What is an Image (ES)

WHAT IS 

AN IMAGE?

“WHAT IS AN IMAGE?” 

–AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LIMITS OF INQUIRY AND DEFINITION

Even the most basic attempt to answer such an inquiry regarding the definition of an image can quickly lead down a rabbit hole of philosophical questions. This is the very nature of posing such a simple question regarding such a general topic. It has emerged as the passion of intellects to challenge everyday notions with relentless questioning, just like their almighty Greek fathers.

Ask me what an image is, and I must ask what a dictionary is? Are the days of relying on Merriam-Webster and Oxford so far behind us that we must indulge in such intellectual duels and petty crusades for self-affirmation? I would expect one who raises such a question to be among those who question their very existences. Perhaps one can no longer rely on such obvious sources of information, because such sources of information may no longer be so obvious.

For this we can thank the internet, and search engines, and open source encyclopedias, and mobile applications, and our friends with Ph.Ds, and our friends without high school diplomas, and our older siblings, and our best friends’ favorite blogs, and Post- Modernism, and the Enlightenment, and the quest for enlightenment, and the quest for a lighter for our friends with freshly packed bowls, and the insatiable appetites for insatiability, and the search for some new light on the old light because the Divine Light is for the Far Right (and we all have the right to ask questions), and the “right” to know the the truth. The problem is that one might not even know what it means to know anything anymore, let alone know what the “truth” is, even if the truth about truth and knowledge came neatly packaged by a reliable source within the pages of a dictionary with a bow on top.

How is that for an image? How is that for an answer? What would a satisfying answer to “what is an image?” even look like? Does anyone even know? Does anyone even know what it means to be satisfied?

I know that I don’t.

I know that if anyone walked up to me right now and asked any one of the questions just raised that I would not have an answer. I know this because the only thing that I do know, is that I do not know everything.Since that is the only thing I know for sure, there is a good chance that I don’t know anything else at all. In fact, there is even a good chance that I don’t even know that I don’t know everything, because I doubt that knowing what it means to know is among the few or many things that I may or may not know –and of course all of this presupposes that knowledge even exists. I think.

I am not sure.

When I close my eyes.

I would imagine that there was a time and place when a certain caveperson roamed around hiding from dinosaurs or volcanoes or giant carnivorous chickens or evil serpents or divine wrath and he/she too might close his/her eyes and imagine that there was a time and place when pre-cavepersons didn’t have to hide their pre-cavechildren during giant-chicken mating season.

I would imagine that there was a time at which a certain caveperson x might have turned to a certain caveperson y and realized that y might find x’s imaginary haven pleasurable, and y could really benefit from some pleasure since he/she just lost his/her legs in the volcano last Tuesday. For the sake of simplicity, I would imagine that the wildly offensive grunts that modern pop culture uses to describe Cavespeak are inaccurate, and in this scenario Cavespeak does not exist yet. So x takes a stick and makes some marks on the dirt to his/her left that kind of resemble chickens in a sort of pre-historic coop, and to his/her right a bunch of marks are made that sort look like cavechildren playing in the hot springs while x and y are fooling around in a fancy cave. Then things get a little awkward because y thought that he/she and x were just friends, because it’s pretty obvious that y has been into caveperson z since that one botany class at Hunter-Gatherer State.

When I open my eyes.

I vaguely remember some stuff from a psychology class about short-term and long-term memory, and some process where short-term stuff makes it into the long-term stuff. I bring this up, because my eyes are open and for as long as my short-term memory allows, I will have a vivid image of dirty cavepeople with long hair, dirty finger nails, and severe burns where legs once were. This image is as real to me as the assembled marks in the dirt that I envision as the first incarnation of the “image” as we have come to accept today. Although, that too is the product of my imagination.

Gone are the days when an image was simply smeared pigment in a cave or marked up dirt, for with the rise of civilization and the development of culture so too has the monetary value of the “image” soared. Perhaps this is why the question in question is worth asking and answering.

But alas...

I have exhausted my intellect and reached the introductory limits of inquiry and definition. 

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The short answer is:

The shorter answer is: