Live on a Bigger Map

How do we navigate the disorientation of living in industrial society?

How do we rectify the gap between reality, and the systems we've built to represent it?

Why do we follow straight lines if the universe around us is curved?

It helps to remember that consciousness is a map.

A jumble of nodes and conduits - both in the architecture of the brain and in how it collects, collates, and represents sensory input.

Each human brain builds the world around it. Sound by sound. Sight by sight. Room by room. Block by block.

Reality grows as we do.

It expands with our experience - physically, intellectually, emotionally.

Watch out for the tyranny of the straight line.

Riding too straight means you see only a narrow strip of reality.

You have to leave the main trail again and again and again to see the wild complexity and simplicity and horror and beauty around you.

Because we don't know what we don't know.

And the only way to expand our perception of reality is to push on the edges and go somewhere new. Physically, intellectually, or emotionally.

I believe in progress. I believe that human beings can grow up into something wonderful, by taking all the stuff we hold in the shadow and talking it through.

I believe we can build rational systems that more accurately mirror reality, and remind us that they are just systems.

In order to do this, each of us must individually become responsible for exploring the reality around us so that we can all live on a bigger map.

Up Next: Wandering is Good for You