Perception

Perception is a terribly interesting phenomena. Wikipedia describes perception as "the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to fabricate a mental representation through the process of transduction, which sensors in the body transform signals from the environment into encoded neural signals."


What? Let's break that down into layman's terms. Perception is the gathering and interpretation of information gathered from the senses that the brain builds its personal view of the world. The biggest portions of this are very simple and paradoxical. We gather information, identify it, interpret it, then make it into what we want based on our experiences. Another way of looking at this is that we gather information about the world and then build it into what we perceive of the world. Long way to a short result, we make our own world! What an exciting concept, our world is what we make.

Surely you have all heard these philosophical questions. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" and variations on it. Basically, if something is not observed(perceived) does said thing actually happen? With the tree, assumptions can be made upon seeing it before and after the fall. Standing at one moment and the next visit its on its side. Fairly clear it fell right? Well, maybe. Other things could have happened. Not many in the realm of what we deem possible. If the tree was small(a sapling), someone could have yanked it out of the ground and then laid it down. Other possibilities exist, but I think my point is clear. If something is not perceived, did it actually happen?

Now that we have touched on the philosophy of existence(close your eyes, has the world simply disappeared waiting for you to observe it before it is constructed again?) which recently my coworkers and I discussed. Okay, now the true reason why I decided to write this. I was reading the comments on a news article about politics(who it was about or the opinions represented therein are unimportant  for this discussion). Thinking about our political parties, I was struck by how these political parties, living in what we must agree is the same nation(based on perception, though we may each perceive the world a bit different, we all agree that the world, in fact, is), have completely differing views on how to handle the running of said nation. This is not uncommon though, we are very familiar with differing opinions. As I type this, I realize I should not be flabbergasted by this occurrence. Opinions abound everywhere, and some are so different, it is nearly impossible to see their origin.

Anyways, this article mentioned a particular former President of the United States of America. It could have been President Barack Obama, either of the Bush's, Clinton, Reagan, Washington, Garfield, Eisenhower, Lincoln, JFK, either Roosevelt, or any other former President you wish. Once again, party stances in this perception discussion are unimportant. What struck me is how differently different people can perceive and interpret the same events. Now sure, each person may perceive them differently, but once again, assumptions lead us to agreeing that these events happened. For instance, many people adore George W. Bush, see him as a hero, intelligent, and a great President. And yet his detractors view him as a villain, the ruiner of our nation, a bona fide idiot, and one of the worst President's our country ever had to suffer through. Which side is right? We do not have all the information to make that determination. However, I hope for Mr. Bush, as I hope for all of our Presidents, that he will be remembered as a great man and leader, who did the best he could with the information about the world(what a masterful association!!!) that he had.

I feel like we have traveled a long distance, to not have actually advanced any. I think my point is, based on the assumption that we and the world actually exist, how is it possible that beings living on the same planet, seeing the same events, can perceive them so very differently? Is there a genetic/biological reason? Is it our education and upbringing? Is it simply that every person's senses gather slightly different information from another person's, thus changing what we actually perceive? Or, is it possible that our perception of the world(which the individual builds) varies per person?

Yuck, its been a long time since I have slopped together a metric crap ton of rhetorical jargon(and I may have never done it unintentionally). I could tie this back to our discussions of literature. Many people love certain books while others detest them; "Ender's Game" falls into this category.

I guess the end result here is basic and abstract. Remember that the world you perceive is what you perceive, based on your experiences, prejudices, and desires. Remember that another being can see something completely different from what you see. And remember, when a disagreement arises where you draw a completely different conclusion from another man when presented with the same facts, you may appear as stupid to him as he does to you. I guess that's it for this blag post. What a mess! I will proofread it a bit and hopefully hone/focus the ideas. But before I go, here are some questions for you. If nobody reads this post, does it actually exist? If you are reading this and we have never met personally, do you exist? If we close our eyes, does the world dismantle only to be reconstructed when the eyes are reopened?