Some Reflections on Using and Altering Space

Everything exists in space with universal uses. Even so-called empty space is full of magnetic fields. Nature itself fills space with mountains from tectonic shifts and volcanic residue; rains cause flooding; water erosion creates gorges; aridity attenuates agriculture; rivers carry trade and serve as boundaries; and tempestuous winds sometimes annihilate entire environments. Humans extend spatial modification through anthropogenic landscapes and have for eons. Mental space allows us to imagine and create icons, gods, and symbols that help clarify the ambiguities of life, which become part of material culture (Laura A. King, Samantha J. Heintzelman, and Sarah J. Ward, “Beyond the Search for Meaning: A Contemporary Science of the Experience of Meaning in Life,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2016).

Page 149

Space and time operate together, “proxemics”and “chronemics”being the formal words for each. Proxemics is, broadly speaking, space and its usage. Psychological preferences for degrees of distance are fundamental to issues of intimacy. Many, when others are “too close,” expand margins, whereas familiarity shrinks them. Unfortunately, those socializing children rarely teach them how to navigate space, except through observation. How close should I be to others? How much space should exist between our houses? Which societies build walls or fences and which remain spatially vulnerable? What groups, if any, should be marginalized or put outside the circle? Even our poetry reflects this universal concern, such as Robert Frost’s “Mending Walls” (1914) and Paul Perro’s “Hadrian’s Wall” (2018).

Chronemics is the temporal element in spatial usage. When should children marry and bear children? When should we bury our dead? At times, temporality marks great change, such as during the beginning of the agricultural epoch following the last Ice Age (c. 10,000 BCE) when one can imagine massive landscape transformations. Water distribution systems and thwarting annual floods ensued with ancient windmills, aqueducts, and dams. Pacts were made about irrigation and feeding herds of cattle necessary for
survival.

Perspective informs how people structure their space. Anthropologist Brian Fagan writes, “There is a close relationship between the way people perceived and exploited their environments and their world view, which makes… [this] a vital part of the study of the intangible” (From Black Land to Fifth Sun:The Science Of Sacred Sites,1998, 14). This illustrates the mind’s interaction with the divine; hence, the spires of the West and the domes of the East, the differential architecture of the cathedral, the synagogue, and the mosque. Cathedrals and ziggurats (pyramidal temples) reach toward heaven while mosques and Eastern churches favor the dome of heaven’s overarching protectiveness. The former is more traditionally masculine while the latter is more feminine in the psychoanalytic sense.

One component of space is how we cognitively negotiate it and another is how we feel within it. The former results from mental complexity and the latter from individual emotional states and traits. Research shows that spatial navigation varies by age, cerebral complexity, and, to some extent, gender. The greater our navigation skills, the greater our likelihood of survival. Physical dis-

Page 150

tancing during COVID-19 is a salient model for avoiding other potential dangers. We can only imagine how our forebears felt gazing at the huge temples and castles of high-status persons.

I recall teaching in Moscow immediately before the Soviet Union’s downfall. As I walked the city, I felt the oppression of thick, gloomy gray buildings. The only color I recall was in Red Square, which felt closed off by an invisible wall. I had a sense that I should not enter the compound, though physically that was an option. Ordinary families occupied small apartments in large, vertical buildings. People of all ages walked up endless stairs to their places. Hallways were dark. No one I met owned a personal vehicle. There were lines for food and vodka and larger apartments but in rural areas, people fished and hunted. They had more space than urbanites and geography was less forbidding: It felt relaxed and natural. I interacted by gesture with the people there and got a “feel” for them and their poverty. Babushkas, whom I saw as archetypal mothers, were gathering food in the fertile woods. I thought their perceptions of life must differ from my own.

In the city, I went to a simple cement building to speak about treating sexual problems. The Communist Party strictly limited journal access and psychotherapy was unwelcome, but the psychologists craved treatment strategies. Their interventions remained Pavlovian, which comported well with the Soviet political view. When the building’s governor learned I was to teach sexuality, he forbade it “because there are no sexual problems in the Soviet Union”! His denial negated a vital dimension of his people’s humanity; it was as if intimacy had no challenges. Staff got around him by asking me questions “informally” over tea.

At another time, I taught in China and visited the Great Wall. This colossal structure covers about 13,000 miles of historic northern Chinese land, defending against nomadic tribes and acting as a border. Today, hundreds of hawkers sell their wares on the wall, creating a polarity between the fiscal and the historical-cultural. It is hard to picture that area without the Wall and the Wall without vendors and trade.

The Forbidden City and everyday domestic housing were different altogether. Even faculty homes were incredibly humble. Although I was teaching at a noted university, the faculty and intellectual lifelacked social status. Bathing and drinking required boiling then cooling water. Auditory space was overrun by a loud

Page 151

voice over outdoor microphones booming propaganda about the West. Numerous people lived in cramped places and students occupied very tight quarters. Food was buried in red sauce, so I did not know what I was eating. Chinese students were curious and tentatively approached me, but the adults glanced sideways and stayed away. Police were everywhere and distanced from students; both groups were young and rigidly stratified.

Spatial arrangements mediate behavior everywhere. The way a door swings determines our navigating it. Walls stop us. Fences both keep in and keep out. We avoid bumping into furniture. Traffic lights, stop signs, and other vehicles shape our driving. Social rules influence how we behave. Situational conditions establish when and how we speak.

Signs and memorials help us share common ideas and attitudes but also evoke strong feelings. Today, we mimic our ancestors as we use space to persuade and communicate. When we create sayings or memorials, we often connect them with some emotion we assume others will find salient. An example I saw recently is a political sign that read “In Trump we trust,” in which Trump is substituted for God as the replacement of a deity and an appeal to allegiant idolatry.

Societies also erect massive worship centers, towers, statuary, government buildings, bridges, and other structures to meet the multidimensional needs of the people. It is attested that the oldest sacred ziggurat honors the Mesopotamian people’s goddess Nanna (c. 3000 BCE), and the Arkansas Ozark rock outcroppings served many purposes including housing, burial, and other activities starting about 8,000 BCE. Before Stonehenge and the Giza Sphinx, inhabitants constructed ancient Ireland’s massive Newgrange mound (c. 3200 BCE), spread across an acre, serving as a temple and a tomb. It faced ad orientem (East) and, only during the Winter Solstice, the sun shot a river of fire through its roof-box, diffusing internal light slowly. Another cosmological statement.

One of America’s fondest edifices is the Lincoln Memorial, which celebrates maintaining the union, freeing many slaves, and serving as a sacred space to civil rights groups. Abolitionists and Southern slave owners would have felt differently about this monument. The shrine reifies our tendency to heroize our idealized selves. American historian Charles Beard argued that Confederate troops and those who led them were traitors to America but cham-

Page 152

pions to the rebels who exonerated them and the “cause” (History of the United States,1921). Perspective informs the use of space.

Statues of Robert E. Lee are very controversial today, writes military historian Ty Seidule (Robert E. Lee and Me,2020). However, generally accepted are war memorials like the American flag on Mount Suribachi. Sacred and military markers were often entwined, as in the Akkadian Stele of Naram-Sin, the warrior-god (c. 2200 BCE). Images of the deity Atlas eternally holding the celestial sphere apart from the terrestrial is a punishment from Zeus. Atlas represents not only strength and reprisal, but the excessive expectations of others (Alice Miller, The Drama of Being a Child,1990), particularly in childhood but continuing after. It’s sometimes called the Atlas Personality (Robert Baron, Psychology,1995), meaning the one who carries the load for others. The iconic Statue of Liberty, named for the Roman goddess Libertas, symbolizes American freedom and holds a special place for immigrants arriving in New York City. We have historically peppered the land with memorabilia and honoraria, seeking to motivate and persuade. But would anything be different if others had been memorialized than those who were? Who, for instance, might we substitute on Mount Rushmore?

To emphasize anthropogenic landscaping as universal, we need only consider five additional examples: one, Turkey’s Gobekli Tepe, built before the agricultural age (c. 10,000 BCE), an ancient temple and gathering place; two, Italy’s bell Tower of Pisa, the iconic memorial of Pisa’s conquest of Palermo in 1063 CE; three, Egypt’s pyramids—sacred entombments of pharaohs; four, England’s Stonehenge, a lithic structure attested to be a burial site constructed in about 3,000 BCE; and five, the recently excavated stone of Romulus and Remus (c. 49 CE) on Rome’s ancient city walls. These are tributes to humanity’s creativity and appreciation of beauty, memory, and cosmology. We are animals who relish leaving vestiges behind as symbolic of our immortality.

We know that nothing lasts forever, including human creations and Earth’s topography. Today, Americans debate what is sufficiently offensive to warrant removal. Are those seeking redress overidentifying with a past they were not a part of, or not? This is not only about history and identity but also an emotional reaction to a threat to certain behavioral freedoms.

Spatial arrangements are both constant and changing.

Page 153

Should a hero forever be considered heroic? Unease about removing a Lewis and Clark statue is ongoing because Sacagawea appears to some as subordinate to the explorers. But do we judge that statue in terms of its own time or ours? Could the adolescent Shoshone girl have appeared equal to White, male explorers at that time on a monument?

Humans will continue to alter space even though pipelines and nuclear centers may leak, lead may contaminate water, and industrial detritus may penetrate the slim ozone layer. Solar and wind energy “farms” now also mark the land. We continue to shape space for our own purposes. When we are gone, later generations will judge us. How will they interpret who we were? Among other things, they will look at what we did with the space we had and evaluate us according to their own worldview.

Page 154