Do you see your beliefs as beliefs? Or call them reality?
Your perceptions, your experiences, and the way you’ve interpreted them, the meaning you’ve placed on them may be your reality, but I assure you, they are not my reality. I have my own set of experiences and stories, thank-you!
And we are at a little over 8 billion of us, each one with a unique heritage of culture, DNA, and life experiences and I dare say each has their own concept of reality. So, who is right? Well, we all are and none of us are. We each think we see the world objectively, but we don’t and in our heart of hearts, most of us know that.
We overestimate the ‘centrality of our perspective’ and assume it is close to universal and if it is not, well, others are ill-read, stupid or just out and out wrong. We prefer stories that make ‘sense’ according to our world view and we reduce complex narratives to simplistic white hats v. black hats. We reject data that threatens our identity or self-concept (it is hard to convince a man of a truth when his livelihood depends on believing otherwise) and to top it all off, we use confirmation bias to ‘prove’ to ourselves we are correct.
Ok, we are human, all of us, you and me both, beautiful combinations of learnable flaws and stunning strengths. Key here is developing self-awareness: understanding and mapping out our belief systems, having humility around their absoluteness, wrapping our mind around the complexities and contradictions of the world, that legitimate competing perspectives exist and reality is multi-faceted.
Closing Quotes:
“What we call reality is a kaleidoscope of perspectives.” – Robert Kegan
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” – Robertson Davies
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while.” – Isaac Asimov, 1920-1992
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.” – Epictetus, c. 50-c. 138 AD
“Each man’s world picture is and always remains a construct of his mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence.” – Erwin Schrödinger, 1887-1961
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832