Thesis Research - Understanding Orientation

Posted on: October 1st, 2011

It is clear that we orient ourselves in physical space. The physical sense responsible for our understanding of the relative position of neighboring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement of such parts is called proprioception. This sense is tested frequently in field sobriety exams where a person in question of DUI is tasked with touching their nose with their finger. Due to this sense humans have a little known reflex termed ‘the law of righting ‘wherein upon the body tilting in any direction, a person will reposition the head to naturally align and normalize to the horizon – this is seen in humans as soon as neck muscles begin development in infancy.

We also orient ourselves in psychological space. The psychological factor responsible for our understanding of being and our own existence is memory – the phenomenological reference through which we understand, assume, categorize, interact with and know fellow forms. We are the sum of our memories, our experiential snapshots from the perspective of our own being inhabiting a vessel through which we may connect with other beings in time and space. Through mental landmarks we come to know normalcy in existence.

Physically space is a grid in at least three dimensions that defines locations, distances, and the relationship between one thing and another. Orientation is an understanding of our dot in the grid to the dot of another being in the grid – to reality – a reality that we perceive as normal from our own perspective. Typologies, standards, anomalies, aberrations – there is subjectivity in normal. We may define a state of normalcy through cultural standards – a collective definition of normative behavior defined by regulations and policies, law and order. Based on a collective memory we may understand ethics of regularities and irregularities.

And so it is through the regular- the familiar and predictable physical and psychological landmarks that we are able to understand and orient ourselves, our being. Yet what happens when we are no longer in control of our environment and external forces decimate stability and the known? The idea of losing a limb yet still sensing the lost limb may play a role in understanding disorientation.