“Not till we are completely lost, or turned round,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
"He's not to be reached, he's to be reached He's not to be reached, he's to be reached Called the fool and the company On his own, where he'd rather be Where he ought to be And he sees what you can't see, can't you see that? (He sees what you can't see) Maybe he's caught in the legend Maybe he's caught in the mood Maybe these maps and legends Have been misunderstood" -- REM, Maps and Legends
The Infinite Extent of Our Relations
Although all of the REM band members are credited with the lyrics of Maps and Legends, it was probably Michael Stipe who penned these words. Stipe certainly wrote most of the lyrics for REM, whose songs generally combine wandering, evocative yet ambiguous words with a painterly style of weaving music and words into song. And there is something particularly delightful in how the word legend functions in this particular song. A legend, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a story coming down from the past whose truth is popularly accepted but cannot be checked.” But a legend is also the feature of a map which offers a “key” to interpreting the map itself.
Such, according to most — or all — of the writers, speakers and thinkers at Perspectiva, is the core of the challenge which the metacrises foists upon contemporary humanity. At least, this is how it seems to me. Only the whole matter is further complicated by the fact that the maps and legends under discussion have a relation to the mapped territory which cannot readily be ‘checked’, at least not in a matter-of-fact and uncomplicated way. For as soon as we have (1) map and (2) legend the (3) territory is implied as part of a presumably tripartite whole. The legend may be suspect—, uncertain, if not checked in comparison to the territory being mapped. And that brings us face-to-face with our lostness, which while it may bring us delight, even joy, may also lead us to ‘nausea’ and confusion. What was one becomes three. And in being three it longs for coherence in a unity which is both experientially palpable and conceptually sound. It is this which may possibly define the task of philosophy, including metaphysics.
And this is why any talk of a metacrisis necessarily falls into the lap of philosophy and its metaphysics.
Map and legend becomes metaphor, and metaphor longs, in us, to become whole again. But to become whole again we must accept the invitation of Rene Magritte to take note of the fact that “this is not a pipe”.
I began with an investigation into “the polycrisis,” and it brought me up against Magritte’s pipe. The polycrisis notion tends to assume we have a good enough map and legend (in our dominant culture) to discern where we are and how we got here. But the metacrisis challenges this assumption. At least that’s how I see it.
There appears to be to be no way to address either the polycrisis or the metacrisis without facing the delight and the nausea of getting a bit lost, for a while, on our way to coming home to “the infinite extent of our relations.”
It is with this in mind which led me to initiate this space of inquiry, which I dearly hope will bring many voices to its pages.
Let our delight be our guide through the labyrinth of our nausea.
If you’d like to contribute to these pages, I can be reached at jrivermartin (at) gmail (dot) com.
Odds are, this Substack space will eventually give birth to yet another publication. But, for the time being, we’re getting started here.
Welcome!
James