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On
the 43rd World Day of communication, Benedict XVI, with great
wisdom and realism, treated this extraordinary important theme: new
technologies, new relations, promoting a culture of respect, of dialogue
and friendship (January 24, 2009).
Therefore, we are always in the orbit of educative emergency, to which
we must give an answer, not only a good sense answer, but mainly an
answer with a scientific efficacy. A positive instrument can give
noteworthy help to the parents and educators, as they face this
emergency: it is about the studies of Nazareno Taddei on communication.
These studies identify, in the language of the mass media, the aspect
that influences the individual personality most, moulding it with a mass
mentality.
In fact, if we take into consideration the thing that, together with
experience, contributes to create “the way of thinking” and, therefore,
the behaviour, we find ourselves inevitably before the phenomenon of
communication. To say communication, today, means, first, mass media
communication.
Every communication is truly such when, through a language, we succeed
to put ideas “in common”. The constitutive signs of every language, if
we read them correctly, allow us to reach the meaning of messages.
Concepts and outlines
At
first, all this sounds not only logic and taken for granted, but also
simple to evaluate. In reality, however, things are not simple, because
the languages by which man can express himself are, substantially, of
two kinds: those ruled by convention and those ruled by
connatural way. These languages are different in nature, in meaning
and in influencing the forma mentis, as well as the behaviour of
those who use them.
On one side, we have the conceptual languages (symbolic and
signposting word), on the other side we have the outlined languages
(images and some types of gestures). The meaning of the first ones
bases itself on a convention established by men, the second means
according to the capacity of reproducing the contours of what we can
perceive by senses. We can distinguish the outlined languages in
languages of normal image (painting and sculpture) and languages of
technical image (photography, cinema, TV, computer).
The language of the media, founded on the technical image, assumes a
worrying power, because its effect, under the psycho-behavioural
profile, can reach a loss of interiority, due to the
superficiality of encounter and due to the substitution of the truth
with the opinion.
This consideration would suffice to investigate on the danger of a given
use of images and, therefore, to prevent negative effects. At first it
would seem that an image favours a more immediate perception of the
concept, because it calls back directly the exterior aspects of things,
but it is not so. Better, it is no longer so from the time in which the
use of the image language does not have its foundation on the simple
drawing or painting or sculpture, but is constituted massively by man
through a machine (photography, cinema, TV, computer).
The technical image
Painting, sculpture and frescos exist from antiquity (normal image), but
their effect in our mentality is very much different from the one
produced by the cinema or the TV (technical image).
The first type of image depends on the ability and will of man to follow
some correspondence between a real thing (the subject) and the
represented thing (the reproduction of the subject), thanks to the
mental image elaborated by the brain according to the perception of the
real world.
The second type, instead, even if it depends on the will and the
technical ability of man, is completely under the influence of
technology. The machine that reproduces the real contours intrudes
itself between the thing in itself (the object) and the
represented thing (the object taken by the film or the card), thus
giving the look of “reality”. The results obtained through the machine,
in fact, make the observer forget that what looks like “the exact” copy
of reality, is the fruit of a choice and pre-disposition (of the will)
of the author, who uses the machine in a given way.
He who takes the reality with the machine ( even if he uses
automatisms), does not limit himself to reproduce objects and persons;
he rather expresses, in a more or less successful way, all that he wants
to say about the reality in front of him. In this way, he selects a
portion of space and reproduces only what and only how the
machine can take according to the way it is used. In other words, the
author keeps on interpreting.
Lying communications
The so-called unnoticed communications, which are responsible for
multiple misrepresentations, are born in this phase. In fact, they
deceive those who are not capable to read the image thoroughly, because
they allow the operator to lie systematically, a little or a lot, on the
relation with reality, namely with the truth. They are able to make
believe that objects and persons are furnished with attractive
atmosphere or, on the contrary, repugnant, even when these halos do not
exist. They know how to pretend nonexistent connections between person
and person or between persons and environments. Finally, and this is the
most dangerous and elusive aspect, they can compel the spectator to draw
moral conclusions (positive or negative) about persons or events, even
when the presuppositions of their judgement do not exist for the person
and the real event.
In very simple words, we could judge or absolve a delinquent and,
instead, we could condemn and ridicule an innocent person, convincing
the spectator of doing a just action, without making him realise of
adhering to an intrinsically erred metre of judgement.
This strategy allows me to condemn the evil masked as admissible, thanks
to a particular use of the image. Thus, they subvert the hierarchy of
principles and values linked to the natural law and to human dignity.
This is because they propose behaviours and discussable ways of thinking
at the level of common opinion, imitable and tolerated in the daily
life, considering them as a right of subjective freedom. If we think of
the laws on divorce and abortion, as well as of euthanasia, in the
perspective, we shall realise that the nature of the consensus, which
has imposed or will impose them, depends on a way of reasoning that
takes its origin from what we have said above. .
The unnoticed communications, therefore, are “inevitably false”, because
they are structurally part of the image language. Therefore, we must put
them in relation with the problem of testimony and respect of the truth.
The attentive reader must be ready to prepare himself to the end of
recognising and unmasking them, even where they become particularly
sneaky. He who deals with communications faces the linguistic as well as
the moral problem of making a good use of his freewill, aiming at
reducing as much as possible every risk of unnoticed communication.
Let us not confuse freedom with will
The author of communication must know well the nature of the language he
uses. He cannot take as objective and real his own subjective
interpretation, exploiting the characteristics of the language. He must
be aware of the fact that, to use a language in significant function
implies a moral criterion, without which we may confuse freedom with
will.
In the field of mass communication, violence against the dignity and
rights of the person begins, before given contents, from the use,
calculated for the purpose, of the image language peculiarity in
function of the mental enslavement, with the consequent loss of
individual freedom. Therefore, he who handles the arm of the image
language must be aware that, in the absence of a robust ethics, he
becomes accomplice of a progressive intellectual flattening of his
public, namely of a weakening of conscientious defence before the
production of a global mass.
The way of reasoning that already flows from this panorama and that will
go on spreading, will be that of the sequential thought
(like the successive actions in a film), destined to be satisfied with
the superficial aspect of phenomena because of ever more simplified and
childish examples, not in evangelical sense.
Thus, it is a way of reasoning that does not allow reaching the
unequivocal meaning of phenomena, but gets satisfied with a superficial
reference to relative examples, with the pretext, however, of
generalising them and turning them into universal law (the so-called
“stereo-types”).
This will finish by our lacking the capacity of a hierarchical thought,
built up in an argumentative way, capable of explaining causes, effects,
connections and dependence on values and levels. Today there is a
unique, narrative, serial thought, more and more rudimental, unable to
suggest the research of the reason why and the sense of things,
inadequate to locate the fondant aspects of culture and society, as well
as of religious and moral values, at the right level of the architecture
of the private and public life.
Educative distortion of the media language
It suffices to look around us to find the example of all this in many
present behaviours: exaggeration and superficiality of conversations due
to the use of cell phones; habits and behaviours caused by TV models and
on-line attendances. This society shatters and clashes against
the rocks of an exasperate individualism, in the egoistic and
mean vocation of the tendency to pure consumerism and material
possession; to conformism in uncritical imitation of behaviour
models, including the most unbridled unreasonableness in non considering
the existence of others and of their rights, even in the simple daily
life.
Paradoxically, therefore, because of a pervasive moral laxity, tending
to justify one’s own behaviour and ready to condemn others, a diffused
intolerance takes its way.
Aggressiveness and violence
have flared as normal methods characterising common manifestation of
opinions or claims, transforming them into instruments of imposition and
ransom at all cost.
In this system of relations, the duties are no longer part of personal
commitments, but only of what we pretend from others.
Nobody has the courage of stating this openly, but a similar society is
de facto an uncivilised, desegregated and anarchic system, prey of
“giustizialismo” overview.
Therefore, we can find the cause of all this in the media, which
contribute to foster a state of irresponsibility, to favour
emotive and superficial feelings, to the detriment of
reasonableness. However, the fact of not facing the problem of the media
language in an educative key has had its consequences.
However, these would still be tameable, if we adopted the right
formation instruments to face the culture of confusion, which
goes on rapidly imposing itself on the culture of clarity and rigour in
moral reflections.
Luigi
Zaffagnini
Formator di formators in the Progetto EDACOF
By the Ministry of Public Instruction
Member of the Committee of the Direzione edav - CiSCS di Roma
Via Vicini 48
48024 Massa Lombarda (Ravenna)
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