"Why?" is probably the most oft asked question. All our lives - right from the times we are kids to the time we are pondering old men in rocking chairs - we constantly wonder "Why?". Why does a certain thing happen? Why does a person behave in a particular way? Why is it that people have different beliefs? Why can something hold different values for different people? And everytime the answers converge to the same thing - PEOPLE. People are different. This has been said often enough. But what is it in people that makes them differ? The difference, most certainly, lies entirely in the mind. For where else can the difference between two intelligent creatures lie? There already seems to exist a philosophy that says that everything is just an illusion. The entire world around us is a projection of our own brains. A recent conversation with a certain Ms. Ln'F drove me to this lane of thought and I have been cruising along it since.
It was brought up, during the aforementioned conversation, that people try to get to know each other, to find out more about their fellow human beings, despite a certain muffled knowledge of there being no guarantee that what they are finding out is the truth. The reasons for profiling people and things despite knowing the uncertainity of it were listed by Ms. Ln'F as follows:
"an intelligent mind
will try to find out as much as possible
about fellow humans in it's environment
one part is survival
another, intellectual curiosity
a third
a genuine need
to discover others...
who you can communicate to
those who understand you...
it's a process of identification...
the immature mind
will typecast
into friends and foes
the mature one
will treat each individual as different"
This leads to an obvious conclusion that lurks just under the surface of point three. Making some safe extrapolations to it we reach come up with the following :
People try to draw a picture of the world around them.
But then there is nothing new to this philosophy. People having a certain set of notions and beliefs of their own is a well known fact. And it is quite well understood too. A certain John Moore said the following on experiencing a similar realisation :
"Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception - do not confuse them with "facts" or "truth". Wars have been fought and millions have been killed because of the inability of men to understand the idea that EVERYBODY has a different viewpoint."
I could not, however, help but pause and ponder whether our basis of differing perceptions is limited to just the abstract. Whether there is a single set of these "facts" and "truths". Take something as well defined as a colour. Red per say. Perhaps your perception of red is similar to my perception of blue. But in the end we point at a "red" object and call it "red" albeit our perceptions of red being different. (This is comically expressed in http://xkcd.com/32/ [:D] ) Another obvious confusion that Ms. Ln'F had was between perceiving and analysing. Perception is simply how you look at your world. Analysing is how you decipher your perceived world. But in the end, it all contributes to how we define the "worlds" that we live in.
But wait! It is still not the end of this line of thought. How do we define our worlds? Or rather, can we define our worlds? My take : the world is too big an entity for a presumptuous creature like man to define it. So what does he do? He takes the easy way out. He defines his stand in his immediate surroundings, which, again, is nothing but his own brain's interpretation!
"one cannot really define how one defines his world
one can tell how he defines himself in his world
as in
where do i stand among these people
in this system
that kind of stuff...
one cannot define his position in THE world...
as i see it... no one is anyone in THE world...
in fact there is no THE world...
there is atleast one world for every living person...
so when you define your world(s)
you are simply defining how you see yourself as compared to your perceived surrounding
people, places, things
etc...
when you say that the world is scary
you just say that you see yourself as weaker than those around you
be it the jungle, the animals or people"
This probably explains multiple personalities. All one needs to do is look at the phenomenon as someone defining more than one world for himself when faced with the urge to BE contradictory selfs in the same perception of his surroundings. But I guess this line of thought has become too complicated and twisted by now. So I'll end it here at this untied end.
Here is a quote by William Blake that shows the importance (or possibly the unimporatance) of perception :
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
(Had we been able to perceive nothing and not define our worlds, we would have been able to see everything and comprehend nothing.)
It was brought up, during the aforementioned conversation, that people try to get to know each other, to find out more about their fellow human beings, despite a certain muffled knowledge of there being no guarantee that what they are finding out is the truth. The reasons for profiling people and things despite knowing the uncertainity of it were listed by Ms. Ln'F as follows:
"an intelligent mind
will try to find out as much as possible
about fellow humans in it's environment
one part is survival
another, intellectual curiosity
a third
a genuine need
to discover others...
who you can communicate to
those who understand you...
it's a process of identification...
the immature mind
will typecast
into friends and foes
the mature one
will treat each individual as different"
This leads to an obvious conclusion that lurks just under the surface of point three. Making some safe extrapolations to it we reach come up with the following :
People try to draw a picture of the world around them.
But then there is nothing new to this philosophy. People having a certain set of notions and beliefs of their own is a well known fact. And it is quite well understood too. A certain John Moore said the following on experiencing a similar realisation :
"Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception - do not confuse them with "facts" or "truth". Wars have been fought and millions have been killed because of the inability of men to understand the idea that EVERYBODY has a different viewpoint."
I could not, however, help but pause and ponder whether our basis of differing perceptions is limited to just the abstract. Whether there is a single set of these "facts" and "truths". Take something as well defined as a colour. Red per say. Perhaps your perception of red is similar to my perception of blue. But in the end we point at a "red" object and call it "red" albeit our perceptions of red being different. (This is comically expressed in http://xkcd.com/32/ [:D] ) Another obvious confusion that Ms. Ln'F had was between perceiving and analysing. Perception is simply how you look at your world. Analysing is how you decipher your perceived world. But in the end, it all contributes to how we define the "worlds" that we live in.
But wait! It is still not the end of this line of thought. How do we define our worlds? Or rather, can we define our worlds? My take : the world is too big an entity for a presumptuous creature like man to define it. So what does he do? He takes the easy way out. He defines his stand in his immediate surroundings, which, again, is nothing but his own brain's interpretation!
"one cannot really define how one defines his world
one can tell how he defines himself in his world
as in
where do i stand among these people
in this system
that kind of stuff...
one cannot define his position in THE world...
as i see it... no one is anyone in THE world...
in fact there is no THE world...
there is atleast one world for every living person...
so when you define your world(s)
you are simply defining how you see yourself as compared to your perceived surrounding
people, places, things
etc...
when you say that the world is scary
you just say that you see yourself as weaker than those around you
be it the jungle, the animals or people"
This probably explains multiple personalities. All one needs to do is look at the phenomenon as someone defining more than one world for himself when faced with the urge to BE contradictory selfs in the same perception of his surroundings. But I guess this line of thought has become too complicated and twisted by now. So I'll end it here at this untied end.
Here is a quote by William Blake that shows the importance (or possibly the unimporatance) of perception :
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
(Had we been able to perceive nothing and not define our worlds, we would have been able to see everything and comprehend nothing.)
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