Paper Towns, the latest of John Green's teen fiction books to hit the big screen, brought back to the forefront the story of a little town in New York called Agloe. The short of it is that Agloe started out as a cartographical falsity intentionally placed in a map by mapmakers at General Drafting Company. Although Agloe was labelled on the map as an actual location, Agloe, the town, didn't exist. There was not a single wall that stood erect in the whole of "Agloe"... or at least where Agloe was supposed to be. The name Agloe was, in fact, just an anagram of the mapmakers' initials. There was method in the erroneous reporting in that the mapmakers could now tell if their work was being stolen for use in other maps. If another map had a dot juxtaposed with the word 'Agloe', it was obvious that the original mapmakers had been duped.
These so-called "paper towns" were common in cartography and, to an extent, are still used today. Their uses are still necessary, but for 99.9% of these paper towns, they remain just that, Paper. Towns. No more than ink on paper. Pretending to be real, but not real enough to actually be real.
Of course, this story wouldn't be worth anything if Agloe did as all the others did and remain in a state of cartographical limbo. Some years later, the mapmakers who came up with Agloe saw Agloe appear on another map. They had been caught! General Drafting Company sued the other cartographers for copying their work. But no.
The accused replied to their fellow cartographers and said that Agloe did exist. In creating the idea of Agloe on a map, haphazardly placing ink to paper, the original cartographers had created an actual town. Because people kept coming to this dirt road intersection in the middle-of-nowhere, New York, expecting to find a town named Agloe, someone got the bright idea to set up a general store, the Agloe General Store.
Nowadays, Agloe cannot be found on any maps. It was, after all, placed in the middle of nowhere, New York. Business probably wasn't the greatest. Residents were probably hard to come by. Agloe has returned to being ink on paper.
That wasn't exactly "the short of it" was it? Oh well. Moving on.
Recently I've been thinking about the connection between the literal and the abstract. For those who don't know me that well, I am a very cut-and-dried person. I like things to be very black and white. That's one reason why the sciences are my forte. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said, "It doesn't matter if you believe science is real or not. Science is still real." Of course science is always changing and evolving as new discoveries are made and falsities are found within the bindings of textbooks, but it certainly doesn't change as much as my English teacher's opinion of my research papers.
I've always been this way, but recently things have been changing. I've met people. I've learned that things are not as cut-and-dried as I once thought. Humanity was never meant to be this way. It's diverse, ever-changing. Opinions come and go as the tides. In this respect, I had never been one to consider the different proclivities of human nature to change. Human nature was always human nature? Ya know? To me it was static, because in my book, I was rather static. Human nature in my description was like the instincts of an animal. The needs always remained the same. The concerns, never changing. Discovering that there was variance in human nature turned my world upside down.
It happened in college, where so many other life-changing events happen. Someone at some point said that the friends you make in college are the friends you'll keep for a lifetime. So far, I can confirm this. For the most part, this is true because I've had to live most every part of my life with at least one person or another. In living so close with others, you learn their tendencies down to the smallest mannerism. There is no "right" way to live life in college. There are many means to obtain the same goal.
I found that emotions had a lot of weight in the dynamics of human nature, not necessarily a black and white logic where there was a single solution for everything. I found that I, myself, was also driven by emotions to a certain extent. I found myself embroiled in occasional bouts of drama with people that I met. It was then that I would say to myself things like so this is what it's like to hate someone and is it logical to hate this person? My cut-and-dried way of thinking would usually find it illogical to hate a person, but fighting that logic with my pure inexplicable emotion was new territory.
Abstract feelings such as love and hate are inexplicable at their core. Yes, you may hate that person for doing you wrong, but there is no logical basis for it. What good is it to you that you hate the person? Sure, you could say that the hate and angst generated would be beneficial for you by helping you avoid said person so that you may not be hurt again. But it's more than just I'm staying away from so-and-so so they don't hurt me again. It's a passion that resides beyond the instinctual human psyche. Same can be said for love. Yes, you can give reasons for loving the person, but it's more than just a draw towards someone for the potential benefit for you. It's... love.
Because of their inexplicable nature, I assumed that logic could conquer all there was to know about emotion. I was sorely mistaken. Emotion has a way of making what is abstract, reality. That which resides deep in each of our bosoms can manifest itself and, thereby, become real. The showing of emotion is the bridging of the two worlds.
This is not to say that emotions are fiction or in some way fake. Emotions are real and they reside within and drive the majority of human nature. I say that they are, in a sense, "not real" because to the universe, emotions are not real. They only become real when they are manifested in action, whether it be a slight change in demeanor or full-on temper tantrum.
Anyways, because there is this link between the emotional world and the literal world, things can travel not only from the emotions to the literal, but also from the literal to the emotions. One of the best examples of this is the repairing of marriages. As a pastor's kid (#PK4lyfe!!) I've witnessed my father counsel couples as they struggle with marriages. I've seen strife and all that comes with it: the falling out of love, the fighting, the long term tolerance that builds hate. While the emotions are there, the only way to get to the people is by means of the literal world. Because emotions are purely personal, "changing someone's mind" can only take place through access to their literal world. Why then are broken marriages able to be mended? Is it because their emotions spontaneously took a turn for the better? I don't think so. Something external changed their demeanor. Whether it be a counselor or a book or a good heartfelt discussion, something external prompts the changing of the internal, and somehow, some way, love springs forth again.
All that to say to give weight to each side of the coin. The emotional and literal worlds are irreducibly complex, that is, they cannot be separated without the whole mechanism falling apart. Never discount either side. Yes,
I personally am learning to acknowledge the abstract side of me and of others. In dealing with others, I have been very cut-and-dried, discounting their feelings for temporary squalls in a pale blue sky of logic. I now know that's wrong. The emotional and literal worlds that I reside in are becoming more entwined like the combination of two circles to make a Venn diagram.
So, who am I to say that the emotional and literal world are two different worlds entirely? Maybe they have overlap. Scratch that. They probably have overlap. What if those worlds were one-in-the-same? I guess I would call that personal reality... since it's not the universe's reality... da da da. You get the picture. That's a can of worms I'll save for another day.
I've written this late at night and I'll probably see it in the morning and think What in the world was I writing??
Oh well. I'll live with it.
Best Wishes! -Richie