Spotting the moonwalking bear - your perceptions ARE your reality
yeah, ok, i gave it away in the title of the post...
the point, however, is one that has fascinated me for years... we are schooled from infancy about how to interpret the information we receive from our five senses... we learn to recognize leaves on tree branches, differentiate among various colors, associate certain sounds with earlier experiences, on and on and on... i've always wondered what the world would look like to us if we had been schooled differently... what if, for example, we were schooled to form a mental picture out of the spaces BETWEEN the leaves on tree branches, rather than from the leaves and branches themselves...? we can't answer that, and, in fact, many people have difficulty even comprehending the question...
how we have been schooled to perceive the world constitutes our definition of reality... put more bluntly, our perceptions ARE our reality... it is the failure to grasp this fundamental fact that has led to so many of the conflicts that continue to tear at the fabric of the human community... think of the incalculable amounts of energy expended each and every day by people insisting that THEIR perceptions are the only valid reality, when their "reality" is only what they have been schooled to see and doesn't take into consideration anything that they HAVEN'T been schooled to see... acceptance of that single fact all by itself would contribute dramatically to a lessening of world conflict...
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the point, however, is one that has fascinated me for years... we are schooled from infancy about how to interpret the information we receive from our five senses... we learn to recognize leaves on tree branches, differentiate among various colors, associate certain sounds with earlier experiences, on and on and on... i've always wondered what the world would look like to us if we had been schooled differently... what if, for example, we were schooled to form a mental picture out of the spaces BETWEEN the leaves on tree branches, rather than from the leaves and branches themselves...? we can't answer that, and, in fact, many people have difficulty even comprehending the question...
how we have been schooled to perceive the world constitutes our definition of reality... put more bluntly, our perceptions ARE our reality... it is the failure to grasp this fundamental fact that has led to so many of the conflicts that continue to tear at the fabric of the human community... think of the incalculable amounts of energy expended each and every day by people insisting that THEIR perceptions are the only valid reality, when their "reality" is only what they have been schooled to see and doesn't take into consideration anything that they HAVEN'T been schooled to see... acceptance of that single fact all by itself would contribute dramatically to a lessening of world conflict...
Labels: perceptions, personal reality
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posted by profmarcus at
4/12/2008
