Chapter 1 Idolatry
Credulous ear
Human perceptions are based on five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste—sight being the most dominant by which naked apes adapt to their environment. In social sciences, cause and effect are rarely confirmed: only correlations are observed, and without statistics, these disciplines would be esoteric, due to the lack of direct access through the five senses, unlike the hard sciences.
The expression “I will believe it when I see it,” testifies to this. In front of his comic book, the boy draws confidence from observing with his own eyes the incredible exploits of his demigod. As we get older, everyone refreshes this ideal with their daily lives and their new idols. The worst scourge of the modern idol: to melt into the experience of now suspicious spectators, to regain the lost relevance of temple statues.
We know the senses are limited. However, technology allows humans to perceive things beyond their own senses, or even those of any kind: through communication, each person accesses, beyond his or her sensory experience, a reality made accessible by technology, which translates a signal that is otherwise intangible—the individual, for his part, continues to know little about most things.