The Haunt of Jackals Part 3

"For the customs of the peoples are a delusion;
Because it is wood cut from the forest,
The work of the hands of a craftsman
with a cutting tool.
They decorate it with silver and gold;
they fasten it... so that it will not totter.
Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
because they cannot walk!
Do not fear them, for they can do no harm,
Nor can they do any good"

Jeremiah 10:4-5

Context is everything. Jeremiah makes the above statement in reference to the wooden idols of his time which were crowned with silver and gold. They were objects of great fascination and pretended power and meaning.

The "woods cut from the forest" were, and still are, the materials of creation refashioned into objects of adoration and worship. The decorations of "silver and gold" were the special effects of the day used to adorn these basic objects. Together they formed the idolatrous image upon which the culture was based. Though obviously made by men, that fact was quickly forgotten or repressed in order to bestow the highest possible meaning upon the object, which in turn would tell people who they were.

But what has Jeremiah to do with the story of the bread-picture people and the alien's visit to the mall? And what of our curious title, The Haunt of Jackals?

Imagine that you actually live in just the sort of world our two stories have described: the type of world which feeds upon image and likeness over substance and life; the sort of culture which has devalued the currency of communication to the uttermost degree. Imagine that you live in a society where truth is dominated and informed by the immediate images of that culture, and where the great gift of language and communication...of words...has become the strip-mined ground of advertising, meaningless rhetoric, and titillating slogans.

Now don't imagine it, because you already live there.

Over the last 100 years something unprecedented has taken place. We have moved from a society based on the spoken and written word, to a society based upon visual images. Television, movies and digital media have replaced words as the dominant means of perceiving reality and meaning in this culture.

Where a personal and detailed written description of historic events once provided information, our optic nerves are now bombarded with images of world events from every conceivable angle. Who would have thought, one hundred years ago, that people could routinely view our entire planet from the depths of space, or watch the tiny movements of a human being in its mother's womb?

This shift from words to images as a means of perceiving reality has staggering implications for our culture. Whatever is viewed begins to take on a life of its own. It begins to produce and shape new contexts at a dizzying rate. And these visual contexts, which are being created and embraced by so many, are nothing more than idealized and abstracted pictures of various "lives" which no ever lives. They are the valueless bread pictures eaten by a nation ravenous for the true Bread of Life; they are the meaningless logos imprinted on the clothes of all who need the true Logos to cloth them with His own Self.

George Orwell, in his novel 1984, had already begun to imagine a world where new technologies could be used to control people. But Orwell got the order mixed up. Orwell saw a world where the people were controlled because "Big Brother" was watching them. In our culture it is just the opposite. We are controlled because we are watching Big Brother. Orwell saw millions of lenses and a few viewscreens. Our world is moving toward millions of viewscreens, and fewer and fewer lenses.

And its ironic because it is not only a more effective means of mass control than what Orwell envisioned, the masses also end up paying the bill! There may even come a day where the whole world watches events through one single lens (Don't laugh. How many people were watching a single murder suspect trying to flee in his white Bronco a few years back? Just push it up a few more notches and we are there.)

But for our present purposes, let us just note that the words which people still use are no longer trusted and valued the way they once were. We watch and watch and watch while the ad-men steal and use every word which still has some resonance left to sell us more stuff.