I was just reading “While Mortals Sleep” by Kurt Vonnegut and stumbled upon the following quote:

“It came to me all in a flash that Verne Petrie was what was wrong with the world....Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves” (p. 44).

Although this quote juxtaposes two extremes (as exemplified by the words “everybody” and “nobody”) illustrating black-and-white thinking, and I don't agree the situation is that severe, it is nevertheless still a very, very good point. Written at a time when smartphones did not exist and the Internet was merely in its infancy, these words speak so much more loudly today. It is true that visuals play a critical role in communicating meaning and in understanding the world around us. After all, the sense of vision provides more information of outside data coming into the brain than all other senses combined. The way I understand this quote, however, is that it cautions us not to get carried away so much that we forget to pay attention to the essence of the things we see. We are talking here not only about visuals of inanimate objects but also, and more importantly, visuals of people – and this is where the quote rings home to me.