Science-technology-and-industry has enabled us to be precise (apparently) in describing objects that are extremmely small and near or extremely large and far away. It has failed utterly to provide us with even adequate descriptions of the places and communities we live in - probably because it cannot do so. There are scientists, one must suppose, who know all about atoms or molecules or genes, or galaxies or planets or stars, but who do not know where they are geographically, historically, or ecologically. Our schools are turning out millions of graduates who do not know, in this sense, where they are.
Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle
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My brain feels solid after a day wayfaring on the wheels; finding my way, checking the maps I bring with me, checking landmarks, hill-lines, even listening to the landscape, whether it be roads with cars on them or rivers and streams, or the absence of both.
It may be a little exhausted, this little brain, but it is solid nonetheless, as if you had just done a major workout at the gym, except here the muscle is in your brain, more specifically, in a little area responsible for navigation called the entorhinal cortex.
This cortex is related to memory, in particular spatial memory. In 2005 it was discovered that the EC contains a neural map of the spatial environment in rats. And if you've ever kept a rat, you'll know how explorative they are. In short, it is thought that the EC in humans works in a similar way to other animals. I have always maintained to those who simply dismiss rats as 'rodents' or 'vermin' that they are great navigators, like humans used to be, seafarers, wayfarers, trekkers, et al.
Now however, progress and technology has forced most of us (the dimwitted who accept without questioning) to outsource these natural talents for navigation, our vision, our hearing, our finding our way by ourselves or by using tools that enhance our search and not annihilate it entirely.
The EC, like any 'muscle', requires exercise in order not to atrophy. Yet, faced with gadgets and gizmos which do the work for us, atrophy it has to the point where we no longer know where we are... spiritually, physically, existentially, metaphysically....
And if you don't know where you are, well, problems are never far away. Problems like ecological devastation, economic destitution, and human desolation (loneliness, alienation, confusion, self-loathing... etc.). Indeed, it has been suggested that the onset of Alzheimer's disease and various neurological disorders are a direct result of our lack of presencing and not knowing where we are. Effectively, dementia is a state of mindlessness (de-mented, removed from Mind), resulting from our kowtowing to an economic system that is neither economic nor eco-minded; it is a result of our outsourcing our own locomotive forces to machines, and outsourcing our own mental energies to technologies that do it for us... Kowtowing to convention it would appear is fraught with danger. Of course, the converse is also true: that the harder people try in building cognitive maps of space, the stronger their underlying memory circuits become. As Nicholas Carr writes in The Glass Cage: Where Automation is Taking Us, this practice can actually 'grow gray matter in the hippocampus - a p[henomenon documented in London cab drivers - in a way that's analogous to the building of muscle mass through physical exertion.
Veronique Bohbot, a research psychiatrist and memory expert at the University of Montreal warns us that today's over-technologized society is the road to entorhinal and hippocampal ruin, and thus the road to our ruin:
Carr himself states based on the information gathered by various experts in the field that:
One could thus conclude that, in terms of knowing where we are, and re-membering the self in all its intricate complexity, Memory (with a big M) is thus a matter of locomoting-navigating, thinking and moving, under our own steam, and not allowing anyone else to do it for us.
This cortex is related to memory, in particular spatial memory. In 2005 it was discovered that the EC contains a neural map of the spatial environment in rats. And if you've ever kept a rat, you'll know how explorative they are. In short, it is thought that the EC in humans works in a similar way to other animals. I have always maintained to those who simply dismiss rats as 'rodents' or 'vermin' that they are great navigators, like humans used to be, seafarers, wayfarers, trekkers, et al.
Now however, progress and technology has forced most of us (the dimwitted who accept without questioning) to outsource these natural talents for navigation, our vision, our hearing, our finding our way by ourselves or by using tools that enhance our search and not annihilate it entirely.
The EC, like any 'muscle', requires exercise in order not to atrophy. Yet, faced with gadgets and gizmos which do the work for us, atrophy it has to the point where we no longer know where we are... spiritually, physically, existentially, metaphysically....
And if you don't know where you are, well, problems are never far away. Problems like ecological devastation, economic destitution, and human desolation (loneliness, alienation, confusion, self-loathing... etc.). Indeed, it has been suggested that the onset of Alzheimer's disease and various neurological disorders are a direct result of our lack of presencing and not knowing where we are. Effectively, dementia is a state of mindlessness (de-mented, removed from Mind), resulting from our kowtowing to an economic system that is neither economic nor eco-minded; it is a result of our outsourcing our own locomotive forces to machines, and outsourcing our own mental energies to technologies that do it for us... Kowtowing to convention it would appear is fraught with danger. Of course, the converse is also true: that the harder people try in building cognitive maps of space, the stronger their underlying memory circuits become. As Nicholas Carr writes in The Glass Cage: Where Automation is Taking Us, this practice can actually 'grow gray matter in the hippocampus - a p[henomenon documented in London cab drivers - in a way that's analogous to the building of muscle mass through physical exertion.
Veronique Bohbot, a research psychiatrist and memory expert at the University of Montreal warns us that today's over-technologized society is the road to entorhinal and hippocampal ruin, and thus the road to our ruin:
Society is geared in many ways toward shrinking the hippocampus. In the next twenty years, think we're going to see dementia occurring earlier and earlier.
Carr himself states based on the information gathered by various experts in the field that:
It may well be that the brain's navigational sense - its ancient, intricate way of plotting and recording movement through space - is the evolutionary font of all memory.
One could thus conclude that, in terms of knowing where we are, and re-membering the self in all its intricate complexity, Memory (with a big M) is thus a matter of locomoting-navigating, thinking and moving, under our own steam, and not allowing anyone else to do it for us.
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