What can we create together?

Pete sent me this "interesting illusion" in an email message.  My reply follows.

I guess it's just in my nature to reflect a bit on these "illusions".  And... I suppose it is also in my nature to share my reflections - at least it's a desire that I'm going to give myself license to act on.  If you choose to read what follows, you'll have made yourself either a victim of my self-expression (you can seek revenge in a reply), or the recipient of a gift, a portion of myself.  Besides, it IS Sunday morning!!  

I think these "illusions" provide opportunity to question our basic Western assumptions about reality.  We think that the "illusions" are tricks of the mind and in one sense they are.  What we often do not understand or realize- and in fact, has not been understood until  very recent times - is that these "tricks" are exactly how our minds work all the time.  

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish—a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

 

The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.

 

But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. Just what these lines are is by no means obvious. One way to find out is by looking at language. Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.

-George Lakoff and Mark Johnsen (2003) Metaphors we live by. London: The university of Chicago press.

 

We think, for instance, that we "see" a house, but what we really "see" is a symbol or metaphor which is formed from the patterns of colors and shapes we perceive.  Just as the word 'house' is a symbol or metaphor for what we perceive, so also, what we perceive is a symbol for the word 'house'. The house is a construct of our mind - but not simply our own individual mind - it is socially constructed.  Without taking the concept too literally, it can be said that we "co-create reality".  And so, the first "illusion"  is an excellent illustration of what we do in community - what we do at our neighborhood gatherings.  We create something together that is added to the world. We create meaning - something which is incredibly important to do.  As David Bohm writes in his book, ON DIALOG:

I''m saying that it is necessary to share meaning.  A society is a link of relationships among people and institutions, so that we can live together.  But it only works if we have a culture - which implies that we share meaning; i.e., significance, purpose and value.  Otherwise it falls apart.  Our society is incoherent, and doesn't do that very well; it hasn't for a long time, if it ever did.

This is really what drives me, this realization of how important and necessary to the survival of humanity this creating of shared meaning (which is really just the same thing as learning to be neighbors in other words) is, and how important it is for each of us to live meaningfully and with purpose.

I'm extremely thankful that, perhaps without fully realizing how important our gatherings are, and with little "philosophizing" about what we are doing, we are sharing the fruit of putting these ideals into practice.  And, as Jack Nicholson might remind us, "that ain't bad".