After thirty-five years of researching design principles, one of my main questions has always been, “Why do people decorate?”
I always realized it was more than for material reasons. There had to be unseen components as well. I decided to use metaphysics in the title of my emerging book since this philosophical practice asks, “What is beyond our understanding of reality, and is there an unseen reality beyond our senses?”
A Philosopher’s ‘s Warning
“Don’t go there,” my philosopher friend emailed me, referring to my plan to use the word, “metaphysics” in my book: “It is like a maze from which you will never find your way out.”
His admonition ended with three laughing emojis and a warning by Voltaire:
“When he that speaks, and he to whom he speaks, neither of them understand what is meant, that is metaphysics.”
“LOL”
My life’s work work has always been a search for the reality behind the act of decorating. What unseen things happen when we change the wallpaper, rearrange the furniture, and fluff up the pillows? How can we become aware of the effects of decorating or understand them.? How can we manipulate an unseen reality to change our environment to create a better life?
The Big Question
So why do we decorate? Is it to express our identities? Sociologists refer to decorating as a means to establish connections with our social groups and to reflect gender and life stages. Others emphasize impression management? One health reporter even brings up a new perspective: decorating is an extension of and to repair body image. I think differently. I believe:
We decorate to get energy!
Some may disagree and say they decorate for investment or to beat “the Joneses.” From my perspective, those are just misguided attempts to acquire energy. My scientist friend argues that he decorates for beauty because it brings pleasure.
I argue that pleasure is just a hormonal response showing that an energy transfer has taken place.
It is at this point the that I find myself in the metaphysical maze my philosopher friend warned me about. What looms ahead, using the word “energy” in a culture based on science which has only one definition of the term.
The Term “Energy”
I am not referring to its scientific context when I use the word “energy.” Those types are the electricity that powers your Keurig, the radiant energy that provides an ambient glow in your track lighting, and the chemical energy that resides in the lithium battery of your smart phone along with sound energy, magnetic energy, gravitational energy, nuclear energy, and so on.
Instead I am writing about a life force, sometimes called subtle energy. It has many terms used throughout the world. We do not have a term for it in the West but it has been somewhat diffused in our culture. Examples include the Hindu “prana” cultivated in yoga. It includes the Chinese “chi” in every aspect of life from Feng Shui to acupuncture to the martial arts. All are geared to controlling the proper flow of subtle energy in our lives. It is not unusual to find groups of Chinese people in parks moving their hands in slow motion. Known as “tai chi,” this activity is meant to pull chi into their bodies.
The Difference Between the Two Uses of the “Term
The concept of life force energy has been around since the beginning of mankind. There are over sixty-five cultures in the world that have and still use it in their thinking. It is not common in Western thought since culturally, spirit and matter are not considered the same. Cultures who use life force energy believe that it is everywhere at the same time, beyond the space-time continuum and because of that faster than the speed of light. It gives rise to animism. To some extent, this energy is a glorified noun.
Scientific energy, on the other hand is like a verb since its definition is “the ability to do work or the potential for action.” As a scientific term, it has only been around a short while. The scientist Thomas Young adopted it from Aristotle’s term “energeia” as a substitute for the term, “power” in 1807.
The Difficulty with Words
Why do we Westerners not have a word like the Eastern word, chi?…..
Because there is no philosophy in the West built around a word to express this life force!
In general, Western culture is built around the separation of spirit and matter. For over 2000 year organized religion compelled man to focus on the spirit rather than the physical and the scientific revolution, based on empirical study, pushed spirit aside to create a sterilized field to study matter. Thus, most Westerners cannot grasp a life force running through buildings, pots and pans, rocks, mountains, and even weather systems.
The Difficulty Resolving Ideas
The bedrock of Western culture is empirical science. Problems arise when people use the words “life force energy,” “energy” or “subtle energy.” In the mind of the scientists, there is only one definition for “energy.”.Because they were the first to coin the term, they claim it as their own. Most of them roll their eyes when they hear energy used to describe a life force. Its existence is refuted because it has never been seen, never been measured, and never proven to exist. (For ease in future reading, subtle energy and all its synonyms will be the word, “energy” italicized)
To some extent, such ire is justified. So many pop, new age books and movies misuse scientific information. Physicists resent their hard work being reduced to colloquial and often misleading concepts by lay merchants of quantum ware. [1]
Another reason most scientists deride energy is that it tends to be thrown into the pot with other not-understood phenomena. I was excited once to find a promising article on the subject. I eventually discovered, however, the organization put it into the same category as UFOs, rapturous LSD trips, and Big Foot.
The main issue, I think, is that the scientific method is based on matter as separate from spirit. Scientists dismiss energy because belief in it would entail that all matter is infused with some sort of life force, which is anathema to the Western mind.
The West and Energy
Is there a need in the West to find an equivalent for chi, for a word for energy? Very much so, I believe, because we often see people searching for it. With few working models in the West, people tend to look to the East. Consider the emerging popularity of the Indian vatsu shastra, the partial diffusion of feng shui in our culture, and the recent Japanese phenom, Marie Kondo. A delightful angel of Netflix, Kondo has espoused the theories in The Magic Art of Tidying. She has performed a major service by re-introducing animism to the West.
Going to the East can be problematic because few Eastern concepts are sustainable for us. We search, we find, we partially embrace, and because of our cultural bounds to Western thinking, we then reject and become divided within ourselves.
Then we start the whole process again.To get around the need for finding spirit in our environment in a culture that doesn’t acknowledge that need, we find backdoors to satisfy it. In Lesson II, I explore some of those backdoors.
Science and Metaphysics
As a forewarning, I cannot scientifically prove anything about my decorating theories. I am and will continue to remain respectful of science and not try to (mis)use it to prove a metaphysical idea. Occasionally I will refer to a scientific idea but will clearly let the reader know when I switch from metaphysics to science and vice versa.
Science is based on observation and proof. Metaphysics is a guess. At some point metaphysics helps science since a hypothesis is a guess, but one ready to be put under the rigors of the scientific method.
Yet, my ideas are reasonable metaphysical speculations based on my own observations and questions about our common experiences. What do we experience in an exceptionally beautiful environment? What do we feel when we walk into a freshly cleaned and decluttered living space? Do we not experience a kind of positive energy? Readers will only know if my theories work for them by how they feel in the laboratory of their own personal experience.
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[1] Although the Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Leon Lederman, admired Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics and Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters, he found much of their work scientifically wanting, for he dedicated “The Dancing Moo-Shu Masters,” a chapter in The God Particle, to them and other pseudo-scientists. Need Ione say more?
See also:
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This website has two parts, The Lessons, which are more difficult in concept, and the blogs, which are lighter in nature. A blog you might enjoy has the same theme as Lesson One:
Please note that my website allows the reader to leave comments at the end of the blogs but not at the end of each lesson. If you have a comment or question about lesson, you may email me at ruta@rutas-rules.com.