From our earliest days we have all been cartographers. In the crib we mapped our hands, our caretaker’s face, our sleeping area. As we became more aware and independent, we mapped our dwelling in an ever-expanding worldview. From our homes we mapped outward to property, neighborhood, district, region, and world. All our mental maps bear the marks of associations: Details, thoughts, events, and emotions have all attached themselves to our mental maps. This is where I played. This is where I shopped. This is where I met my friend, or lover, or enemy. This is my route from point A to point B. This is one of my favorite spots.
In our active brains mental maps change. We revise our maps because of real and false memories, rational thinking, episodic learning, enculturation, study, attitude, affinities, and by the infusion of current or changing circumstances, emotions, concepts, and attitudes. We also alter our mental maps by forgetting details, a process that makes unreliable records of our personal historical geography.
However flawed they are as representations of reality, mental maps still serve as templates for behavior and attitude. We act as we have mapped. In certain settings we are assertive; in others, deferential. In a place we have mentally mapped we are cognizant of a “proper attitude” associated with that place: Wildness on the beach at spring break, reverence at the worship site, trepidation in the “bad neighborhood,” sophistication in the “ritzy neighborhood,” fear near the ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.
The places we have mentally mapped are those whose details we learned through either direct experience or vicarious experience. I never, for example, visited Chernobyl, but I would not visit the site because I know it was contaminated during the nuclear accident. My mental map of Chernobyl comes with a warning.
So, how have you mapped your life? What are the attitudes you associate with the places you know either directly or indirectly? How have those attitudes been shaped by time, experience, and forgetfulness?
All of us believe we are meticulous cartographers until we revisit those places we originally explored. We change, and our maps change with us.
In our active brains mental maps change. We revise our maps because of real and false memories, rational thinking, episodic learning, enculturation, study, attitude, affinities, and by the infusion of current or changing circumstances, emotions, concepts, and attitudes. We also alter our mental maps by forgetting details, a process that makes unreliable records of our personal historical geography.
However flawed they are as representations of reality, mental maps still serve as templates for behavior and attitude. We act as we have mapped. In certain settings we are assertive; in others, deferential. In a place we have mentally mapped we are cognizant of a “proper attitude” associated with that place: Wildness on the beach at spring break, reverence at the worship site, trepidation in the “bad neighborhood,” sophistication in the “ritzy neighborhood,” fear near the ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.
The places we have mentally mapped are those whose details we learned through either direct experience or vicarious experience. I never, for example, visited Chernobyl, but I would not visit the site because I know it was contaminated during the nuclear accident. My mental map of Chernobyl comes with a warning.
So, how have you mapped your life? What are the attitudes you associate with the places you know either directly or indirectly? How have those attitudes been shaped by time, experience, and forgetfulness?
All of us believe we are meticulous cartographers until we revisit those places we originally explored. We change, and our maps change with us.
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