas and chips, and the other processed edible products. The products worm their way into our desires, highjack the reward systems in our brains. These reward systems, which should be guiding us to better choices for our lives, are easily fooled. Chemicals – which mimic and signal flavours and nutrients to our taste buds – convince our brain we are being nourished. In fact, we are consuming highly profitable, bleached out, pulverized mulch going into our gut. 

On screen, all the relentless notifications and recommendations keep us artificially online through application of dozens of persuasive and technological surveillance activities. We have no idea the extent of the brain hacks being used against us. They effectively fool us into thinking all this speed scrolling matters a lot; that if not constantly looking at the phone, we’re missing out on something important. 

They keep us hooked into their agenda. The purveyors of wares and amusements know how to do that. And they convince us that following along is in our best interest. Is that believable? Apparently. We can’t seem to get enough of it. 

Google promises to give us the world, but in his book Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and resistance in the attention economy, David Williams – another Oxford graduate, a researcher in the Digital Ethics department at Oxford, himself a former Google insider – writes that while Google tells you, the public, it is offering you access to the whole world, inside, at the strategy meetings and software design meetings, the only concern is how to keep you on the platform for as long as possible.

They do that by keeping our sensations stimulated with a relentless barrage of images. The problem of social media is not social media -social media is a wonderful communications tool and way forward for humankind -the problem is social media has been coopted to manipulate what we feel, what we desire, what we love, and to fool us about how to realize those longings in our lives. Without restraint, the new media companies coerce our attention and shape our behaviour solely for their own profit. It’s not the image or our imagination that is the problem, but rather our handing them over to a corporation that has no interest in us except as a commodity for their earnings.

The masters of the game tables, slight-of-hand tricksters, sellers of dreams are good at making us believe they act in our interest. Truth is the academics and insider whistleblowers have been telling us that these fancy purveyors of bobbles couldn’t care less about our well-being. Truth be told, we don’t actually need the stuffed, white rabbit, the one offered us as best ever. 

Oh sure, for a while, it’s a bit of fun. A bit of salt and sugar for a while, knowing what fun others are having for a while, some funny videos for a while are all a bit of fun. But only for a while. However, in the interests of shareholders (that’s who it’s about), the platforms insist the endless notifications buzzing in our pockets are about us being important, being in the know, us having friends, being liked, looking competent, sharing in the good life….. the more they have us believe that the constant clicking and scrolling and liking matters, well, truth is, the more money they make. It’s in their interest. In fact, we know that. Have known it for some time now.

So how might we properly understand the value of the image? That question has long been asked. The nature of image and imagination is at the heart of philosophical reflection going back millennia, even to the earliest of human origin stories. It also underpins folkloric culture and traditional rites and ceremonies back to the earliest of human time. 

While acknowledging such complexity for describing the role of imagination and image, we might allow that an image mediates between the sensations of the world outside and a sense within us that life matters.

In the image we find desire, appeal, attraction, something that draws us in, captures our imagination. That visceral experience of the image is experienced in our bodies.

But the image does more than attract. It points beyond itself, mediates the sensation, takes us on a journey, a journey beyond the image. We take that journey within. 

For us to pause -that is, to step back, consider, weigh, question – allows the image to speak to that deeper place. Rather than our hurtling from sensation to sensation, our attention to the beheld moment leads us to discern a deeper appreciation for the life we have, helps us to choose what really matters to us, to our sense of living well. 

Moments can pass us by such as watching an eager little leaguer hit a ball and run to first base, so proud to have done that, laughing her head off, jumping up and down. It can pass by. Next sensation. Or we can step back, spend a moment with that image, ask ourselves what it is in that image that awakened us; discover, in our stopping for a moment, what the image mediates to us about living well. 

Whether it’s a shared moment at the kitchen table with the children; or sitting alone at the table staring at a teacup; or seeing tree limbs through the window blowing about in the wind; or seeing a film; or observing two ducks flying over marshland – these images, real or fiction, in attending to them, honouring them, listening to them, will begin (that’s the idea of it) to transport us to an inner presence, where we discover what makes us feel most alive.

In the same respect, those images before us that make us fearful and afraid, anger us, tap into a feeling of emptiness and loss, also need attending to, so we might understand what those moments want us to know about ourselves, how we are to be.

And what does that time within, that time spent with the image amount to? It seems that the journey of self-discovery gives one a feeling of deep connection to all things – a closeness to oneself, yes, but also a closeness to others, and a closeness to the world around one. That we are home. What is it but a sense that this is life, living life.

Joseph Campbell, author and professor of English Literature, writes that the pleasure of a lifetime is knowing who you are and who you are in the world.

The social media business strategy and the industrial edibles industry don’t want us to pause, to think, to consider, to reflect on the image sensations. Since industrial edible products clearly are not healthy, we might dismiss them, send them on their way. Since the endless notifications could seem a waste of time, we might dismiss them. Go our own way. ‘Not good for business,’ fret the corporations wanting our attention focussed on their agenda. Hence, the only way for the platforms to keep us online and in line is to relentlessly stimulate the sensation, but not let us reflect on what the sensation in the image might be saying to us.

The Fair is fine. Three days of it. The Fair gives life a glow. For a while. Nothing wrong about that. Nothing wrong with social media. But the relentless dazzle that gets us all worked up, and keeps us worked up, all wound up, won’t let up – the business model of social media platforms – is only hurting us. What the experts, the victims, the people giving it second thought, are telling us. What we already know.

That’s the difference in comparison with the image of the two ducks flying over the marsh. The image of the two ducks held in your hand is your journey. Taking time to reflect on what you hold in your hand, what speaks to you, becomes a journey you take. That’s the difference: it’s your journey. Not someone else’s. You come to realize what really matters to you for living your life.

The relentless images of social media are not your journey; it’s their journey, their agenda. The social media platforms are brilliant at making it look as if it’s all about you, but in the truth of it, they care little or nothing for you. 

So what about the two ducks? What in the form of the ducks flying across marshland speaks to some hidden longing? What is it about the framing of the ducks, as if, in the next instant, they will fly out of the picture, leave behind only the suggestion of marsh grass and emptiness? 

What is it about the form of the two birds with wings in different orientations, perhaps suggesting the progressive movement of flight? Maybe it’s one bird caught in two different moments. Maybe it’s two birds each in sync with the other, acting as one. “What is love,” said Aristotle, “but one soul dwelling in two bodies”….

It might well not be the ducks for you; there may be some other image that speaks to you: the words of a song, an afternoon spent with a grandparent, a poem, knitting by the window, seeing a red ribbon in a shop window… Whatever it is you fall in love with, whenever a sensation catches you, then as the sages tell us, wait on that moment, test its authenticity. If true to you, if it touches your heart, then take time with it, listen for its answer, find its answer within yourself. 

The image awakens you; the image reveals the thing in you that makes you you.

Embracing these revelations, you become your own self. As the sages teach, it is only your own true self that can be alive in the world, can matter to the world, be goodness for the world. Abandon all else, the wise ones tell us.

Here, I think, is the trick: eventually to abandon the image. Like the Fair, the image needs to pass on from us. It is not the image that means something. Adoring the image is what the Ancients called idolatry, worship of false gods. Devotion to the celebrity, the shoes with red soles, the sports team success, can’t be your identity, can’t be you. The image itself, like the Fair, is only a god of false promise, fine for a while. 

The wise ones, those spirits hiding in the image – the breeze blowing through the trees, two ducks flying across marshland, innocence heard in the laugh of a child, frailty seen in the suffering of an ill and broken person – those spirits call you to yourself, to your humanity, to be you, to know yourself, to live as you are, in your own self. To breathe for yourself. Feel your own breath in you. Embrace that thing itself. Live in the world. There you are, you, yourself, as free and alive as the ducks, and you, your life, meant to be as beautiful, in sync, in love with life, as theirs.

Peace be with you.