In the latest edition of Discover, a woman named Temple Grandin, an expert in the design of animal holding pens for cattle processing facilities, describes the differences between the way ordinary people think and the way animals think. She has a particular insight into this, because she is autistic, and according to her, the visual and pictorial nature of autistic thinking, the lack of abstraction, has a great resemblance to the way animals think.
Grandin is continually surprised at how much ordinary people do not see. Humans do not see the whole picture, but rather filter images and sounds through a layer of abstraction – taking the world in through a layer of meaning and symbolic thinking, and not directly observing the world. “Normal human beings are blind to anything they are not paying attention to,” She says.
But human urbanization has made it worse. Our urban world is already an abstract concept (that foundational act of civilization, farming - is the result of abstract thinking that conceptualized more efficient ways of gathering food.) As a result, our abstractions are perceiving only earlier abstractions. We are becoming further removed from practical experience with the world that we emerged in.
This, in a funny way, ties in with someone else I’ve been reading – Henri J. M. Nouwen, the renowned spirituality writer. He writes that there are two poles that one movement of our life keeps revolving between – loneliness and solitude.
He notes the irony that most of us suffer from loneliness at some point in our lives, but also crave solitude. And as I read this, I reflected on what Grandin had said about practical experience with the world.
When do I tend to feel the solitude I seek in my life? When I am in nature, bonding with the world that is (rather than the world I filter out.) Perhaps by cutting through the abstractions that make us truly alone in our heads, and meeting nature and its maker out where it truly can be found, I achieve aloneness… without loneliness.
Here at the Sandbanks on Lake Ontario (where I am visiting my parents this weekend), sitting by the rocks, watching the fish ducks out in the water, I meet my God in solitude.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Abstraction, Loneliness, Solitude
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7 comments:
Solitude is something which we choose, loneliness is forced upon us.
I am not sure that loneliness is 'forced' on us. It is, in some respects, the polar opposite of solitude, in that it is an unconscious feeling, an unwilled and unbid feeling.
But I don't know if forced is the right word. We may not choose loneliness, but it is not a condition imposed on us by others, or by an unfriendly fate. It too is an internal action, and can be fought (if not completely overcome.)
I may post more on that. An interesting thought you've had there :-)
That would be interesting to discuss.. I'd say we usually don't choose the *conditions* to which we react by feeling lonely...The feeling can probably be fought by changing the conditions rather than by changing the feeling itself, although that too is possible to a certain extent.
Do you really think that loneliness can be completely overcome.
I am sure it cannot be. However, and this is one thing that disciplined contemplative people excel at, I do think it is possible to understand our loneliness, to even diagnose it.
Loneliness is a tool - one of many - that our personhood uses to measure our "social health," a critical need of the very social human being. However, loneliness increasingly results from other things, other than social isolation (which is beginning to be physically impossible in the crowded world.)
Often I think, loneliness is tied up in abstractions - our sense of self, our concern for our esteem in the eyes of others, worry that we will fall through the cracks of a society whose social milieu is increasingly automated.
That, I think, is where solitude comes in. Solitude (which is not necessarily isolation in nature, much as that can help get there) is simply rediscovering who we are, apart from the social security number, MSN Messenger ID, email address, and other societal badges, such as mother, husband, leftie, or elderly.
Who are we? Only a quiet inner voice ever tries to answer that question honestly. In finding that indentity, I think we reduce the opportunity for loneliness to work its worm.
I think you might just have something there! Nicely said.
Hmm, imagine if "One Hundred Years of Solitude" had been translated as "One Hundred Years of Loneliness"... which is how it is translated in Russian... what a difference it would have made... Though never having read it in English or Russian, I'm not really sure! ; )
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