Take off your glasses...

I am concerned, worried, about the cultural lenses with which we are forced to view the world depending on how we choose to look at the world and who is and isn't at the table when we choose to look. My eyes ache in fact. I went to an event - the format was a debate - i was at a government event a few weeks ago with the same format - a debate. At both events i got this creeping sense that a debate sets up the frame for argument in a way that sets up an artifice of us and them, simultaneusly creating positions against which opposites seek to protect and attack. Debate forces us (and them) into discussions about polar opposites - black and white, terrorism and security, able bodied and disabled - which are probably artificial but help the mind think it is making sense and seeing things clearly. It moves us away from possibility and from much needed fresh ideas and divergent thinking.

What are we missing when we engage in this way? Everything in between - everything that cannot be defined and is unknown (but necessary - the vernacular and the tacit) and crucially depends on the presence of the other. There is something about saying 'we' that conjoins and circumvents 'us and them' like we are all included and a neccessary part of a whole rather than a cake sliced in two or multiple versions of ethnicities, class and gender and other others that are yet to be defined. How can we belong to a whole rather than these artificial fragments? where is home - where we are treated as equals and the assumption is that everyone has something to contribute.

When the debate ended 'we' (who were frustrated at the slicing of the cake) started thinking about what's missing - what would we want to see/hear/ participate in - what can we bring to the table collectively that binds us rather than divides us?

I have been thinking about this a great deal lately and experiencing it in everyday life and getting surprised again and again that it keeps resurfacing. One of the things i noticed was to do with language. When i make up stories for my niece i always have her as the main character in the story - which thrills her - i have her full attention - the main character bears her name and she listens intently and asks me to tell the story again and again (mutant versions abound). Other times i tell a story and she acts out the main character and what the main character does - takes on that characters persona - and we fall about laughing as the character that she inhabits starts influencing the story and making my storytelling flow in other directions that i could never have imagined - a kind of call and response collaboration that draws on her memory and mine, that resonates with us both because we are both participating and creating in the moment. Anyhow - i thought i'd touch base with her and retell some elements of the story by writing to her and in writing to her i realised a dichotomy - when i write 'i', i mean me, when she reads 'i' she will assume i am talking about her. there is this dichotomy of 'i' and 'you' in language - and i wonder at what point do kids make the connection of being able to unconsciously switch between not understanding this and to understanding and adopting it and seamlessly integrating it into reading and writing. In being the teller of a story from a first person perspective, the 'i' is the owner and the 'you' is the listener. how often in conversations when we say 'you' do we actually mean 'i'?

The artist, katya sander, who was on the panel at the last event articulated something around this in her artistic creation of some badges with the words 'if you read this, i'll give it to you (but then you must wear it)' written on them. Through exchange of the badge from one person to another there is a switch of the 'i' and the 'you'. But i think this was lost in the frame of the dialogue in which she was constantly asked to tell us about how things were in denmark like she was representative of the whole of denmark - as one guy remarked in the audience - "i feel we are falling into a trap" and avoiding the real and interesting areas for discussion by this distraction of talking about Britishness and white and black. And the good ideas die a death as we try to understand the increasing smart questions that people pose (and subsequently have to explain because they are theories that they want to disprove and the question is a trick or a trap that the 'asker' hopes the panel might fall into). Indeed they were all trapped.

Anyway it gave me some ideas about 'who is the other' and actually is the other just a reflection of me and all that i might be and might not be. I wonder which languages get around this dilemma. I think maths circumvents the problem through logic and reasoning but i need a mathematician to back this up.

I think there is a connection in particle physics, conceptually at least, to the Higgs boson particle that is yet to be observed. Scientists think it exists but it hasn't been seen yet - and it begs the question - and by thinking about that conundrum, by analogy, i have reached a question - is the mechanism with which we are trying to see the whole picture truly objective or is there something about the act of 'looking' that prevents us from seeing what is there? Time poses a problem here - how long can you be looking to ensure that you don't miss the thing that you are looking for and what if we just assume that it exists and is a necessary part of binding us together and allowing things to fall apart over time? how can we measure multiple interactions that all contribute to what happens next?

Maths, physics and storytelling - different ways to explore and explain the universe. I wonder does a story equate to a theory? Somehow we can be receptive to a story - it can bypass our intellect and we respond - a belly laugh might uncover a truth or proof of something we thought was there but had no evidence for. But who is counting the laughs? and who is laughing!?