Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Perceptions

Nobody in the world views the world as it actually is. All of us have filters in place designed to eliminate unwanted information. Without these filters, we would all suffer from massive and literal information overload. So we learn to ignore what is unimportant and focus on what is important. Doing so was literally a matter of life and death in the past. Hunter-gatherers need to be able to distinguish between the important and the unimportant. This represents the difference between having lunch and being lunch.

In the modern information age, the value and importance of these filters has increased enormously. We are inundated in an ocean of data points most of which are irrelevant to our situation and needs. The problem is that we are not attuned to this new era of always on, always available information. As a result our mental filters are not yet fully in place. They let in too much information which seems important but is actually not. So our email boxes are overflowing with emails that we will never read again and indeed will forget about. We buy books because they seem important to our self development but actually are not. We read reports that may contain information that we think we may need. Six months later we discover that we have never used that information.

The filters that we create and use give each of us different points of view of the same outside inputs. Thus each of us creates unique points of view that seem real and objective to us when as a matter of fact they are anything but.
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