What is a place?

Whats is a place? Is a place just a collection of stories, and references? Can a photo or painting become a place? Is a place the space you currently inhabit at this moment? How do we interact with the places we go? What is a home, country, shrine, or nature? What is your ideal place, or utopia? What is a toxic place?

So I will begin digesting this by exploring where I and most readers of this are. A home. What makes your home a place of reference for you? At what point does the place transfer from a space to your home? Is it when you do your first load of laundry? Is it when you stop noticing that it smells different? Is it when it becomes comfortable? Can it be he point in time you know how to set the water in the shower to the right temperature. Is it a home because you can control the space? You have power over the environment who is let in, and who has to stay out? When you can put the furniture in the configuration you desire?

Or is a home a bigger place? Is it the city you are from? Your home town, or even bigger your home land,or to stretch it even further your home planet? Does a home just become the place with the highest amount of personal references. You have the highest quantity of narratives that attach you to the space as a point of reference. Can a home just become where you find your loved ones? -Home is where the heart is-. Could it be the place you start, and end your routine that gradually builds experiences which generate all the feelings of love, control, comfort, smell, or ownership. So if a place is simply a collection of narratives that we can reference; can middle earth from Lord of the Rings be defined as a place? It has a large descriptive collection of references equally as powerful as any other place I have not physically been. I have never been to middle earth, but I have never been to Paris either. Both merely exist as a collection of stories references, or souvenir like objects and relics said to have come from the place.

Humans have tried to define places with monuments in an effort to strengthen the narrative of a place. The more stories there are to define a place. The more photos of an object the stronger the narrative of its existence becomes. We embrace wonders of nature, as well as man made monuments symbolising events in time that define the place. We most often build monuments to atrocities. We commemorate the deaths in a place. Such as Auschwitz, or the 911 site. We construct memorials in places other then where the events transpired to strengthen the narrative of other places. Such as Washington D.C which contains memorials not to forget the cost and sacrifice of conflict abroad, as well as the violations to human rights which transpired. We create museums which like a mirror to reflect how we see ourselves culturally in a place in time. Some people create monuments to themselves not to be forgotten. We cast bronze statues that represent ourselves in a place. We selfishly do this to claim a piece of ownership of the narrative tied to a place. So that we become part of the nostalgia of the time we as humans inhabited the place.

We construct narratives about places to build significance for them. Some of these places become so valued we construct a set of rules that govern the way we act in the space. These rules can come in the form of the constitution of a country. They can come as a sacred text such as the 10 commandments for a religion. The rules can be a social construct tied to a place, like not talking in a movie theatre, or discussing politics at Christmas dinner. Some of the rules tied to places overlap and cause conflict for us such as Jerusalem. Jerusalem holds value as a place for Jewish, Muslim, and Christian people. All three of these groups have different rules they tie to separate narratives of the space in time. The rules of a place can enhance our narrative, and strengthen our definition of it as a place. They can bring the place closer to our ideal. The place can bring a reality to the rules we choose to live by.

Nature is another place we as humans try to define as a space apart from ourselves. Though we are part of it, we often try to control, separate, curate, and protect our experience with it. We shape places such as gardens, parks, reserves, and choose to leave some places in nature untouched. We value the resources or the aesthetic of one place such as Lake Louis in Alberta Canada; and another place such as the desert, or the north pole we find unappealing, and inhospitable. We visit a park and create a narrative for it as a place for the rest of nature to exist as an other for our enjoyment. We curate what animals narratives give value to a place, and donate money to protect them. Such as the Panda, or animals that are hunted for sport. Other animals though equally important like an ant we value less. We create poisons to kill and keep ants away from our homes which we curate, and control as places for ourselves. Though we are part of nature man has used it as a tool for resources. Most often the value of a place being the economic gain one can have through ownership of a place. When North America was first colonised by the Europeans it had a preexisting narrative for the indigenous people who lived there and still do today. The colonisers had no historic narratives, souvenirs, photos, monuments, or feelings created by such things attached to the place. The only narrative the Europeans had was what the explorers proclaimed. Witch was the stories of North America as a new land ripe with resources for the taking. Is the narrative of a place how one creates ownership of it? This is how easily time and again groups of people are able to claim places from others. With enough money and guns can you change a narrative. History is written by the victor. Is this why we build build the monuments, and shrines to strengthen our narrative value in the minds of others? The stronger our narrative the more empathy we can create to perpetuate our own existence in a place?

We have explored the places we know, now what is your ideal place. What things create the place we would call a utopia? Do we simply curate, and remove all the the things that make for a toxic dystopian place? Would a place so orderly, clean, and safe not be oddly boring? Creating a utopia means following a strict set of rules to perpetuate its perfect existence. At what cost does following these rules have? To create a world with food, shelter, health, happiness one must regulate toxic variables like crime, hunger, death, sickness. People have tried to create utopias in cities, cults, countries often resulting in the fascist rule of a dictator, or oligarchical elite. We can imagine a utopia, but it always has a cost.

What is your ideal place? Leave a comment of a place that makes you happy, comfortable, or feels like home away from home.

-Barakar

These ideas were generated by a group at a drink and think discussion even at lil indies bar in Orlando, Florida.