Using our eyes and brains and senses we see a skewed and highly individualized version of the world. As of this moment there are roughly 6.65 billion realities (based on the human population and not taking into account animals, our imagination, dreams and dissociative identities). 6.65 billion versions of today, of our time, of this moment.

Within and beyond this, we project ourselves into these realities and into the world. It should not be termed ‘the’ world,  unless we are talking about an objective world, otherwise ‘our’ world or ‘a’ world would be more appropriate. A visualization of this projection can be seen in some intriguing maps by Nina Katchadourian. Called ‘Geographic Pathologies‘, these ‘anatomical’ maps are a figurative way of interpreting how we project ourselves into the world. The world becomes an anthropomorphism of ourselves. Turning that around, one could argue that the world projects us, but I am not one to argue this. We could also include ‘-centrism’ into this debate and into these maps (think Euro- or Afro -centricism), and use the odd word ‘anthropocentric’, which regards mankind as the central aspect of existence or of the world, as an interpretation.

But how then do we map our reality?

posted by rowanp at 5:51 pm & filed under culture, philosophy |