David Brooks & the Concept of Metis

An excellent TED talk about Man as a Social Animal.  Listen here:



I love to travel and part of the fun is going to places "off the beaten path."  I'm very confident is walking or driving around these places because I feel very engaged with the surroundings, however, I know many other people are uncomfortable being outside of the "comfort zone."  But what makes one person comfortable or not?  Perhaps its this development of social skills that Brooks is talking like the metis or blending or "equa-poise." 

There are a number of excellent points he talks about - but one that stuck out was the concept of "metis" or the feeling of sense of place.  How do people cognitively map a space or anticipate through "feeling" the different changes or in many cases the merging of senses into a notion or expectation of something coming.  For instance, dowsers can sense the presence of water hidden in the soil.  Metis was a Greek goddess known for her wisdom and "cunningness."  To me this is an interesting way to think about sense of place.  Wisdom suggests that there is some knowledge that you've gained over time that begins to set about a framework for understand a place.  You've been on a street before, you recognize a door or window or a boarded up window.  However, there is also a level of cunning.  Cunning is described in the MW dictionary as "dexterous or crafty in the use of special resources." 

Exactly what those special resources are help to define cunning with either positive or negative connotations, but in Brooks' argument these resources are the intangible, subconscious merging of senses.  You feel things, you hear things, the air tastes slightly differently and while you are processing the individual pieces and parts (that hot dog stand smells really good), your subconscious is merging these sensations together to give you a "feeling" about a place - whether good or bad or neutral.