A Strong Unifying Cultural Image, Why?
Correcting Fragmentation
The model corrects overly fragmented views of the self by describing both the body and the mind (which in recent decades have been so finely differentiated that they now seem dissociated) by the same set of concepts. It uses space literally for the body and metaphorically/figuratively for the mind. Our concepts of bodily space are not only demonstrable facts of our physical existence but also important organizing structures that permeate our concepts in science, mathematics, economics, art, our inner self, our interpersonal relations and ethics, our social systems, our philosophy, our relationship with nature and with the transcendent. At a glance, the model shows us the unity of our lives in a single image/metaphor, but, when necessary, we can unpack its details to reflect many aspects of our experience. I believe that we intuitively grasp the existence of the MetaSelf model, implicit as it is in our body and in our English figures of speech, but until we see it explicitly spelled out, we are apt to feel flustered and dizzy when confronted by philosophical riddles about how the body and mind or spirit can be connected. We therefore fall into believing that these metaphors are scattered miscellaneous straws we grasp at when drowning. Only when we look at a whole collection of straws, as I have tried to do over the last nine years, do we see enough of their patterns to understand why we ordinarily trust them to make sense of the world.
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