Picking Out Images

You can learn a lot about humanity when picking out images for your blog.

Plug in the word “kind” and you’ll see a bunch of people with animals.
(Hey! What about people with people?)

Put in “listen” and you get a bunch of people with headphones
(the exact opposite of listening, actually.)

Put in “planet” and you get protest signs for reversing climate change.

Put in “career” and you get people in suits.

Until recently, I could only pull up white people. And “business” meant “men with briefcases.”

Our minds work the same way as the image search. “Dog” makes us smile. “Planet” makes us tense. When we hear a name, we have a reaction. A single word on a page can make us happy or sad or angry.

Associations are often rigid, like an equals sign. We, as a species love to link things together. We love to classify.

It’s efficient but it creates beliefs that aren’t true. We’re constantly manufacturing facts and putting them in glass cases.

We should remember this.