At that time, while I found the book to be fairly intriguing, I didn't find it directly applicable to what I was looking for, as it did not have any instructions on how to be a visual thinker. Nevertheless, I put her blog in my Google Reader.
After having had a good background on visual thinking, thanks to the books I mentioned above, I look back and see the subtlety and depth in Hagy's diagrams. I am amazed by the level of creativity she has and the seemingly effortless way in which she can portray complex concepts in a simple x-y chart or a Venn diagram.
I thought I might as well make an attempt in creating such an index myself and here are a couple that I could think of.
I have been having interesting discussions with my Dad about religion and spirituality. He has his strong views, him being a devout religious person, and I, mine, trying to find a balance. While I won't call my diagram accurate, as the topic tends to be subjective in nature, I could see how creating a simple diagram can at least make thoughts a lot clearer and much more easy to understand. No wonder they said that a picture is worth a thousand words! It truly is.
2 comments:
Sathya,
Interesting post...Yes, I am with you about visualizing complex thoughts into simple diagrams...
However, I would have liked it better if you could eloborate on your thought process...( on both the venn diagram as well as the XY Chart)...
1.Totally agree with you that Religion is a subset of Spiritual and Socio-economic factors.
2.On the XY Chart, you had Spirituality (top right corner)as the epitome of Faith and Inquiry..So, in order to be spiritual, you need to have high faith with a high degree of inquiry :-)?
Ideally, they should be self-explanatory! Here's my thought process.
1. To me, Religion is a combination of spiritual, socio-economic, and political factors. When we talk of religion, we also talk about morals, values, culture, and tradition, and tend to link them all incorrectly to spirituality. While there is some element of spirituality in our tradition and values, my belief is that it's wrong to consider all as spiritual.
While some of the rituals we perform have a spiritual connotation (the symbolisms), most also have a strong socio-economic reason behind them and have to be taken with a grain of salt, as those socio-economic reasons may not be relevant today ("Theettu" is an example). In the same vein, I think "morals" don't have anything to do with spirituality and calling them as such is pure idiocy (examples being statements made by politicians like 'Muthalik')
2. The chart shouldn't be read as 'epitome', but rather, quantity.
You are lethargic if you don't have any inquisitiveness and faith (basically you just go about your life normally - there is probably a better term than Lethargy, but should do for now here).
You are fanatic if you have only faith in your religion but no inquisitiveness to understand what is written in the scriptures (because you take everything as is, including the non-spiritual aspects of religion as mentioned above, you'd tend to expect everyone to follow your faith, hence becoming a fanatic).
You are skeptic if you have no faith but only inquisitiveness. There are still a number of questions unanswered in this Universe and a number of natural wonders yet unsolved. While eventually we may find an answer for a lot of these questions, some faith is usually required for emotional sustenance.
Lastly, I think spirituality needs a combination of faith and inquisitiveness. If I look at the works of the seers/spiritual leaders, I can see that they all had unwavering faith in their God, but at the same time also had boundless curiosity, leading them to have 'vaada' and 'prathivaada' with the knowledgeable people of their times. I think the right combination is what made them as such.
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