Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Three Elephants

What do you see below?
















The answer most would have given is three elephants.

What do you see below?












The answer most will give is three pens.


What do you see below?











When we come into the world as infants we are a blank slate. We see things for what they mean to us on a physical level. We feel things, smell things and hear things. We use our senses to read and react. We don’t have labels or judgments and our responses to what we encounter, are pure and free flowing. Every day that passes from the first, we become influenced by others. We are taught to label things and given assigned expectations and feelings towards all the things around us. We lose sight of the purity of what surrounds us and become influenced by what we are told should and shouldn’t be.
Isn't it odd that we dont identify the Elephants or the pens as anything else other than Elephants and Pens but when we see the Women the labeling automatically kicks in? I don’t know what most people answered to the last of the three questions but I can’t imagine it was three human beings.

4 comments:

Kiki said...

I thought three women...I guess that is labeling too though.

Mary said...

Good one. I think if you would have put the 3 women's pictures FIRST then I would have been more apt to "label" and say - "a model", an African villager, a plus sized model, etc. But since I had just said (in my mind) 3 elephant, 3 pens, then I naturally went to "3 women."
I really liked this entry. It's very true that labeling is a learned behavior.

Alex said...

Yeah, i guess it didn't have quite the effect I wanted but you get the point. Thanks for the input. There was also a newer blog below that i posted late yesterday. Make sure to read it

Anonymous said...

I thought three women that depict how messed up this world is. One woman struggling to stay skinny, the other woman struggling to be skinny, and the other woman struggling to probably find something to eat.

Very good entry Alex..keep up the great blogs.

Diana Shim