The South Queensbury Mosaic Mural and Relational Meaning

This post is the first episode of what will be an ongoing series of extensions of the ideas and skills discussed this year in the 3 books published by QBCT (Question-Based Critical Thinking). What I hope to correct is the appearance of most books that a commitment has been completed and the author is now onto the next project. In the case of this blog, each new post will be part of the ongoing fabric of this critical thinking project.

“Critical Thinking” as a concept is neither good nor bad. It is a tool used by us for our purposes.

When we activate our lives creating meaning with individual accomplishments, envisioning life as a contest of individuals against a hostile environment and as a struggle against one another to see who can amass the greatest collection of toys, critical thinking can enable us to dominate situations and others. Even in a more benign instance a person with greater knowledge of critical thinking can use it as a cudgel to demonstrate superiority in cognitive disputes.

But there is a nobler use of critical thinking, one emerging from a recognition that our links to one another can create a higher meaning. This higher meaning is relational, one that recognizes that a symphony can create music that individual instrumentalists can only dream of producing. Relational meaning is grounded in the acceptance of our individual frailties and limitations as thinkers and actors.

Cervantes’ Don Quixote may be more financially comfortable than his Sancho Panza, and Quixote may be more alert to moral outrages, but he badly needs his peasant assistant to avoid windmills disguised as villains. Our humility permits us to use critical thinking as both a teaching and learning device. By seeing others with whom we are having a disagreement as joint explorers for better beliefs, conclusions, and decisions, we can see ourselves as partners. The sound and look of our collaboration permits us to consider options otherwise obscured by inflated egos.

1+1 equals more than 2 when strengthening relationships replaces individual achievement as life’s purpose.

In a small suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland, a couple artists provided a model for the transcendent potential of collective aspirations. They and other leaders in South Queensbury developed a plan to build an uncommon cohesion in their neighborhood. I had the privilege of visiting their testament to relationships only because multiple members of the town urged my wife Nancy and me to “go see our mural,” They enabled me to see empathy as more than compassion for others; the pride in their voice as they heralded the mural made it clear that givers also grow from seeing the potential of recipients.

The mural is roughly 10 by 60 feet in a small park. The original purpose of the mural was to teach mosaics skills to members of the community as an avenue to involve otherwise invisible neighbors in the magic of belonging. Stroke victims, the aged, the homeless, those enduring the devastation of dementia, and the unemployed collected small pieces of glass and metal and used their mosaics training to construct a collective art piece. The mosaic attracted so much interest that children and others whose voices were often overlooked lobbied to become members of the artist team.

The mural is beautiful in both the traditional and the aspirational sense.

Soon everyone wanted to share in the spirit of “weness.” The town reminded me of the insight of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who described taxes the “voice of civilization.” They are the price of our higher needs, those that make us more than lonely survivors.