The Map is not the Territory

I was corresponding recently with a dear friend. We disagree on everything, but I am very fond of her. I suppose she's like a sister. Anyway, she had expressed some concern that her daughter had not shown any interest in returning to school and getting a degree (she spent a short time in the military after high school and is now in employment). I reassured her that there is nothing like working full-time to inspire an appreciation for academic life.

Later in my letter to her I was ranting (a bit) about the youth in my adopted home town. I live in a depressed area where there is little opportunity for advancement. Employment is predominantly seasonal, low-paid, and requires little education. It is therefore perhaps understandable that the local youth rarely choose to continue their studying, or if they do, it is strictly vocational. Adults appreciate the fact that the pace here is slower than in town. And some may see the lackadaisical attitude as a reflection of that. But I see it as more endemic, indicating a plague of listlessness and hopelessness. There are so few jobs which require one, there is little value placed on getting a university degree. A first in typing is more suitable. And why should you strive for more?

Since sending my email to my friend, I have been concerned that she might have misconstrued my disappointment with the people around me as an indictment of her own daughter who has, for the time being, eschewed education. This is of course not so. Everyone must choose their own path, and if her daughter wants to work and it makes her happy, then that is all I would wish for. Knowing my friend as I do, and knowing her blood flows through her daughter's veins, I fully expect that at some point she will want to do something else, something new, something more challenging. And she will likely look to education to fill the gap. Either she will happen upon a vocation she enjoys but hit a point where she can no longer progress without a degree, or she will decide (as I did, when I decided to learn to program computers) upon a career which requires specific vocational training, or perhaps she will just get bored and begin taking courses out of interest. And I recognize there are lots of ways to become educated - school, private tuition, reading, doing, watching the Discovery Channel. But I don't think for a moment that she will become like the young people I see here - cashing their unemployment cheques and haunting the chippies (in this context, "chippy" does not refer to a young female of questionable morals but rather to a popular enterprise offering fried fish and potato wedges). The ultimate difference, I told myself as I lay awake this morning, petting the cat, was in the need to know, to do, to understand more every day.

This last bit hit me quite deep. I've been working for years now to establish "my purpose" and I have identified many goals which, upon achievement, would give me great satisfaction. For instance, I hope one day to create a planned community which caters to every mental, physical, and spiritual need of the residents, one which does not require limitless wealth to enter, and one which empowers everyone who visits to reconsider their potential. One which boosts everyone up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you could say. Another goal is to eliminate - or at least try - homelessness amongst domesticated animals. I still hold on to these goals, but without a monstrous reliable income, I'm finding them rather difficult to pursue. In order to attain a goal, you must make one small movement in the right direction on a regular basis. I'm still stuck on number one - save enough money to buy a large piece of land which is appropriate for development. I work in the planning department, so I know all too well how unlikely this is - if I could find land I could afford, I couldn't put so much as a teepee on it, and if I found land I could build on I'd never be able to afford it. To that end my discretionary income wouldn't get me a mortgage on a parking space with a cardboard box on it.

But think about "to know, to do, to understand more each day" as a goal. Doesn't that sound totally do-able? It doesn't take much to know, do or understand more than yesterday. I can do that just by choosing my cable channels more carefully.

So what does that have to do with the title of the blog, you ask? Or maybe you don't ask, but if you're still reading, don't you want to know?

One of the main functions of the human brain is to make connections. Imagine for a moment, you are dropped in the middle of an unfamiliar town and told to find your way to your new home at 123 South Easy Street. You begin to explore, carefully at first. Maybe you establish where south is, and then where the streets switch from being called North to being called South. Then you look at the street names to see if there are any clues - some towns name their streets alphabetically, for instance. You begin to create, in your mind, a map of the town. When you eventually do find 123 South Easy Street, you know how you got there and, if dropped in the same place tomorrow, you will have a much easier time getting home. You haven't created the territory, that was here already, but you have created a map, an image in your mind, to make sense of it. You might even be able to draw a rough sketch of how to get from the middle of town to your house. Not to scale, but with all the turns and landmarks indicated.

But imagine if your brain could not make connections, could not compile and categorise and evaluate new information. You're dropped in the middle of town, and, after wandering for an indefinite period of time, you do find 123 South Easy Street. And tomorrow, you're dropped in the middle of town, and you're no better off than you were yesterday. You haven't learned anything from your experience. NLP'ers have a saying, "the map is not the territory." The map is everything you understand about the world. The territory is the world itself. You can't know anything about the territory unless you have learned something about it, somehow, either through a book, or a news story on TV, or your own or someone else's related experiences. I don't know anything about China, for instance, other than what I've read or been told or seen on TV, because I've never been there. My map is rather sketchy. But I grew up in Oklahoma, and I have a pretty detailed map of the town I grew up in, what different parts of the state are like, what makes the Midwest different from the South, and, because I have spent time on both coasts, what makes Coastal America different from The Heartland. My map is pretty good here. But I'm using the word "map" a bit too literally. It has nothing to do with geography. I like to read about different spiritual systems, what people believe and why. Although I cannot prove that my map is accurate, it is built from information gathered from hundreds of sources (isn't the internet wonderful?) and I have carefully pieced them together like a jigsaw in the hopes that I will be able then to understand the finished picture.

Sometimes, in order to make a new piece fit, I have had to take the scissors and cut the tab off an existing piece (haven't you always wanted to do that?). But only after checking how the two pieces would look together - one doesn't have a picture of a flower and the other waves - and making sure the existing piece works without the tab. It doesn't do any good to put pieces together just because they fit, they have to create a flow from one edge to the other, so that the petal which begins on one piece continues seamlessly onto the next. This is also my map of reality. So too is my study of history in high school, although I will be the first to admit this once healthy piece of fabric is now moth eaten to almost nothing. And literature, and nature, and the personal history of a coworker. This is my map of reality. It will never be exactly the same as anyone else's map of reality (although, the more two people share and agree on ideas and experiences, the more their maps will overlap and the more connected they will feel).

Which also explains why two people can so vehemently disagree about a "fact." We like to say, "you can't have an opinion on a fact." But a fact is rarely a discrete element. We say it is a fact that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But this isn't actually true. Ice will always melt at 32 degrees, but water has to freeze onto something (like the walls of your freezer, or, apparently, a particle of dust or soot or a passing airplane). It spontaneously freezes at -40 degrees Fahrenheit. The freezing point of water also depends on pressure (did you know that water in a vacuum will boil regardless of the temperature?). So there is really no such thing as a "fact." It is just a particle of information which is generally agreed to be true in a certain set of circumstances. If the "fact" is scientific, it has probably been subjected to careful experimentation and, like my water, there may be a great deal of information available on how that "fact" was tested and what factors render it invalid. However, other "facts," like my natural hair color, may never be tested and are, in fact, no more than educated guesses.

So back to my thesis. By knowing, doing, and understanding more than I did yesterday, I add to my map of reality. I increase my understanding of the map. And by doing so, hopefully, I get closer to knowing and understanding the territory.

If you haven't yet found your goal, feel free to borrow mine until you do.