Why should we care about the context we are surrounded by?
Have you ever wondered how context can impact the way you experience the world around you? Have you ever said to yourself “I don’t feel good about it” or “there’s a weird vibe around here”? So, I propose an exercise for us to start considering the importance of the context in which we are experiencing a certain moment of our life.
So, picture a recent moment in your life. It can be a nice conversation, a good event you’ve been to, a simple dinner at home. Remember your surroundings: who were you with, where were you, what were you doing. If you want to write it down it can be even better but you don’t need to. So now, since you’ve recalled some of the aspects around you, now remember the feelings in relation to this same setting. Did you feel anxious, comfortable, angry, or isolated? Did you want the moment to continue forever or did you want to escape from where you were as soon as possible?
Ok, now that the exercise is done, try to flip it around. Change one little aspect of the situation: if you were in a dinner, imagine that you were eating another food, maybe some food you don’t appreciate that much. Or, if you were with someone, imagine being with someone else, maybe a stranger. How different the whole “vibe” of the place could have been if you could change just a tiny piece of the setting you were in? Could you feel anything different from this new situation? Having dinner with a stranger feels different than having dinner with your family member or your friend? Going to an event with a more uncomfortable shoe than what you actually used could change the way you were experiencing the event?
As soon as you start making these questions, you start identifying the power of context. The settings in which we are embedded are extremely important for our own well-being and our own sense of identity and clarity. The way we make sense of our world is completely related to how we operate in the world, which is connected to the way people react to our behaviours and how the environment around us interacts with these same variations. We can’t be in the world completely alone and considering how we navigate around our environment is key to understanding the interconnections between living and non-living entities that are around us.
In the same way, our cognitive processes are part of a long web of entities interlinked and in constant relationship with each other and the result of it is the experience you’re having. The philosopher Even Thompson says that “just as there is no place in the orchestra where unison resides, so there is no place in the brain where attention resides” (Thompson, 2015). The way we feel about something is not down to our own personal and individual way of processing things around us but rather a combination of brain, body, and environment that will, dynamically, create the reality we live in. We can never explain life and experience only in a linear and singular way like we do with the brain. It won’t be possible to explain the beauty of having a great time with someone you love just by analyzing only one specific aspect of this context.
To conclude, recently I’ve been in a really interesting setting with great people listening to impressive, outstanding, and beautiful music, in a marvelous ambient that had a mix of wine and old wood smell in a warm and cozy night. At that moment, while experiencing all these different senses and flavors to my surroundings, I was transported to a different dimension, a different time frame. I was in a movie, where I saw artists trying to make a living with their under-appreciated talent, where society judges musicians for not having a proper job and calls them“crazy”. I could experience how hard it was for professionals in the 40s to aspire to be great performers but the only places where they were accepted were in the small bohemian taverns of a really hidden dark ally. I’m sure I wasn’t at the same time I am as I write this text. I’m sure without the environment I was in, it could never be possible to experience what I did. And I’m sure there’s a lot more beyond the brain than we can ever imagine.
