The editorial this month was to be a debate
between Karra and myself about the effects on
consciousness between reading and visual media.
She ended up bringing me over to her side so we
wanted to put the conversation out there to the
group. To start the conversation, we will begin
with a boy wizard with a tragic back story. For
those who have read the books and watched the
movies, the difference becomes dramatic. In both
cases you step into the shoes of Harry Potter, but
the scene around him as you read each page is
formed in the imagination of what the words
describe. In the movies, the scenes are laid out
and becomes CliffsNotes of the fuller and richer
experience buildup in the imagination when reading
through the series. Inner thoughts round out the
characters personality and character descriptions
paint a picture of the people involved. Visual
media almost force-feeds the story but has
advantages over books in several ways. Days of
reading are condensed into a couple hours of
watching. The story comes alive from a visual
perspective instead of the one imagined. When
reading the books through after watching the
movies there are now visual images that replace
those built up previously. Finally, movies can
sometimes spread a message that affects the
collective consciousness of the world. We have two
perfect examples.
When Star Wars came out in 1978, it was a
life-changing experience for those seeing it for
the first time on a big screen. This first example
opened on a star field that suddenly overwhelms
the senses with two ships doing battle is
something hard to forget. Then came the force and
the story of the Jedi who kept the peace in the
galaxy. By the time you are stepping into the
cockpit with Luke Skywalker, you can relate to
someone who has found an inner power that should
be possible now. The Star Wars movies may provide
the images that trigger memories of lives lived
elsewhere than on earth. Of lives lived where that
inner power is harnessed to defy physics. No books
preceded the movies in 1978 and no imagination was
needed when reading the books later in life. The
characters came fully formed. What ended up
changing was a new vocabulary that included words
like moisture farms and storm troopers. Once there
was a place on earth where psychic powers were
used on a daily basis. The Star Wars series might
also bring back memories of a life led in Atlantis
when trips to the home planet of Sirius were still
taking place. The end result was that people began
to believe they were special in ways they had not
considered before. The second example got people
to look at nature in completely new ways.
It was 2009 and a new movie had come out from
James Cameron with a huge budget and a lot of
buzz. Again, without a book or a series of books
to proceed it, Avatar was a visual feast that
needed to be seen to be appreciated. Then there
was the message behind the movie about living with
the planet instead of exploiting its resources.
One minute you're rooting for the company and then
the Na'vi are the heroes of the story. Then there
is the Tree of Souls where the Na'vi have a neural
connection to their mother goddess of the planet
and thus the creatures on it which come to save
the day. The analogies are many but the main one
is that when a world is taken out of balance, that
world has ways to bring things back into balance
regardless of the humans on its surface. In both
Star Wars and Avatar, those books were mentally
written as every second of the movies plays out.
Later the books were then mentally edited in
real-time during reruns as new details that were
missed the first time fill out the story. As the
sequels and prequels were released in the case of
Star Wars, the stories grew and became mental
libraries that included facts and trivia learned
after the releases. What does the future hold
going forward now that artificial intelligence has
changed the landscape?
A new medium built on AI has changed the landscape
and is fast replacing both books and movies as a
go to form of entertainment with the result being
that what appears real has to be constantly
questioned. It's an exciting future and one that
inspires the imagination to go with the new tools
to bring those thoughts into being. This follows
the same trend as set with Star Wars and Avatar
in that the experience supersedes the need for
books ahead of time. What is created is just there
to be experienced as if in a museum of moving
images and stories. The debate centers on whether
what is created will have the same consciousness
changing effects of the two examples above. Short
of that, books still win out over movies and AI in
spurring the imagination and sparking exploration.
With the push away from written media, the
challenge is in maintaining the desire to continue
reading and researching ways of improving the
self. Be it fantasy or philosophy, reading brings
with it keys to exploring the full potential of
what is possible with an expanded consciousness.
We still hold out hope for AI to assist in that
exploration.
