I have always been fascinated by human perception. I marvel at metamerism where the same color under different lighting appears different (or different colors appear the same!). We can look at a person and see if they look flush even if they are under incandescent lighting, fluorescent, or even daylight. But this makes me even more impressed that our minds are able to make sense of things that are constantly changing.
Life is all about change.Here I am using the word LIFE in a broader sense of the term,a perception which does not have well defined boundaries at most places if one seeks to comprehend teleologically.
We change as time goes by,the change being,at times,natural(or pre-destined from a fatalistic point of view) irrespective of any event that might take place arbitrarily in one's life,and,at times,conditional-the changes we undergo by our experience and perception by arbitrary events.A specific change or a set of changes can be 'for the better' or 'for the worse' on a scale calibrated by social standards of morality that exists with temporal concomitance.(Even this scale changes along both temporal and spatial axes-across decades,centuries,millenia and across ethnic,socio-cultural and religious spectrum at any given time).However all changes are evolutionary(if of course one believes in a uni-directional arrow of time).
Our surroundings,both immediate and remote,independant of human existence,change too,again naturally(independant of any arbitrary phenomenon that might take place) and conditional(which is getting more and more diversified,being affected by human existence and interference.On a bigger scale,the universe,with all its stars,planetary systems galaxies,changes too-this is almost natural,following the scheme of things and again conditioned by arbitrary cosmic phenomena.
I went into this seemingly repetitive details while talking about Change as the change varies subjectively.How we experience and react to Change is absolutely dependant on our objective perception of things.A single event of change,along with its cause-and-effect properties,differs from man to man,depending on individual perception.
What one sees around him,is what one perceives it to be and is not what that is actually out there.We perceive it through our sense-organs,noting and tagging it with a specific colour,smell,temperature,taste,texture.We also tag it with feelings-happy or sad,safe or dangerous,good or bad,likeable or abhorrant-the list of parameters is endless,depending on the entire spectrum of human emotions and instincts.
The world around us is,for us,nothing but a combination of 'tags',which we attached ourselves since we became capable of cognition,the ''information' being carried within us through the generations down to what we are today,shaping our instincts,beliefs and attitudes.Thus the world today is an amalgamation of diverse ethnicities,social models and religions which we have created ourselves with time,and with which we identify through tags.
At a conference about ideas, it's important to step back and consider the engine that creates them: the human mind. How exactly does the brain -- a three-pound snarl of electrochemically frantic nervous tissue -- create inspired inventions, the feeling of hunger, the experience of beauty, or the sense of self -- and how reliable is it?I at times contemplate the mind as an ecosystem in which a new class of entities -- memes -- can compete, coexist, reproduce and flourish, and asks what sorts of nefarious things these entities might be up to.
Sometimes what we think 'ought to' be or even, 'normality' in general', is ambiguous. What's normal isn't just what's 'logical' but also what (probably) works, whats typically practical given the way we interact with the (our) world according and relative to our bodies, our history, or what is the same according to the meaning generated by our being-in-the-world.Every flick of the eyes, every new gestalt, is resemblance and difference, transformation and continuation, discovery from ambiguity.
Of course, our view of the world is extremely distorted by how our brains are shaped (what we have learned before).Many philosophers have said similar things before, starting with Plato and Pythagoras. But even if the originality of his ideas can be disputed, I think It has always been an idea worth sharing.
At the age of 8 years, when making color judgments using only one eye at a time (covering the opposite eye), I discovered a mild difference in my perception of cyan/magenta between my right & left eye.Could this slight perceptual difference combined with varying levels of colour blindness (perception) noted amongst different ethnicities, explain some of the differences in cultural style & design tastes?( For example, what's garish or over-saturated colour to one population is considered normal in another population.)
How many other things do we perceive incorrectly due to context with our senses and thoughts? This also opens up the thought of the vast differences in human perception of the same problem and how that "colors" our actions. That is why we must be conscious of what context we are put in when exposed to new ideas, or the same idea that only "looks" new.
It is about how we see the world, our country our "enemies" our friends, our ability to live and make changes in our daily life and in the life of the planet. Our perceptions drive our actions and dictate how we act in the world. And yet as we have seen, perceptions are sometimes arbitrary and conditioned. Context is often defined by others. To see truly we need to understand and challenge the context. And when we understand the context, and the validity of our perception, then perhaps we can change how we act in the world, and perhaps ,,, change the world.
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