When I was young, maybe 6-8, my family lived in a house with a significant field behind it. For those years this field was my playground. I built paths through the tall grass from the garage to the woods a few acres back. I would spend all afternoon back there, forging away through through my imagination and any scenario that would come to mind. ANYTHING was possible as it was all created. Now my world is made of concrete and brick. New paths are roads I have never walked on and the noise and chaos, as beautiful as it is, keeps my eyes pegged to the walkway looking three steps ahead for oncoming bicycles and pedestrians.

Harvey Cox once defined pre-modern man as living in a magical glen where the very rocks and trees had fiendish properties that would either make or break you. The Babylonian prophetesses of Ishtar would partake in ritual copulation, hoping their act would inspire the gods of rain to do their work. The cave drawings of Lascaux, France are said to be a form of sympathetic magic, meaning the act of drawing one’s self killing an animal inspired the action to occur in reality. The point is that for so long humanity saw itself as a series of interactions between nature and humanity. Neither one controlled, but both played a part in what became. Nature was every bit as alive as flesh and blood.

There is something overwhelming about the outdoors: the organic systems in place, the flow of material and energy (not necessarily in the new-age sense), the awareness of your fragility. You know that you can not control. When you are camping and cooking over a fire you have to first build something. You don’t just flip a switch. You can’t just turn on an oven. You have to perform an action. It is you interacting with what is around you.

When I’m in the woods I carry a knife. Not for defense, but because I’m beginning to believe it is symbolic. The tool is a segue between man and nature. It is a simple way of breaking a divide between who we are and what our species came from. It is difficult to consider and thoroughly grasp the idea that we are tied in with our ecosystem. We are told that.  We know that. But do we really know that? I for one, despite my experience outdoors, think in terms of man and nature. Two separate entities metaphorically separated at birth. But when you cut something real to build a fire you are changing the variables. You rely on it directly.

Being enchanted with nature is an old idea. Thoreau defined this poetically. He wanted to live deep, suck the marrow out off life. He wanted his interaction with the world around him to be meaningful. He wanted to take the actions that led to learning and find what he felt was missing. He is not alone. Why in a world of houses and hotels do people still camp? Why do people build fires on the beach? Why if we can see it on a screen would we step out in the cold to watch the northern lights? We are missing something deeply human.

When my parents lived in Alaska I visited a small pond behind their house a few times in the winter. At 40 below zero I laid down in a foot of snow and watched the sky for as long as I could take the cold. The sky was so bright and it was so quiet I could literally hear the snow land on my hood and around me. I felt so deeply satisfied.

I don’t have any problems with cities. I love the resources, the cultural events, people, and interesting food. But it isn’t enough. We, or I, need to be outside among the trees.

Truth and fact are two words that seem synonymous initially. However, in thinking over these words it seems they operate at different semiotic levels. At a surface level, fact is set in stone. It is not changeable, it is the reality of the situation. Truth is a little more subjective. The meaning is a little more idiosyncratic. Something can be true without being a fact.

For example, look at the scandals brewing around a few of Oprah’s book selections, mainly the latest Angel at the Fence. Author Herman Rosenblat wrote of his time in a concentration camp and of meeting his now wife from opposite sides of the fence. In truth only about 40% of his story checks out, according to the investigative reporter taking credit for the find. In fact, once news broke and he admitted to how little of his story was accurate the book was pulled from shelves and discontinued. If this book was published as fiction or even historical fiction a controversy never would have arisen. What is interesting to me about this is the reliance on truth as being fact and fiction as being imagined.

Closely related to the division between truth and fact is the subject of myth. Commonly understood to be the stories of ancient Greek gods or the mythology of some obscure people groups, myths are quite common and can relate to any set of words in which a meaning is attributed. We carry personal mythologies about our experiences and relationships, making the events we participate in more concrete and satisfying.

What is strange about myth is that it is outside the boundaries of fact and fiction. We live by myths  recognizing them as not “factual” but partially true, or culturally important. An apple a day will not keep the doctor away, but eating vegetables and fruit will go a long way towards healthy living. Working hard does not always mean you will succeed, but it is a good step in the right direction.

Roland Barthes once said, “Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflection.” It makes me wonder, are we looking for a deeper expression of being alive by living vicariously through those who have experienced unimaginable circumstances? Is the day-to-day a dream world of repetition leaving fantastic circumstances as the only real world around us? Perhaps the experiences of a “hero” allow for the inflection of reality we crave - the hero’s story gives meaning to our personal circumstances.

According to some researchers, our brains have not evolved, or adapted to understand media such as television, and even to a lesser degree, books. For all intents and purposes what we see, read, and hear is to us real. Why do we get emotional or aroused at sights and scenes in movies? We know it isn’t real. But do we really know it isn’t real?

Why does it matter if it is factual? Isn’t the deeper meaning of a story of love and survival the love and survival of the characters? Is it, for entertainment’s sake, important to know if the details are completely true, or is the idea of the story the part that we need and are desperately looking for? If a story gives hope to people who have in many ways given up on ancient mythologies, is that hope then factual rather than fictional? If a story becomes part of a cultural consciousness, is it then true even if the details don’t match up?

In this sense religion takes a strange position. Taken more to claims of absolute inerrancy then the spirit of a text, it seems we do not want to believe something unless we can believe in it as testable and provable - even in questions of divinity. The Evangelical Christian doctrine of scriptural inerrancy is a perfect example. In order to counter claims of historical criticism and evolutionary development, a hard line approach was taken. The text has in some ways been reduced to a set of defined standards and convictions rather than a living, breathing document. How much of the mystery and meaning is lost in the pursuit of testable and provable theorems?

What we have lost in the era of investigative journalism and scientific determinism is the ability to see outside of the fact/fiction dichotomy. The myth is understood to be simply fiction  placed into categories for easy consumption by literary students and scholars. But what if we looked at Rosenblat’s story from another direction. What if the book should be published under the banner of a myth as a third category of literature? It may or may not be true yet the ideas presented are human and necessary.

What is more important - to prove something as historically inaccurate and defend the claim to the death or indugle in the very human act of experience and of finding meaning?

True to form I’ve been splitting my time between two books. The first, How We Decide is a pop psych/neuroscience overview of the latest and greatest ideas as to how we process information. Author Jonah Lehrer, a 28 year old science writer (jealous anyone?) is an easy to read and a well thought out writer. What strikes me most so far in the book is the topic of emotions and the importance they play in the decision making process. We process an overwhelming amount of information on a regular basis. We continually evaluate the positives and negatives of every situation. It turns out, from what scientists have found, emotions actually play a critical role in the decision making process. Emotions help us decide by showing preference. To take this a step further, when people for one reason or another loose the ability to use their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the part of the brain that is known for emotional processing, a few abilities become unavailable. First, they become unemotional and unattached. They cease to find connections between themselves and others and actually loose the ability to remember faces. The second is is the ability to make decisions. They will spend hours studying menus in deciding where to eat – scouting out the table arrangement, staffing, and location. In the end they are incapable of choosing based on preference. This has led scientists to understand the role emotion plays in the decisions we make.

For the last few years I’ve been pretty hard on emotions. I generally feel that America is a hyper- emotional culture. We purchase based on a feeling, form relationships on a sensation, and eat until we can not walk because of a desire. From movies to Hollywood romance, emotional sensation is greatly accelerated as though hyped up on steroids. But these emotions are something we can not do without. Unlike the post-apocalyptic-dystopic thriller Equilibrium, set in a world in which all humans are required to take a medication in order to control all emotional impulses, as these were seen as the origin of war, emotions and rationality are both necessary. The complexities of the brain necessitate the balance of opposing factors in the mind.

The irony in our current situation is the extreme to which emotions are carried out and trusted 100%. We listen closely and react to “what we feel”, not asking why we feel. Balance is much more difficult to obtain. Look at food consumption in the US for example. The draw towards fast food is completely biological. We have a natural propensity to consume sugar, salt, and fat whenever possible due to the limitations of these items in naturally occurring systems. Our bodies crave these foods as traditionally humans did not know when they would get it next. Now that fat and sugar are available all the time and salt is on every table, how do we keep up with the changes? Our genes have not transitioned to our lifestyle and culture, leading some researchers to suggest that 1 out of every 3 children under 20 will develop diabetes in their lifetime. Heart disease is at an all time high, and cancer is a story in every household. Beyond physical biology, clothing, electronics, and other purchases are seen as satisfying to purchase. But as any one has learned, this is a momentary impulse. In face, the brain is chemically rewarded (essentially you obtain a natural high) much more for a purchase than for the owning of the product.

Is this why Buddhism is such a growing trend in American culture? The simplicity of serenity in the midst of chaos and the ability to control one’s self in an indulgent culture is irresistible. According to Progressive Policy Institute, Buddhism is the fastest growing religion among native born Americans. The irony in this situation is that the chief goal of Buddhism is the eradication of suffering. Though Americans do suffer, I think the draw towards Buddhism has more to do with “future shock”, or the inability to deal with the trappings of modern culture. The more advanced and technologically connected we become, the more susceptible it is to retreat internally. The more purchasing power we obtain the more we realize it does not satisfy basic human cravings for satisfaction. The most logical option is to find a place in which your mind can take a vacation.

More on the other book to come…