My position.
Why do you think that walking around in circles is so productive of creative thought, for some of us?
I read about an experiment that was conducted to conclude if when lost if people literally walked in circles!? Many people have preconceived ideas that when people are lost they walk in circles. In all actuality, the expression going around in circles means lost or confused. As before mentioned, Anglo-American minds tend to be peripatetic. Ironically enough, our minds are always walking or preoccupied whether it’s consciously or unconsciously. In order to answer the question of whether people who are lost walk in circles in the literal sense, the researchers removed the all the structured designs that could influence directions such as sidewalks, highways, and water sources from the equation. In order to observe people and their natural sense of direction, much of the research was conducted in desert. In the expression, “walking in circles” people are trying to express or explain where they are at mentally without a map or perhaps they have a map but don’t know how to decipher it. During the research, the weather proved to be an important variable. On cloudy days, when the sun or moon was hidden, the participants literally walked in circles. In fact, they walked in small circles, only a few hundred yards across. Ironically the article questions the reader to imagine how they would feel if they were lost in the Sahara Desert and couldn’t get further than a quarter mile from where they started. So, to answer the second question, why do you think walking around in circles is so productive of creative thought, for some of us. I believe that when in we are alone or secluded im a cloudy place feeling lost and confused that our imaginations prove to be more creative. The produce a better sense of direction especially, the second time around. The more times you circle, the more you feel as if it could be your last time around. I believe that when you feel lost or confused emotionally that is important that you take time to get a map or a hold on yourself. Without direction, it is very likely that you could find yourself walking in circles. In natural selection, in some cases, people who have been lost before in life make the best examples. Some of our most talented artist perform their most noted pieces when they are cloudy, lost, confused, or preoccupied with walking in circles. Walking in circles helps us to create a energetic force within ourselves. We could be viewed as a walking windmill. We have the potential to create energy just in our direction in life. Hypothesis: without meaningful clues for navigation, our brains may latch onto subtle, misleading cues in our environment—perhaps the slope of the ground, or the direction of the wind—in order to pick a direction. Works for me.
Joshua Ledford
"Walking in circles helps us to create a energetic force within ourselves"
ReplyDeleteIndeed! As the bumper sticker says, "NOT LOST - JUST EXPLORING"... CD wasn't geographically lost, on his Sandwalk, though he must often have felt mentally adrift there. Same for me, making one of my several circuits through the neighborhood, the Warner Parks, the Richland Greenway, the MTSU campus, Stones River et al.
May the force be with you!
lol thanks!
ReplyDeleteJoshua,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your perspective on why we walk in circles and the benefits. There is a park near where I live and they have a circular track around several ball fields and I measured the distance around and then I knew like Darwin how many trips I needed to make to go a mile. If you're just walking for exercise, that is one way, but if while you're walking, you take the time to observe what is going on around you and how change happens with each revolution then you have the benefit of exercising not only your muscles, but your mind. I also like to take a small book sometimes and read and pause to reflect on what I'm reading which another way to exercise my mind.
Don
Very interesting post Joshua,
ReplyDeleteI can vouch for the scientific findings that when lost, people walk in circles…it happened to me. My uncle and I were hunting in Savage Gulf. We walked up and out of the gulf and just about the time we reached the top (flat land) it began to rain really hard. We walked toward what we thought was our parking place a few hundred yards away. Eventually, we ended up back at the bluffs going down into the gulf. Obviously there was no sun shining and there were no distinguishable land marks to guide us, neither did we have a compass. How did we get back to the truck? I followed my uncle at a distance and shouted to him every time he veered to the left (He never veered to the right). We soon arrived at the road we entered on and found our truck.
I still don’t understand why we only went in circles to the left, but I suspect it has something to do with the rotation of the earth. Water will create a vortex as it goes down the drain and circle to the right in the Northern hemisphere. Circling to the right, as water does, is going opposite the earth’s rotation, while circling to the left, as my uncle and I did, would be moving with the rotation of the earth. It seems that walking with the earth’s rotation, rather against it, would be the easier and more natural walking.