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Psychogeography and Feng Shui

If the meaning of “psychogeography” is as what Debord defined – “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” – I couldn’t help thinking about its similarity to the Chinese notion “Feng shui” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui), literally Wind and Water, a guideline for Chinese people to choose an appropriate environment/house to live in or to bury the dead, or to set and decorate the living environment in a specific way to get the most benefits of it, in the premises that the geographical environment (macro cosmos) could influence people (micro cosmos) in a certain way. The expert in judging whether the environment is beneficial to people or not is called Feng Shui Shi (Master of Feng Shui) or Di Li Shi (Master of Geography). Though many people belittle Feng Shui as just a superstition or commodity in nowadays, Feng Shui could be kind of primitive psychology concerning the environment’s effect on people as some anthropologists have thought of the relation between superstition and psychology.

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