That's remnants of the "bicameral" brain combined with the use of your mind...the fact that you can manipulate those images is proof you use your mind.

Interesting...could it have anything to do with your 1st grade introduction to colors and words?

I, myself, still see number patterns the way they were represented when I learned numbers like, 4 dots as a square, 5 with one dot at the top middle of 4 dots as a square...etc.

My memory works in pictures. I replay the pictures in my mind to remember where things are etc. I dont remember a lot in words, but I see the words suspended in space to recall them. maybe I am a little crazy, who knows. BUT, its worked for me.

I'm not sure what to attribute the trend to. Not sure it is as simple as words vs pictures. I think it has more to do with really exercising the mind, which a weaker media makes a necessity. Today boredom has been abolished.

For what it is worth, for some reason (maybe my wooden blocks), I associate every letter and the first few numbers with a color. If you give me a letter, the letter in that color pops right up in my mind. A is red. E is blue. T is brown...

Down line focus using pictures of one's imagined progress is really quite amazing and when your good at doing that, you can jot down notes at the same time...it's also great to describe how things fit and what they will look like.
I used that process when I imagined, then drew my house.

Things a Conscious Being couldn't dream of in a nightmare!

Yea...really...takes a lot of control to not be distracted. Got to be Obstinate...always thinkin...ya ain't gona get me...nancy boys!

When I was five my mother read books to me, "Black Beauty" etc. while we both sat on a sofa. As I sat opposite her, I read along with her - only I read upside down, connecting the words that I saw in the book as Mom pronounced them. Mom was unaware of this, since I didn't mention it to her. When I was six, we started learning to read in school. I raised my hand and said I knew how to read. The teacher handed me the book she was going to teach out of and told me to read it out loud. Delighted, I proudly picked up the book, turned it upside down and started reading. The teacher, thought it was a joke but couldn't figure out what, exactly the joke was. Looking back now, I realize that the teacher was a very young woman and this was likely her first job. She told me what I was doing was all wrong and that I wasn't reading correctly, which really puzzled me because all the words I read were the same ones she had read. She finally insisted that I learn to read right side up and eventually did. Since my Mom in my experience was always right I thought that teachers were a strange lot, but I wasn't about to make waves in my 1st grade class. So, I turned the book around and pronounced, "Sam can run." I have never to my knowledge ever though in pictures. I find it difficult to even imagine anyone thinking without words. It would be very difficult for me.

if that is the case they are seeing weird pictures by the way they act.

So true.

Amen. I still revel in the literary master works of fiction writers such as Asimov, Tolkien, and others. People wonder why books are almost always better than their movie depictions and the answer is simple: imagination. To really imagine something, one has to invest in it - to expend energy creating a mental picture and endowing it with some semblance of reality. Merely watching what someone else has created requires very little effort and very little involvement.

Great article, Carl! Really makes one ...

[distracted by random flashing ad]

What was I thinking about? [/sarcasm]

As a small child, my parents read to my siblings and me every bedtime. Mom read Dr. Seuss and books like Old Yeller, and Dad read us The Iliad, and Edgar Allen Poe (he was an English Teacher, and Mom was an Art Teacher). I still remember Mom started to cry when Old Yeller died. Words create images and images create words. The literary skills of Winston Churchill were augmented by his constant love of painting.

Full Consciousness can be achieved, however, not at the observed rate we see today...but even so, some individuals have evolved, moving the ball forward...see spiral dynamics...I think some of us here are there.

"control the formation of these images or just follow them with single minded focus." this is what my neothink mentor calls: Down line focus.

I think these insights come from quantum entanglement wave exchanges to our minds and decoded by the brain. One can, on occasion, receive insights they might deem, no academic right to have...now That is spooky!

Einstein struggles as would anyone trying to describe what transpires in their consciousness.

"It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit case which can never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the narrowness of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins)"

Einstein basically practiced something called image streaming. The idea is that there are a bunch of images that are constantly streaming through our brains, no matter what work we are pre-occupied with. This image streaming can become a meditative practice if you either control the formation of these images or just follow them with single minded focus. Something of what Einstein practiced was wired into image streaming. This means that a lot of his discovered were actually just creative thought processes perceived intuitively.

We think of meditation as following the breath, but for Einstein meditation was following thought. He had learned how to see the burst of light expanding, traveling at the same speed for the two observers. To the moving observer on the train, the circle of light expanded equally on all sides. To the stationary one on the platform, the light expanded also, but in addition Einstein saw the movement of the train caused one side to meet the wave earlier than the other side. I mimic his thoughts, one-by-one, I think with him and, in this moment, what Einstein thought I think. His insight becomes mine. Our conclusions: simultaneity is relative. Moving clocks run slow. Lengths are foreshortened along the direction of motion. No laboratory is needed, only the mind and the amazing power of pure thought.

Two equivalents with different information densities. They tie to each other or they have no meaning.

Facebook, Twitter, even texting with a cellphone~bah!
Me old dino be old-fashioned. I tell people who want to talk to me just to freaking talk to me.
Call Me~like Blondie sang back in the 70s when there weren't cell phones period.
The setting of my novel is 1914 where I'm comfy with old stuff.
Love to use the word processor in my PC, though.

Exactly! and ruled by those that use, understand or see neither.

Can't agree more.

These paintings are worth more than a thousand words.
I could just imagine what the left would think about the last one...might be worth the laugh.

But here again...these are not the pictures the social media crowd or the left anti-society types are looking at, and remember, they misunderstand words as well.

I'd tell him to shrug!

But that's not all we do, we here, many out there and our beloved Rand can do it all...not just one thing, not just based upon emotion, ignorance or propaganda.
That's the point of the article.

Reminds me of a teacher in-service that I attended. The presenter said the word, "zebra" and then asked each of us what we saw in our minds. All the primary teachers (me included) saw a picture of a zebra in the grasses of Africa, The upper elementary teachers saw the word "zebra" in block letters. There was no wrong or right answer. The point was that we were influenced by our teaching positions. So in short, we need both pictures and words..

Flowcharts, etc., would be other examples of using pictures to think rationally. But I agree with your main point that the images are motivators that do not require rational thought. Nonetheless, that is the nature of painting.

"Liberty Leading the People"
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rsc...

"Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi"
http://www.eugene-delacroix.com/greec...

... and yet, as you would say, some paintings are meant to be read:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...

Can't make a point for thinking in pictures better than that.