Heroes Not Zombies

There are two major ways in which we experience and understand our experience of the world. One of these is narrative and the other is mapping. We use narrative to make sense of our experience and to create a sense of self. We use maps to organise all the information that is constantly flooding our brains. All kinds of maps to situate ourselves in the world and to create some kind of order which allows us to navigate the spaces we live in. Maps are interesting though because they are not passive. When we lay a map on the world it focusses our attention and it predetermines our perception (you can’t see what you don’t know).

Here’s a map of the countries I’ve visited. This is from an interesting site which lets you tick, on a form, the countries you’ve visited, and it then automatically creates a map of the world with the countries you’ve visited coloured in, in red. I guess you could tell from this map that I live in Europe! Interestingly, the creator of this site has recently added another map “by popular demand” – the states in the USA which you have visited. Guess which country’s inhabits asked for that one?