Heroes Not Zombies

This looks like a bird, don’t you think? That’s interesting because in fact it is a stone on a beach with a little sea creature clinging to its undersurface, looking for all the world like a bright orange beak, and a tiny shell attached to the side just where you might expect to find an eye if this was a bird.

So, my mind has taken a combination of a stone and two completely different sea creatures and created a image for me which makes me think “This looks like a bird”.

We do that all the time. All the time. When we look at clouds we see patterns which make us think they look like faces, creatures, or other familiar shapes. We see people who look like people we know. We see likenesses in babies features which remind us of parents or grandparents.

This “looks like” ability isn’t unique to human beings of course. Flowers, insects and many other creatures are brilliant at developing shapes and forms of other life forms….either to attract what they want to attract, or to repel what they want to repel.

But we humans take this “looks like” ability to a completely different level. We use “representation” to become aware of, or to create, connections between things which we would otherwise miss. We use it to know, quickly, what we are looking at, or at least, to make a preliminary, perhaps “good enough” assessment.

But we also use it to connect to others. We look for similarities, symmetries echoes and reflections, to form bonds, attachments, relationships. We look for some aspect of a person or their life and say “I identify with that”, or “me too”, or “I sympathise with that”, “I understand that”.

Even in the circumstances where we look closer and realise that what we perceived at first wasn’t really what we thought it was…..this is not a bird….that ability of do the “looks like” thing turns something mundane into something just a bit more magical. It’s a way of “re-enchanting” the world.

I think we take this power to a whole new level when we start to employ symbols, art and language. I’ll say more about that tomorrow.