YOU ARE IN MY SPOT
Saturday, Oct. 12, 2019
We live in one spot.
Sure, some of us travel – but then we return to our spot*.
Some people move, but not much. Not far, not often.
Some vagabonds, but mostly we find our spot and settle there.
Find a globe – put your finger on your spot. Now, look for places you’ve been (your temporary spots) and return to the spot where you’ve spent most of your life. If being 1/7.5 billionth didn’t make you feel small enough, check out your cumulative spot-sizes compared to your entire globe.
Most of us hold views and cast ballots based on what is best for our country, about what is essential for the world as we see it from our rather comfortable and familiar spot.
We have very little evidence of anything beyond self-experienced research and seeing things through our lens, from our spot. We rely on information from others. But who are those others? How big are their spots? We live in a highly connected information-rich world where most of us know more and more about fewer and fewer things – because it is no longer sufficient in life to be a ‘general’ anything.
The way we can be citizens of earth in the 21st century – ho pefully the 22nd too – is to make connections with places and people , to understand those spots. Futurists might recommend a virtu al reality headset trip as a way to get there. Sure, fine, do that. Can’t hurt.
B ut isn’t that just a new technology for seeing a documentary ?
We need to do more than connect dots.
We need to connect spots.
My spot, connected to your spo t, and so on.
*written with thanks and reference to Jim Parsons/Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory – you gotta love that metaphor, a theoretical physicist who researches the origins of matter and the massive universe, is fixated on his spot.
