The other day, I was in
a used book store, and I found a copy of a book I had read a long time ago, a
book that indirectly has a lot to say with regard to what I write about. Flatland is a story written in the
second half of the nineteenth century by Edwin A. Abbott, a famous teacher and
headmaster from England. It has very
simply become a classic. It is the story
about A. Square who lives in a world of two dimensions. He describes his own world as well as his
encounters with the king of Lineland who lives in a world of one
dimension. A. Square tries to convince
the king of the reality of the world of two dimensions. In turn, there is the Sphere from the world
of Spaceland who tries to convince A. Square of the reality of a world of three
dimensions. The book is very good for
explaining some important ideas in math.
And although it was written over one hundred years ago, it may have some
bearing on the way people experience the world today.
Yes, we all still live
our day-to-day lives in the world of three dimensions of Spaceland. But the more we sit in front of all kinds of
screens – movie screens, televisions, video games, computers, smartphones and tablets
– our eyes and our minds start to live in a world of two dimensions. Yes, we see three-dimensional images,
three-dimensional processes and three-dimensional events on those screens. And yet our minds know that we are seeing
two-dimensional representations of three dimensions. Particularly with the advent of digital
technology, where images are built of pixels, there is a level on which all
these screen representations can be reduced to clusters of flat colored dots.
The question is what
overall effect does constant encounters with two-dimensional representations
have to do with our daily lives. I would
submit that it has a subtle but very important effect that grows incrementally
from childhood. The most important thing
to start with is that although our bodies still live in the three
dimensionality of the Spaceland of the Sphere, our eyes increasingly live in
the two dimensionality of Flatland just like A. Square. Now in the book Flatland, the inhabitants
of Flatland and of Lineland were able to live relatively normal lives within
the constrictions of the dimensions to which they were allotted. However, the mental Flatland of humans today
limits the kinds of things that they can do in a very fundamental way. The mental Flatland of people today is not
the same as the Flatland in Abbott’s story.
A. Square was living on the same plane as the two-dimensional world he
experienced. People today are living
outside of the plane and looking at it frontally. But by constantly looking at a flat plane,
people become subtly transformed.
With their two eyes,
humans have developed stereoscopic vision, which allows them to naturally see
the world in three dimensions. With this
stereoscopic vision, it is almost as if people could grab onto the world with
their eyes. It is as if they had
prehensile eyes to go with their prehensile hands. This is important, because one has to be able
to somehow physically or mentally hold onto an entity that has a surface in
order to make an imprint on it. One has
to allow oneself to be visually held in order to receive an imprint. One has to experience being able to visually
ground oneself in order to have a template for making and receiving imprints
with respect to other entities. And
stereoscopic vision is an important component of this active engagement by a
person in his field of experience in order to be able to make and receive
imprints.
If one is simply
looking at screens all day, one is no longer exercising the stereoscopic vision
that gives him his sense of three-dimensionality, that allows him to
participate fully in primary experience.
And there is a merger of one’s experience in front of the screens with
his experience away from the screens such that the three dimensional world of
his primary experience begins to subtly flatten. This profoundly affects a person’s capacity
to ground himself, to hold onto entities mentally and to be held by other
people mentally for the making and preserving of imprints.
In such a situation, a
person tends to become a passive observer of life rather than an active
interactor with life. The primary
modality for dealing with life becomes observation rather than
interaction. This relates to tasks and
projects as well as to relationships.
When the world is primarily perceived as flat and in front of a person,
there is little place for manoeuver within the world. Plus, when the experiences and events that
one encounters are flat and in front of him, only a part of him is stimulated
to life, even though there is a simulation on the screen of a primary
experience.
This screen experience
is not to be confused in its effects and consequences with reading books. Reading a book has both primary experience
aspects and mediated experience aspects.
Although reading books does involve looking at the flat surfaces of
pages, those pages are bound within a three-dimensional book that we are
holding, and we are actively turning the pages within the book and pushing back
on the binding and moving the book in different positions. So we are still, to
some extent, visual grabbing the discrete stimuli of words from an entity that
we are holding onto and manipulating in different ways in space within primary
experience. This primary experience aspect of a book doesn’t exist in a
computer. And although we can move a
smartphone and kindle around, we cannot spatially manipulate it the way we can
a book. We are never allowed with a book to think that we are entering a world
that can replace the primary experience world of elemental sensation that holds
both defined discrete stimuli as well as organic blendable continual
stimuli. We have to use our stereoscopic
vision as we turn pages, and so there is a prehensile visual aspect to our
experience of books. There are imprints from the three-dimensional book that
are better received and preserved than what we get from our experience in
cyberspace.
In general, in life, if
we want to be able to make, preserve and receive organic imprints, if we want
to have rich vibrant experiences in life and to prepare for death, then we must
exercise the prehensile qualities of our stereoscopic vision by living more in
a world of primary sensory experience and diminish our involvement with
cyberspace.
This is not simply some
abstract academic notion. As our field
of experience flattens out and we become more passive towards the world, our
capacity to maintain the deep-bonded relationships of family and marriage
diminishes. We become more solipsistic,
more withdrawn into ourselves. Three-dimensional
face time with other people becomes special rather than the norm, and because
it occurs more rarely, we lose our capacity to handle it naturally. It becomes exhausting. And family relationships and marriage become
weaker and fall apart, as well as friendships and community. The relationship foundations that keep the
human race going start to crumble. The
human race from three-dimensional Spaceland puts itself in jeopardy, when it
starts trying to live its life in its own version of Flatland.
© 2014 Laurence Mesirow
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