Expansion

Narrowing is happening everywhere. Disciplines of study look at smaller and smaller areas. Specialties in every field create distance from the big picture by the specific detail they study. People are often narrowing their personal group and guiding ideas. This is possibly a response to fear. Even when we know the news story in all its details, wars, shootings, disease, with every dramatic horror, the media swamps every outlet with endless discussion that generates more fear. We may know the primary characters in the drama, but never who is making money off it other than the media and the arms industry. The way it fits into a larger picture and how a broader understanding might lead to better solutions does not feed the machine, so we are trapped in our chairs, hidden from exposure lest we are somehow fingered as the enemy. The destruction industry is very powerful and is now turning attention to important government structures that though far from perfect have given us a framework to work with competing viewpoints. Facts are at war with alternative facts, our sophisticated brains drowning in simplifying contradictory symbols. Yet creating is still happening. Artists all over the world bring insight and the emotional significance of events. Gaining perspective is a task for images. Antagonisms are built from limiting the evidence, avoiding whatever shows how a different group sees things. We need to see more of how things are interconnected. I recently heard someone on the radio say that banning books was an effort to decrease empathy. Stories create context, allows others into the circumstances behind events. Stories about people different from the familiar group help us understand them better, sympathize with a specific situation and recognize an individual as another human being. Art creates a bridge to the minds of others. Expressed with feeling, the feeling connects people even when the content is unfamiliar. This strengthens the ability to see what matters instead of surface triggers aimed at manipulation. Anyone can train their visual, intuitive intelligence by looking at art. With so much now available on the internet, it couldn’t be easier and more urgent. John Dewey once wrote that propaganda was designed to close minds whereas education was designed to open them. Looking at a bigger picture opens the mind to wider possibilities, opening up solutions that bring together instead of tear apart.