A TRUE Experience

TimbuktuIn Yi-Fu Tuan’s ‘Intimate Experiences of Place’ chapter, he explores the notion of skewed reality.

Tuan states that “evaluations and judgments tend to be clichés. The data of the senses are pushed under in favor of what one is taught to see and admire.” In addition, “thinking creates distance” Tuan is thus, pointing out the rarity of having a ‘real’ experience with a place.

Reading this reminded me of Walter Lippmann’s book, Public Opinion. Lippmann provides examples of impediments to the “actual environment”, including our scanty attention levels, the poverty of language, distractions, unconscious constellations of feeling, monotony, and the obscurity and complexity of facts themselves. He also states that “even the eyewitness does not bring back a naïve picture of the scene..” because our senses are arbitrary and visual perceptions are complicated by tricks of memory and imagination.

Although Lippmann is focused on a more general idea of ‘truth’, both he and Tuan successfully note possible obstructions to truth whether that is in reference to a place or situation.

Luckily, Tuan says that we can still have a true experience, “In a new setting ,[where] we are forced to see and think without the whole world of known sights, sounds, and smells.[…]

Good luck!