MAKING SPACE INTO PLACE
In the last chapters of “Wayfinding” I have at last found the evidence I’ve been seeking for a long time. It explains why I was so attached to the idea of circuit riding as a religious enterprise and why I came eagerly to the prairie in the first place, particularly attracted to the peoples who had adjusted to the east slope ecotome in all its variations.
To follow the argument, you will need to understand two organs of human orientation, the hippocampus and the caudate nucleus. In addition to having two functions etc., they are twinned: two of each, one on each side. No one has explained this. Maybe an artifact of evolving from spined creatures, bilateral: two eyes, two ears, two brain hemispheres.
This line of thought is early, provisional, only partly tested, but both suggestive and attached to solid fMRI evidence about the response of brain gray matter to use in two theories of wayfinding. One is the more familiar hippocampus functions of memory and navigation that are known to be lost in the case of Alzheimers. The other is more basic and early in mammal thought: navigation by landmarks or habit. Surprisingly and dismayingly, the strong reliance on one way of functioning will diminish the ability of the other way.
Now the modern worry is that relying on something like GPS, which is more used by the caudate nucleus method, is eroding the human ability to access and activate the work of the hippocampus, a source of story and art. This flattening of modern minds, it seems to me, is changing the kind of people we are, making us more obedient, dependent, and vulnerable to addiction. In grade school and on through life, I’ve had a Chinese girl friend who was an example of this mindset and reading about Chinese culture has suggested that this is the preponderance of how people function there. It has always been frustrating to try to explain things like humanities to her. She prefers crafts and is good at them. She’s a sweet person and a dependable friend. I value her but there are things I can’t share.
To get something out of the way, I do see our loss of hippocampus functions by replacing them with caudate nucleus dependence on habit, gizmos like GPS and shorthand of cartoons and charts, as setting us up for the loss of reality checking and actual contact through hippocampus experiences we’ve been suffering. I see the extreme limitations of people like our senators to be shaped by their lack of living in any world not a vehicle or a highly furnished room, the same ones day after day. They simply have no reference for anything else. They are easily hooked on prestige, control and success — all symbolized by money.
The following quotes are from Google’s lists drawn from references. They are convenient short hand.
Hippocampus.
Hippocampus is a complex brain structure embedded deep into temporal lobe. It has a major role in learning and memory. It is a plastic and vulnerable structure that gets damaged by a variety of stimuli. Studies have shown that it also gets affected in a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders.
The hippocampus helps humans process and retrieve two kinds of memory, declarative memories and spatial relationships. Declarative memories are those related to facts and events. Examples include learning how to memorize speeches or lines in a play. Spatial relationship memories involve pathways or routes.
The hippocampal formation is at the same time a very plastic brain region and a very vulnerable one to insults such as head trauma, ischemia, seizures and severe stress. Circulating glucocorticoids and endogenous excitatory amino acids acting as neurotransmitters play important roles in both aspects.
The plasticity of the hippocampus is the reason for its vulnerability
Caudate nucleus:
These deep brain structures together largely control voluntary skeletal movement. The caudate nucleus functions not only in planning the execution of movement, but also in learning, memory, reward, motivation, emotion, and romantic interaction.
The caudate nucleus is a nucleus located within the basal ganglia of the brains of many animal species. The caudate, originally thought to primarily be involved with control of voluntary movement, is now known to be an important part of the brain’s learning and memory system.
The basal ganglia (including the caudate nucleus, the putamen, the globus pallidus, and the substantia nigra) lie over and to the sides of the limbic system, and are tightly connected with the cortex above them. They are responsible for repetitive behaviors, reward experiences, and focusing attention.
The poetry of all this is time and space running through a moving human to create “place” which is a kind of meaning. The premise is that what the hippocampus can do probably evolved during the Pleistocene when the early people survived by hunting and gathering — on foot. This built an intelligence in them that drew on the caudate nucleus but didn’t necessarily let it dominate. More weight was on story, depiction, acting out, participation. This continues to be characteristic of prairie people, but particularly in the persisting remnants of the early culture in ceremonies and dances.
Of course, people with these capacities who don’t use them will feel them fade away. I was always frustrated that the UU people I served when circuit-riding most often failed to relate to where they were. The year I served the Browning Methodists went better, because they didn’t define themselves as more sophisticated by relating closer to the Boston headquarters, which they imagined to be superior people rather than the usual bureaucrats.
Because my thoughts, readings and experiences have aligned with each other and fit with the incredible new knowledge of everything, it has not been a time when I’ve had to struggle to justify changes and surprises, far more than dissolving theism on through emptying the assumptions of the Enlightenment. I began with a list of intensely meaningful moments — vividly described as experiences that I tried to understand, describe and justify. That continues, but it is not a process that shares well with people terrified of change. They need successful transformations, both felt and in stories.
