Pseudo-Embedded Mind

1) A more affirming depiction of the Akureyrarkirkja than my last one. See how it soars into the heavens? By the way, that cross lights up at night. I think it's neon. Maybe the Techno Viking came by?



2) Some kind of gym down by the fjord? (saw people on treadmills, so that´s my guess).



3) Buildings occupied by the utility company Norðurorka.

I framed each of these pictures to filter out a lot of environmental "noise" -- the Akureyrarkirkja is actually surrounded by a lot of buildings and houses and cars; next to the gym (?) there is a construction site that's definitely not pretty to look at; and the Norðurorka buildings are near a main road and plenty of apartments. I wanted each of these buildings to look like some austere, ethereal outpost on the frontier between man and "unspoiled" nature. Each of these buildings is beautiful (from a certain angle) in its own way, and I wanted them to look like they were floating silently in a sea of natural beauty, out away from clutter, disrepair, humans, animals, pieces of things, activity -- in short, "noise." Why? Wish-fulfillment -- that's how I wish man-made artefacts were situated. It would be pleasing and peaceful. I could enjoy the beauty of man-made creations within the context of the beauty of God-made creations and not worry about having to manage chaos (so I think).

It took me some work to frame the pictures so that they would give the illusion of fulfilling my man-nature-harmony wish. For each of these, I probably took seven or eight other pictures that ultimately got axed because they were blurry or weren't balanced correctly or because I had inadvertently let a little noise creep in on the side. Not to mention the fact that I had to walk to wherever I thought I would get the angle right.

I encourage everyone to read the Boston Globe essay How the City Hurts Your Brain (and by everyone, I mean the two people who read this blog). Here is one of my take-away lessons from it, related to the above points (with some definite pseudo-psychological and pseudo-anthropological amateur botchery): The brain must also work very hard to filter out things undesirable to it. Anything in our environment that is a potential threat (anything that moves in our peripheral vision, and anything that looks like it might be unstable, powerful, large, sharp, loud, high-pitched, pathogenic, decaying, or in a rival tribe) must be evaluated by our brains. Potential threats cause tension (alertness): in the event of a real threat, that tension contributes to appropriate action (fight or flight); in the event of a false-alarm, tension is released.

The city is an environment overrun with false alarms - things that seemed threatening, but probably aren't (car alarms, traffic noise, fast-walking pedestrians, huge, angular buildings that look like they should fall over). The brain is overloaded, and must filter (ignore) many of these stimuli. It just can't handle them all. Here is a silly analogy: Suppose you live in a rain forest. Suppose you live in a part of the rain forest in which a thousand panthers lived. Suppose these panthers got together and decided to play a joke on you. Whenever you walk anywhere, they line up and hide in the bushes and growl and scream and flash their teeth at you. The first time this happens, you are scared out of your mind; you think your life is about to end. You keep walking - or running, probably - to your destination, and it happens again - and again - and again! The whole time, you are on the verge of a heart attack, and when you finally reach whatever part of the rain forest you're trying to get to, you're out of breath, panicked, and confused. What's with the jungle today?! But one of the nice panthers pulls you aside and says "Look, none of us is going to eat you, so you don't have to worry about that. However, I'll be honest. We think it's hilarious to see you jump back in terror, and we're kind of addicted to it. So whenever you go anywhere, we're going to keep doing this." That first night, you can't sleep. You're terrified. For a few days, you don't go anywhere, because you just hate the feeling of adrenaline surges, horror, anxiety, and near-miss heart palpitations. Then you tell yourself: They're not going to kill you. Just ignore them and get to where you're going. And you try it. And at first, of course, it's really scary. I mean, these are huge, loud panthers! But then you get used to it. You're always slightly on edge, but you've trained yourself to ignore panther-growling, teeth-flashing, and all of their nasty tricks.

This is what living in the urban environment is like. The buildings (probably) aren't going to kill you; the taxis (probably) aren't going to kill you; the fast-walking, angry-looking pedestrians usually won't kill you either. But you're always on edge. You've trained yourself to ignore all those false alarms, but there is a constant background noise of underlying tension.

The point is this: It takes a lot of mental energy to filter out (ignore) potential environmental threats, so that your brain can believe it's living in the world it wants to live in (a word that is not arrayed against you, its host). Wouldn't it be much more efficient - and conducive to mental energy - to shape the environment so that, in reality, it's not threatening, nor does it seem threatening? So that the mind doesn't have to filter anything out, and thus it can devote that energy to creative pursuits instead?

Just some thinking-out-loud on a few themes I'm trying to develop in more detail with the novel ...

Love,
graham