Читать книгу Vol. 1(1). 2018 - Сергей Анатольевич Дзикевич - Страница 10

Why do we assume that images of the human being and images produced by the human being are so effective? Why do they have such an influence on the development of societies, communities and individuals? I believe three reasons are of particular importance here:

1) Cultural learning takes place using mimetic processes, i.e. processes of creative imitation (Wulf 2013a; Gebauer and Wulf 2018, 1998). Images play an important role here. This includes images of other people, images of the living environment and human images occurring gradually in synthetic processes. Human images give orientation and meaning. They are shared with other people and create feelings of belonging and togetherness. Herein lies the sustainability of their effect. Images are not easily adopted, but lived and internalised with other people and their interpretations. They occur in action and language games. In contrast to the instincts of animals, they are historically and culturally determined and can be changed.

2) Human images have profound effects because they occur at least partly in childhood and create a sense of being part of a community. They occupy the imaginary and become part of the imagination. They influence our perception of the world, culture and other people and our own self-perception. Human images become part of the person and his imagination and have an influence on his emotions. They are repeated and consolidated by the rhythms and rites of life. Like plants with extended roots, particular and universal human images are fixed in the imagination and gain effect from the connection with already existing ideas and images (Hüppauf, and Wulf 2009).

3) As images of the imagination and the imaginary, human images become part of the body (Wulf 2018; Pragrana 2016). They are inherent and therefore can be difficult to change. Often they consist not only of individual images, but of picture sequences, even of picture networks, with which heterogeneous, sometimes even paradoxical images are «captured». As a result, existing human images are repeatedly confirmed and their importance is reinforced (Wulf 2014).