On The Nature Of Perception How do our beliefs influence us?

[Vardigon 0]

How do we form our opinions of the way reality truly is? The first layer of reality, the foundation of it, begins with unconnected dots floating on a black background, a void in space. When we, as human beings, look upon this star scape, we immediately engage our minds and attempt to use reason, intuition, emotion, et al., in order to connect these dots and integrate them into a whole, a world view, or what I would like to call, a "reality tunnel." Reality is not necessarily the connections we make between these dots, for there are an infinite number of connections that we could possibly create, but the dots themselves. And yet, in our everyday lives, all of us (me, you, everyone, without exception), are subjected to seeing our connections, rather than the raw information that makes up reality. Why? Because this is easier for us to deal with. Everyone speaks of labels. Especially when person A accuses person B of mislabeling them or pigeonholing them into some group in which they do not belong. But, I believe that it's pretty much proven fact that most of us prefer to see simplified abstractions that contain a caricature or an ideal way of looking at things, based on our reality tunnel. Anything we learn when growing up, including religious experience, time spent in public schools, unconscious learning, how people react to us, and even our direct physical environment, influences us to a great degree.

 

For instance, and to analogize how creative our minds are when weaving together the dots of reality, I submit the idea of 'sensory deprivation.' When a mind, brain, is deprived of all stimulus, sensory input, as per sensory deprivation tanks, or any other method, we know by experimentation and experience that the mind will begin to create its own reality, a hallucination, in order to survive. We often think of the mind as having an upper limit of too much stimulus input, but it also has a lower limit, which wen passed, the mind will begin to generate its own content. In some people, the mechanisms of the mind are a bit faulty, and we see in people such as schizophrenics wild hallucinations, delusions of grandeur, all because they're not able to shut out sensory input as much as a normal human being is (there's research that has recently been done on this, and I'll find a link and post it if anyone is interested in further information on the topic.)

 

The point to all of this is, and I quote:

 

Whatever the thinker thinks, the prover proves.

From an excellent, if crudely presented book, Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson, we see the rule of thumb that people, whatever ideology they come from, will inevitably find some way of proving to themselves that what they believe is true. And yet we know that logic is limited to personal experience: if we don't have enough data, we can't make the right conclusions. Wrong dots, always wrong connections. And by this, we are locked into our old ways of thinking, which promotes a stagnation of imagination and creativity, and ultimately slows the human race down in its evolution. My appeal to all people, members of this forum included, is to look closely at what you believe and try to break it into pieces and see if it actually works. Learn something new, and approach reality from a new perspective. By this, we'll become truly un-robotized people that just walk around in a daze of a LaLa land reality that doesn't exist, and ascend upward into true greatness. Edited June 10, 2008 by Vardigon (see edit history)

[Janissary 0]

...whatever ideology they come from, will inevitably find some way of proving to themselves that what they believe is true.

That's why most of debates are pointless. People who made up their minds are rarely changes them.

 

But it's not just about beliefs, it's about being right. You know even the most evil and disgusting man whom everyone can point him and say "he's bad" can defend his act with stupid logic but a logic he truly believes.

 

I once read a news about a man raping a farm animal then stating but it wanted it too! Well... he's crazy, right. In this example it's obvious. But in our daily life, we all make up stupid logics to ease us. We cant stand to be wrong or bad so we lie!

 

Perception is really something... Thx Vardigon.

[hitmanblood 0]

I think that if you are religious person you will perceive all or most of the things throughout religion and maybe some natural laws will make you scare or at least make you unconformable. But non the less. Important thing is to start thinking about different topics.Since then you will be able to perceive everything throughout your own belief. So to say you will find explanations that are agreeable with the natural laws of physics and with your perception of God. So that they will not fight each other and you will have peace of mind.

[MichaelA8 0]

At birth, our minds a blank parchment. While we grow, others sketch on it. This is what form our perceptions. Their opinions become ours, their fears, believes, interpretations, likes.....all of it.Then, at some point, I'll experience something. I'll see it, scan my memory bank and find a 'programmed' response. Here's a simple example: If I were born and raised in an isolated area, where I was taught that the color of grass was purple, then, once I came to the USA, people would think I was insane. Perception is reality, to a degree. At some point during our journey, our soul begins to burst at the seams. It becomes 'uncomfortable'. Pain, being the great motivator, is what often spurs us on to look beyond the box. That's, when it happens. First I must discover what I am not, in order to manifest what I AM.~Michael

[mbafactory 0]

You will become what you think! For a single glass half filled with water, you might have two different answers from two different people- half filled, or half empty.Your life revolves around your perceptions, which eventuallly convert themselves to beliefs and then to values over the generations. There should be ghosts, over the ages changes to "Ghosts are there!" Similarly for criminals their perception about life, makes them take someone's life easily. Most of the time we do what our perceptions tell us. Psychological aspects make us believe, that what we believe is or should be true, we act accordingly and results are thus just a resultants of our perceptions.