Brain Food #493
We make what we see
Thoughts of the day
Can makers exist in a cultural or societal vacuum?
I have been increasingly thinking that what we produce is a version of what we consume. The things we watch, read, listen to, shape what we write, make or say, at work, during leisure, or in our relationships. ‘You are what you eat’ may not simply be about food.
When reading or watching the work of someone else, we are asked to identify parts of ourselves in what we witness, and through undergoing the experience of another, while learning to empathise, we also change. Researchers have called the act of losing oneself in a fictional character ‘experience taking’. In their study, they also found that this was harder to achieve when someone was reading in a room with a mirror in it.
And though they may not stay with us actively, books shape who we are. More on reading and forgetting tomorrow.
“I cannot remember the books I have read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is something you have watched or read recently that changed you?
Fantastic Work by Andre Martins de Barros
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