A Visual Aid by Peter Carleton
How are we to visualize an overall picture of what it is
to be human when life is so dauntingly complex? Faced with
economic struggles and cultural diversity; bodily needs and
unresolved inner conflicts; our private relationships and wider
social responsibilities; our place in the natural environment
and in some larger spiritual dimension -- How are we to keep our
sights trained on values that transcend all this?
I believe we might benefit from having a powerful visual
aid, and I'd like to share the basic elements of one that I have
put together and find very helpful. Like most philosophical
tools, it provides no specific recommendations, but it does
summarize important values and facets of life and it does
represent them in an integrated visual way.
This visual aid is implicit in our everyday spatial figures
of speech. For example, in talking about power, we use phrases
like "top dog" and "underdog," being "one up" and "putting
someone down." Power is over something, or we are under its
control. Many such fragments of spatial speech and the concepts
they represent come together in a single memorable image.
Let's look at some more examples of how our body's vertical
axis organizes the way we talk. In speaking of social class, we
use high, middle, low and under-. With quantity and quality, up
tends to mean more, down tends to mean less. Mood and energy
can be high or low, up or down. Being "upset" (literally, far off
one's upright axis) means being too emotional to function really
well, but upright describes someone who is virtuous, honest,
stable and just. One needs both to be down to earth and to have
high ethics.
Now look at our left/right axis, which is closely related
to our body's sense of balance. We speak of balancing the two
sides of an equation and of balancing account books, which are
ideas about equality. Our form of government has checks and
balances. Justice and fair trade, in which the interests of
competing parties are balanced, are embodied in the image of the
scale. Additionally, motion from left to right frequently
indicates narrative time, as in a comic strip.
The third axis of the body, from front to back, is also
used for time; our front is associated with the future, our back
with the past. Looking forward is anticipating progress, looking
back is reminiscing or reconsidering. The front is where we
usually interact with people. We face them with the virtue of
courage, and turn away when we fear them, reject them or ignore
them, or know them so well that we trust them. Being "upfront"
means not keeping things hidden from someone, while the "back
of the mind" is figurative for deep memory and the unconscious.
The three axes of the body are also the three dimensions of
formal geometry and practical measurement. They are essential to
the way artists and architects render perspective, and they
structure the pages of books, the columns and lines on computer
screens, and many graphs of scientific correlations.
When one adds the contrast between inside and outside to
these three perpendicular axes, the result is a 3-D model -- a
simple square box-frame with a clear front cover and an opaque
wood back that hangs on the wall. Here's a sketch.
The box-frame is a template for many of our common spatial
metaphors. Its vertical and left/right axes are paralleled by
its edges and are roughly indicated by the four screws that hold
it together. Its third axis is marked by a screw in the wall on
which the assembly hangs. We might see such a box-frame in a
scientific or artistic exhibition. But the important thing is
that, even without content, its structure takes on figurative
spatial meaning as a model of the human self.
The clear front volume of the box is the conscious, clear,
rational part of the mind. The board is the body, the site of
our bodily feelings. And the shadowed recess behind the box-
frame is our deep memory and unfulfilled unconscious needs. We
want the frame to be level on the wall, just as we ourselves
want to be levelheaded and to play on level playing fields. It's
really pretty simple: our bodily structure is the real source of
hundreds of metaphors describing our thinking, personal
character, and social virtues. The box-frame is a neat, easily
sketched reminder of this fact.
Let's take a look at the spaces along the front/back axis
of the model. We'll start with the space between the viewer in
the exhibition room and the box-frame on the wall. This space is
what goes on between one person and another. Compassion can
then be conceptualized as a combination of putting oneself in
another person's position and also staying centered and helpful
in one's own -- a version of doing unto others as you would have
them do unto you. Larger social interactions can be imagined
among several viewers and box-frames around the room.
Now we come to the clear front plane of the box, which
represents the boundary of the self, a protecting and
restraining divider. The space inside the front is the conscious
mind, which contains scientific or artistic images of the world.
The first reflects mostly the world out in front, the second
reflects proportionally more of the world deeper within the
self.
The paint on the backboard is the "persona" or mask we put
on to face the world. The board itself is the locus of bodily
feelings and drives; its three structural axes are adopted by
the acrylic cover, much in the way that the mind builds mental
space metaphorically on literal bodily space. Behind the board,
as mentioned above, is a shadowed recess that is figurative for
the deep memory and the unconscious (the Jungian shadow).
Now we come to the wall, which represents any system within
which we operate and on which we are dependent: dependency
can be explained literally as "supported by" and "hanging down
from." This system may be a small family, an organization, a
nation, an ecosystem, the entire Earth or even the whole natural
universe.
The space beyond the room carries a variety of important
figurative meanings that are spiritual or religious. It's the
"beyond" of death, heaven, and the transcendent. It can be seen
as the whole that is greater than the sum of all the parts in
the room, or as the One that comes out of many. To some it will
be the figurative location of nothingness, the unknown, or of
alternative realities. People have very different views on these
matters, but perhaps we can communicate better about them if
we concentrate first on the spatial language we use for them.
Different activities address problems along different parts
of this front/back axis. The social section between or among
people (including their protective front planes) is a question
of rights and justice, reflected in the ideals of safety and a
level playing field: who is one-up, who is one-down in the
competitive arena? Laws, regulations and government attempt to
address large scale matters here, while on a smaller scale
people bargain, resolve conflicts and exchange forgiveness.
Skills, techniques, procedures and conventions, both
artistic and scientific, govern the cognitive functions
symbolized by the front of the box. The painted front of the
backboard is the plane of "image," "looks" and "face." It both
covers and reveals the feelings experienced in the body, as well
as those that have been repressed (pressed back) into the
imaginary space behind the body plane (called the shadow or
dark side). Of course this space may actually contain good parts that
were unacceptable and unsafe, especially in childhood. To become
aware of these hidden parts and "bring out" their good
potential, one may need a special setting of caring, safety and
love, like meditation, prayer, counseling, somatic therapy, etc.
As we saw, the connection of the box-frame to the wall
represents the self's dependency on a system bigger than the
actors in the room. Moreover, the way the box-frame hangs from
the wall evokes the way humanity has taken natural materials
and built them up into artificial environments on which we all now
depend. We no longer stand directly on Mother Earth.
Finally, the segment of the front/back axis that extends
outside the room can represent the part of life that is
addressed by religious and spiritual practices, or by more
informal experiences of the transcendent. In a sense, the whole
length of the front/back axis constitutes the spirit -- the
connection between society, the self, nature and all that is
still larger, greater, and more mysterious. This axis runs
through all the planes of the self: relationships, boundary,
thinking and expression, persona, body and sensation, the
unconscious, the systems one belongs to (including nature), and
finally the transcendent that surrounds us on all sides.
This model is broadly interdisciplinary, with elements of
mathematics, science, art, psychology, ethics and spirituality,
all expressed through a bodily structure we all share. It avoids
emphasizing differences of race, religion, ethnicity and
appearance, making it a framework for discussion across social
divisions.
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