GUY ON SPACE & INDIVIDUALITY - 1

DEFINING, FINDING, AND “SEPARATING”

Discriminating something as individual or unique in some way is a process completely distinct from any concept of space. Space, spatial relationships, and spatial metaphors help us understand the individual, but do not define it.

It's easy to think of examples of people, places, or things that are undistinguished by space and yet contain individuals within them. Janus. Yin and yang. Yourself reacting with an equal mixture of fascination and horror at some dramatic event. This last example is illustrative: fascination has a pleasurable aspect to it, horror a painful one. Each feeling is individual and what we would normally call "separate" … and yet you can experience them at once, in response to one thing, at one moment. There is individuality, but no physical, temporal, or spiritual space to be found.

In more detached terms, individuality applies only to our ability to recognize something by its features. That ability is independent of any spatial relationships that may or may not exist at that moment of recognition. Fascination—how it looks, what is causing it, and how it feels—is perfectly separate in all these features from horror. A sensation of its own, unique to each being that experiences it. Thus definable and individual, without enclosing, filling, or being separated from anything else by space.

So once we imagine any space existing with reference to individuality (when we say, as I casually did above, that something is "separate" from anything else), we are artificially creating a construct in our minds. Space thus helps us examine and understand individuality, even if it is not intrinsic to the individuality of all those, animal, vegetable, and mineral, that we encounter every day.

So the relationship of space to individuality rests only in how we apply it. We can enclose with space; we can fill with space; we can create distance with space.

Fascination. If we enclose fascination with space, we see that it ends with familiarity: what always fascinates is what is always new in some way. If we fill fascination with space, we see that it suppresses understanding: we are too entertained, while fascinated, to question. If we create distance around fascination, we appreciate the particular kind of gratification it provides.

Bread. If we enclose bread with space, we understand, among many things, that it is destroyed by desire: cravings must be fed. If we fill it with space, we know that bread ends deprivation, because whether spiritual or material, bread provides sustenance. If we distance bread, we begin to comprehend the warmth, contentment, and satisfaction it brings.

A nice exercise. How would you apply space to your own individuality? Your friend's? Your lover's?