Heroes Not Zombies

Like yesterday, I’ve found two images that I want to use together. Unlike yesterday, they don’t represent a single phrase. Instead, I think they demonstrate a single concept.

We try to make sense of the world by focusing on bits of it. A bit like looking through a keyhole, or catching sight of what lies through a gateway.

Our left cerebral hemisphere seems to have evolved to develop this skill to the great heights we now experience. It drills down. It focuses. It abstracts elements from the whole to analyse them, categorise them and label them. In both physical and mental senses of the word, it helps us to “grasp” things.

“Things”. That’s an important word to use here, because this is what this type of narrow focus does. It turns whatever it grasps into objects. It separates “objects” out from each other, and from their contexts. This can work pretty well when we are dealing with material forms, but it starts to go wildly astray when we are dealing with living creatures, with non-material reality such as feelings, thoughts, beliefs and relationships, or, even, I would claim, when dealing with illness.

We often hear illnesses described as if they are objects or entities – “stand up to cancer!”, “conquer heart disease!”, “defeat dementia!” etc. But illnesses are not objects, and neither are they entities. They are more like processes, dysfunctions and disorders of complex networks of relationships.

There is no doubt that zero-ing in on some phenomena helps us to recognise them, classify them, and, yes, grasp them. But the job is only partially done at that point. The normal function of the brain involves the left hemisphere handing back to the right hemisphere the results of its analysis, where the contexts, environments, connections and relationships are re-created. This is how we better understand what we are dealing with….by seeing the whole, by seeing the flows of materials, energy and information, by spotting the dynamic movements, the constantly changing web of connections and relationships. And, in so doing, “objects” often turn out not to be “things” after all.

These two photos remind me of that.

They remind me of the value of peeking through the keyhole, but also the need to step through and into whatever we are observing, in order to know better, to understand more deeply, to more fully grasp….

Looking through the keyhole, turning the key, unlocking the door, approaching the gate…..these are all just a beginning. They invite us to enter, to experience, to explore.