Being-in-PLACE

Cognitive science tells us. Doesn’t it follow that PLACE is important in our experience of life?

Where the body is, what place, is half of what contributes to knowing. A child surrounded by chaos, by neglect, by hunger is scarred; a school environment can blunt the impact; this is well understood.

And, a walk in nature, down a path by a stream with water splashing over rocks; this sensory experience  alters the brain’s functioning, if even for a short time.

The embodied brain is half our knowing, and it operates unconsciously through our senses. But what a difference the two different place experiences make in how our brains function.

The state of our environments, both natural and built, are troubling. And our thinking brains send stress signals through our bodies. Environmental destruction, the economy losing local jobs and friends moving away, the political climate, all tax the body, impacting our sensorium, altering the way our brains function.  

For most, the experience of living in this Age includes having our bodies assaulted daily by sensory inputs not of our choosing. Oh well, keep going. But then again, maybe not, our sensorium is experiencing more pain than delight.

In 2017, the AMA Journal published a story that 12.5% of American adults were alcoholics, likely dulling sensory inputs. Also in 2017 researchers with the National Health Interview Survey in a CNBC report said 14.3 percent of American adults were doing yoga (up from 9.5% in 2012); and 14.2 percent were meditating (up from 9.1 percent in 2012). With a little back of the envelop reckoning that’s 41 percent of American adults, and no telling what those numbers look like in quarantine.

Is ‘sense of place’ somehow related to the embodied brain?  

The cognitive science research that established our understanding of the embodied brain does not operate in the realm of everyday speech or folk wisdom. However other fields of research, philosophy, psychology, biophilia, architecture, anthropology to name a few, do use folk wisdom as a valid research input. And ‘sense of place’ as recognized in cognitive science does have a resonance with ‘sense of place’ as used in everyday speech. Here it implies that the identity of a place is known by a kind of intuition, by a complex sensory experience. This is a recognition of our sensory experience of place. Often artists are credited with an especially keen ‘sense of place.’ Sometimes, by a shift of emphasis, ‘sense of place’ means the place is distinctive and communicates its differences. The use of the term ‘sense of place’ confers approval: it’s good for a place to be distinctive, and it’s good for a person to be sensitive to differences among places.

‘Sense of place’ is not used to describe frightening, ugly, undesirable or ‘down and out’ places. That does not mean the experience of place is any less impactful for those there or traveling through. And there is a literary insult that is sometimes used by people, Gertrude Stein’s “there is no there, there.” Either way, place is a personal and a shared experience; in a sense a circular experience. The more the experience improves, the quality of place improves, improving the quality of life for people and community. As a being-in-place, enriching place is the royal road to a new wholeness.

And here is another interesting thing about the relationship between place, embodied brain, and knowing. “Research confirms that to develop a long term memory the brain must contain something of the place you were in when you had the experience. Place is central to the formation of our identities,” says Sarah Williams Goldhagen in Welcome To Your World.  So, the way our minds record something that matters to us requires that a memory of the place in which it happened in order for the memory to be recorded. This is because the recording memory pathway is the same pathway in the brain that is used for navigation. Making our way through life is like making our way through places.

What is it we want in place?

To find ourselves in place.

On New Years Eve, 2009, the New York Times published a tribute to places, a toast to them disappearing.

“Tonight, millions of Americans will raise a glass, sing the only three Scottish words they know and remember the past with an ineffable blend of sadness and delight …

But maybe we’ve reached nostalgia’s end. “Nostalgia” — made up of the Greek roots for “suffering” and “return” — is literally a longing for the places of one’s past. And lately, it has become harder and harder to find things to miss about America’s places.”

Creating takes place in a place – so does experiencing, loving, being