Thoughts Make Images, Images Make Thoughts

The latest popular jargon that has risen in fame is the “6-7" phrase. This phrase gained popularity due to a widespread viral meme, particularly among Gen Alpha. Yet, it has no fixed meaning and is primarily used as a nonsensical interjection or a group identity marker. The “6-7” phenomenon speaks to the state of our culture. The fact that the enduring message that consumes a generation has no meaning and offers no depth to it speaks to the intellectual decline of our culture.

What does the “6-7” phenomenon say about the messages we are consuming? It reveals that we operate in a soundbite culture that reads things at a meme-like level. Rather than lurch toward intellectual depravity, let us reinvigorate our reasoning capacity by examining the intricate influences of our thoughts.

A staple in psychology is that consuming certain messages can influence one’s thought patterns, beliefs, and even emotional responses. In short, the messages that go into your psyche will affect your level of thought and, in turn, actions. As the food one consumes will affect their body and overall health, so too it is with the health of our thoughts. As a popular expression asserts, “What you feed your mind with becomes your reality.”

In our fast-paced digital world, messages come at us glued with images that inevitably impact the quality of our thoughts. The famous psychologist, Carl Jung, first championed the theory that one’s sense and visual environment molds a person’s values and world views. Jung articulated that unconscious influences—including repeated visual input—shape our thoughts and behavior. Jung saw a strong pull from the messages in the environment to one’s internal psyche. As Jung formulated, "What we find compelling in the outer world is often a mirror of what stirs within us; the image attracts us because it speaks the language of our own unconscious thoughts." Jung saw that images, symbols, and archetypes deeply influence the psyche, so much so that other theorists have expressed the phrase  “the medium is the message.” In short, the manner in which the message is conveyed is equal to or greater than the message itself.

Jung and other psychologists saw a movement from how the outside world influences our internal thoughts, which, in turn, causes a chain reaction in which our thoughts are repeatedly drawn to specific images of the outside world. While the psychologist debate rages as to what causes this chain reaction - outside messages or internal thoughts – the Catholic faith looks at this question at a different level. The Biblical notion expresses itself as an internal search for fulfillment by either choosing God or by choosing the desire “to become like gods” through sensual pleasure. Yet, this psychological dispute reveals that there exists a battle over your thoughts. A cognitive scientist remarked, "The mind is naturally drawn to images and ideas that echo its own thoughts; what we see is often a reflection of what we already believe or feel." In point of fact, if you are fixated on God and are accustomed to taking in holy images, then God’s objective beauty will be more easily detected than if you are concentrated on secular affairs. If your mind becomes attracted to the images that match the data that your brain has converged on, the crucial question is: what are you giving your thoughts to? St. Paul candidly asserted that because of man’s fallen nature, there is a draw to gravitate toward images that please our fleshly appetites. This is why he implored, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). This passage insinuates that the images and content we surround ourselves with and reflect on ultimately form our soul.  As stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius expressed, “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

Here, we come to how art shapes our mind, either for better or worse. The movement of art reveals that an image goes into our imagination and influences our mind, then directs our will. As the philosopher Iris Murdoch puts it, “Man is the animal who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.” In meditating on an image, the experience, in delighting about the picture, we are changed by our connection to what the image signifies, which, in turn, affects our mental state.  

Images have the power to attract or repel people - depending on what the image presents and the state of the person who ingests it. A sacred image that appears to one of noble character will cast him into virtuous action, whereas a holy image presented to a person in vice will cause him to recoil. Therefore, our attraction to images depends on the state of our soul. And the state of our soul depends on what we’ve been putting into our thoughts.

To properly identify art as objectively beautiful or not, there is a lot going on behind the scenes in the human faculty. In our human make-up, we have five senses that drive our psychological faculties. Everything we encounter in life is through our five senses. Even our ability to think the data must come through the five senses. So, the connection from the five senses to your psychological reasoning, coupled with the state of your cognitive reasoning to the five senses, is vitally important.

The crucial move from physical senses to our rational senses in the quest for comprehension is summed up by Daniel McInermy, “We have five external senses, of course, but we also have several internal senses, senses that do not work with particular sense organs but that function as various ways of storing and compiling the data we receive from the external senses.”

Psychologists indicate that all our sense experience is unified into one starting point called the cogitative power. In the cogitative power, your senses present an image, and the image, in turn, expresses itself into your imagination. As it moves into the imagination, the image is then put into the memory. After the image is filed in memory, your thinking pattern then attaches an association of that image, and finally, an assessment of that image. This whole cogitative process happens at lightning-like speed. Broken down simply, our thinking moves from the senses to rational powers in the following order:

Image (taken in through the senses)
Imagination (invokes emotion and sense response)
Memory (the more it moves the imagination the more it is glued to memory)
Association (extract the concept of the image using intellectual faculties)
Assessment (determination if beautiful or ugly)
Act of the will (move toward God or away from God)

While the last step in the cogitative process is crucial, the resulting whole is reliant on the sum of its parts. In short, if steps 1-5 are ordered in its natural setting, step 6 will make footprints to God. But, as we can suspect, the serpent has muddied up all steps leading to God, for he has "deceived the whole world" (Rev.12:9).

In the repeated stage of association, the concept of that image is extracted by the cogitative power. Once a concept enters the mind and can have an active understanding, the intellect makes an assessment of that image. In the assessment stage, the intellect determines if something is morally good or bad. After an assessment is made, the person makes a choice with the act of his will.

Knowing how powerful our thoughts are, coupled with the way our cogitative power works in our mind, it is crucial to grasp how an influx of emotions can derail our thinking pattern. Research has shown that when a person’s mind receives a flood of emotions, the logical center of the brain, the cerebral cortex, shuts down.

When an image is presented using emotional appeal (to sensual appetites), it will skew how a person makes an association of that image and, in turn, their assessment of the message embedded in the image will be defective. With a high dose of emotion injected into the cogitative process, the person’s intellectual faculty becomes limited, and they’ll have a flawed analysis of how to categorize and interpret things. At this point, truth-seeking is taken over by propaganda. Propaganda is defined as information that is presented using biased, misleading, and emotionally charged images and rhetoric. Propaganda is centered on the audience being persuaded by recurring vague, emotional laced words that limit the use of one’s intellectual rigor.

The cogitative process becomes more convoluted when an unknown image is presented to the person using catchy phrases instead of logic. Here, an emotional image will more likely stick in the person’s memory than an image of high reason imploring little emotional appeal. Once the emotional image continually surfaces in the memory, the association and assessment of that image will become amiss, given a lack of adequate reasoning power in that image.

For example, someone who is raised by an abortion advocate will have a flawed association of abortion as a “reproductive right” or a "freedom of choice," and, in turn, their assessment of abortion will deem it as "good" rather than coming to the rational conclusion that it is the murder of a vulnerable human being. People who have unwillingly embraced evil have a weak association power because they’ve been heavily influenced by repetitive emotion in the cogitative power.

Catholic theology vividly displays an interplay between the rational faculties and the lower sensual faculties, candidly described as logic versus emotion. Not that our emotions are corrupt in themselves, but that the emotions want to bypass the intellect in making assessments and acts of the will. St. Thomas Aquinas articulated that the original setting of man follows a precise order in the soul of: intellect, will, passions. However, because of sin, our intellect is darkened, our will is weakened, and our passions (i.e., feelings) become disordered. With sin, the passions now want to bypass the intellect to control the will. This presents a pressing dilemma for man as it becomes hard to know the truth when our pesky passions keep distracting the intellect. This predicament is further convoluted because even if the intellect comes to know the good, our will is weakened and unable to do the good (cf. Romans 7:19)  

In this clash between the higher faculties and the lower faculties, both crave to be fed. As Carl Jung foresaw, the more you feed one, the more control that faculty gains over your will. For example, someone who takes in sacred images is inducing his higher faculties in thinking and meditation, which, in turn, moves the soul closer to God. However, if a person consumes messages that merely appeal to his sensual appetites, his passions will have an intoxicated grip over him, thus clouding his intellect and obscuring the true, good, and beautiful.

Theology adds clarity to the interplay of the higher and lower order by asserting that the devil cunningly manipulates the sensual faculties over the rational faculties. In the biblical narrative, the devil enticed Eve to consume his fruit by making it “pleasing to the eye.” Here, Adam and Eve were drawn into sin through sensual pleasure. They forgot about God’s instructions to stay away from this poisonous tree. At this point, there became a rupture between the intellect and the passions. Interestingly, exorcists note that demons want us to obsess over our lower faculties. Being fixated on the sensual appetites, demons can make hey to entice us away from holiness, and toward the level of an animal, only drawn to what feels good to our fleshly desires.

The scene in Eden where a serpent attempts to influence human senses plays out every day in our world. Exorcists caution that demons operate through human agents to sway our emotions away from what is rational to what is alluring to the senses. Take, for example, social media. Social media’s clickbait mentality exerts heavy control over one’s sensual appetites, causing their rational thinking pattern to shut-down. Behind the scenes, we see the serpent’s handiwork in which critical thinking has been replaced by emotional reaction, making human beings easier to control.

As we find ourselves in a fallen world influenced by nefarious sources, truth and beauty become elusive. Here, demons have us preoccupied with messages and images that tickle our disordered passions, causing a society to produce barren art that lacks depth, meaning, and any draw to the divine. E. Michael Jones became readily aware of this predicament. He wrote a trilogy showcasing the switch from beauty to ugliness in the culture’s architecture, psychology, and music. In the story, he articulates how the sexual revolution caused the vast majority of people to indulge in the sensual faculties, which, in turn, left the culture void of deep meaning in the rational faculties. Being in a sensual extravagance, the cultural morality took a nosedive. And given that modern art arose out of the disordered lives of its creators, art lacked depth, divine insight, and objective beauty. In short, if the artists are immoral and lead ugly lives solely focused on their lower faculties, then the art they produce will be ugly.

In its natural setting, art is supposed to exercise our rational powers of thinking, meditation, and contemplation in which we mentally seek something greater beyond us, elevating our mind to the transcendence. When we are in this stage, our sensual appetites are essentially turned off, allowing our rational appetites to lock-in towards grappling with higher things. However, if there is a switch and the rational powers are muted while the sensual faculties are on full-blast, your analysis of truth, goodness, and beauty will be off-kilter. Jones argues that the people and institutions that produce architecture, music, and entertainment are immersed in the pleasure-seeking of lower faculties, thus producing ugly art that leads to moral debauchery.

The examples Jones uses in his trilogy are arresting. He shows how, in the work of Picasso, we can witness these stages of movement. In his younger years, when Picasso was leading a more chaste life, his art produced attributes of beauty. However, later in life, when his sexual morality plummeted, his artwork lacked symmetry, clarity, and meaning. As Picasso became more obsessed with the lower faculties, his higher faculties became drained, thus causing a deficiency in his work, short on imagination, depth, and beauty. Jones also illustrated how Communist and Socialist regimes would seek to destroy the art of previous eras and construct flat, uninspiring art. If you compare architecture in post-Nazi Germany with pre-Nazi Germany, the difference is striking. Whereas the pre 1930 buildings had a classical look of symmetry and detail, the post 1930 buildings were disproportionate and barren. In fact, the book (and subsequent movie) "The Monuments Men” documented how Hitler went to great lengths to destroy medieval cathedrals, ornate sculptures, and traditional paintings.

Today, the trend in art is to be more provocative; to merely elicit an emotional response from the audience. Performance art has become all the rage. Performance art appeal is more for entertainment, in which the performance pokes at people’s sensual curiosity. It doesn't even attempt to draw people into contemplation of greatness. Take, for example, Lady Gaga’s “meat dress.” These bizarre displays are meant to shock our senses for attention-seeking purposes while at the same time degrading our imagination and meditation quality.  

Artist Robert Florczak articulates how, in previous generations, art produced work that inspired, uplifted, and deepened human thought, but today art seeks merely to jolt the lower senses. He contends that modern art is centered around the “creative genius” (i.e., the personal opinion) of the artist. Yet, the personal opinion of the artist devolved into a spirit of rebellion against traditional works. Instead of profound meaning, modern art lives for imploring "shock value" that is viewed as “bold” or "creative" for the attention-seeking audience. Florczak observes that as objective standards were loosened, the artwork became ugly. As he bluntly puts it, “Today the silly, the pointless, and the purely offensive are held up as the best of modern art.” To see how far we've fallen, consider that Michelangelo carved the statue of David out rock, whereas now a museum in Los Angeles displays a 300-ton rock as an exhibit of great art.

Given that modern art lacks depth, imagination, and contemplation, our society has been feeding off low-level intellectual junk food. This sterile cultural environment helps explain why more people today suffer from a depression referred to as “meaninglessness.”

A move back to beautiful art can pull man out of this dreaded state. Philosopher Daniel McInerny notes,  “The contemplative space in which we enjoy beautiful works of art, our soul’s powers enjoy a simulation of moral choice that can incline or attract us to future virtuous action.” Further, there exists a bridge between discovering good art and encountering the divine. It is worth noting writer Copelius Simeon’s summary: “We learn that the world is good and orderly because of the beauty of nature that we experience sensually and that we come to understand, only later, intellectually. And just as we come to know the personal God through His divine artistry, we see the inner beauty of the human person most of all in the great works of human art.”

Catholic art uniquely stands out from the modern look. Cathedrals are not meant to blend in with the suburban environment. The medieval cathedrals burst out like temples ready to launch into the sky. Over the centuries, the Church has harnessed the power of art as tools in catechesis, devotion, and mystery. She preaches through music, paintings, sculptures, majestic churches, and sanctuaries with towering altars. In this, sacred art exalts us out of the mundane world and gives us a glimpse of that which transcends time. As we find ourselves surrounded by meaninglessness and degeneracy in the culture, sacred art acts as light to steer us away from the muck. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone echoes this sentiment. “In an age of anxiety and unreason, beauty is thus a largely untapped resource for reaching people, especially young people, with the Gospel message of hope.”

Human beings are expressive. We see the world and all it contains and then move to respond to it. In His wisdom, God fashioned the human being to interact with God’s creation, and finally to interact with Him through man’s rational intellect and free will. Aligned with God’s will, man has constructed masterpieces of art. The artistic movements from Christendom came for imagining Heaven. Such expression shapes culture and habits, making the world a waiting room for Heaven. As our culture's artwork is malformed, we are now in danger of sitting in a waiting room for hell. Yet, to recognize the crisis is the first step. While it seems modern man has rebelled against sacred art, beauty has a way of asserting itself, for beauty sheds divine light into the longings of the human heart.

As modern man obtains more glimpses of beauty, the cultural counterfeits will lose their allure.

Our thoughts make images, and the images we take in mold our thoughts. Let us view holy images again so are thoughts are elevated towards God.