Perceptual filters
On Boing Boing Cory described being robbed and in the ensuing discussion, it turns out that the incident supports everyone's thoughts on crime, urban living, politics, drugs, gentrification and more, no matter how wildly mutually exclusive the thoughts are.
Sometimes not thinking I know everything seems downright isolating.
I wonder how often and how profoundly we might be applying these filters to more direct sensory evidence — things that would seem to be less subject to interpretation... engaging in positive or negative hallucination (perceiving things that aren't there or not perceiving things that are there, respectively) so as to ensure that what we perceive supports our beliefs.
In The Illuminatus Trilogy, everyone is brainwashed to not see the fnords. A character breaks free of this conditioning and suddenly sees fnords everywhere. What they are is never defined. When I first read it at 16, I was convinced they referred to subliminal advertising. I now laugh at how narrow a view I took.
At 16, I was sure that fnords were soft and brown and had many, many antlers. Maybe signs that I had moose on the brain from a young age. But when I saw "Princess Mononoke," I looked at the forest spirit's daytime incarnation and thought, "Huh, I wonder why they put a fnord in this movie."
Posted by Mris on July 3 2002 11:32