Infographics and wordmapping have caught my eye lately. So when I found Inkscape, I decided to start fiddling around with it. Here’s a first attempt at beginning to think visually about things running around in my head.
The biggest objection will probably be the “I” being in the middle, but I put it there simply because it’s our perceptual center, and we can’t escape that position. We can imagine and rethink and reposition ourselves in our mind’s eye so that we know that we are not the center of things…and we do that from the place of our own centeredness, looking out. All the information, images, and ideas that come through our processes of thinking have to pass through that center we call the self, so I leave that I-ness in the center of things.
There are a world of things to think about when it comes to the way we are ordered in mind, body, spirit, and soul–and who knows if there is an ontologically correct way of referring to them or ordering them. But how we map it out is part of the (largely unseen and unnoticed) daily task.
So if you happen by and have a look at this thing, I’m wondering what you think I left out or misplaced. It’s an interesting tool to talk about the way we see our lives.
Obviously, it’s a Christian viewpoint, though I’ll bet many of my Christian friends will have a thing to say about how all things Christian enter the picture.
Another note: at this point, I’m not trying to really make things clear, nor am I trying to simplify. At least not yet.
I will keep tweaking this, I’m sure, but at least you can’t say you didn’t have anything to think about today.
How do you map things…?
JEFF BERRYMAN 