Have you ever considered how the colors you see might not look the same to someone else?
Or how two people can witness the same event yet recount it completely differently?
What we perceive as reality is not always a universal truth, but a personal experience
shaped by numerous subtle forces at play here folks. And how do these perceptions impact our
understanding of the world and our interactions within it? Welcome to Life Unscripted where we
delve into the depths of how our perceived realities shape our lives and the world around us.
I'm Alan Stafford, your host and guide through the often invisible yet profound influences
that perception wields over our daily existence. In today's episode, we're exploring the subjectivity
of perception and its far-reaching implications from how we navigate our personal relationships
to how we interpret and respond to broad societal issues.
So why is understanding our perception crucial? I mean after a while aren't we happy with what we
perceive? Imagine navigating a ship, for example, with a compass that doesn't point north. Or if
you don't drive a ship or sail a ship, maybe you're driving your car where your navigation just
isn't working. Our perceptions could be just as misleading. And recognizing this can profoundly
impact how we interact with the world and how we interact with each other. Are we really responding
to the world as it is or as we see it through our uniquely colored lenses? And I'm talking about our
own worldview, our own point of view. So let's unpack these questions and more as we explore
how perception molds our reality and examine ways to broaden our perceptual horizons for a richer,
more empathetic life experience. Alright folks, there's so much on this topic of perception.
I don't even know where to start. I mean a good thing I have an outline, right? If I didn't,
I'd just be all over the place, which I typically am anyway. But human perception, that's,
it's pretty wild. There's over 8 billion people on this planet. So there is over 8 billion different
realities. And what we're going to talk about reality and perception here as the podcast
goes on. But before we start, let's talk about what is perception? What's a basic definition
of perception? Assuming we can all agree on that. I only laugh because perception is not even a
objective, it's subjective. And I don't know if we can all even agree on perception. But I'm going
to do my best to give you some sort of basic description on how I understand it. And then
we'll go from there. So basically, perception is an active cognitive process, where our sensory
input, you know, sight, the sound, the touch, the smell, the taste, all of this is interpreted
and integrated by our brains to create some sort of coherent meaning and understanding of the world
we're in. I mean, all of that comes into play in helping develop our perception
of how we see the world. So right off the bat, we can simply say no two people are going to
experience the same exact set of a set of senses, so to speak. So that should tell you that no two
people have the same perception, exact same perception, I should say, I mean, there is overlap.
There are people that have similar perceptions, but nothing no two people are exactly alike and
they're how they perceive things. But but I do want to stress that perception is not just passively
receiving that data, that sensory input into the brain, you know, it involves actively constructing
a personal reality influenced by just your individual experiences, your expectations,
you have certain expectations based on experiences, and any prior knowledge that you have.
All that comes into play in shaping your perception of the world around you.
You see, I think if we all understood this part, we probably get along a lot better than we do now.
If we respect to each other's, I guess, viewpoints. But that might be a topic for a whole
another podcast. And so as the brain absorbs, I should say for a lack of better terms absorbs
all of this stimuli from the environment around us, through our sensory organs, it basically
does this interpretation and organizes the information and, you know, different sensory
sources and develop maybe like a coherent whole using processes like pattern recognition and
contextual inferences, drawing inferences on the information. And some would call those
probably heuristic shortcuts and judgments. And in our memories, our memories play a big part
in shaping our perception by basically taking what we've remembered what we recall making predictions
and interpreting this sensory data as we're gathering this information, making predictions,
as I just said a second ago, you know, he heuristic shortcuts to how we make judgments,
how we make decisions. And so all of this is happening inside your mind. And you're not even
aware of this year. And you're thinking you think this way because this is the right way.
But it's not necessarily the right way. It's the right way for you, perhaps, but it's not the
right way for the other 8 billion people on this planet. I think if we understood that,
we would even get along a little better, right? And then there's selective attention,
selective attention. selective attention has a big impact on what we perceive. It's basically what
we're choosing to pay attention to, which leads us into the subjectivity and perception. There's
a concept known as perceptual set. Basically, it's a mental predisposition to perceive one thing
and not another basically highlighting the subjectivity and perception. So what the heck does
that mean? You probably thinking, let me explain. So basically perceptual set is a psychological
concept referring to how we perceive information in a certain way based on our preconceived
attitudes, experiences, expectations and emotions of that event. And it's this predisposition that
we have that significantly influences how we interpret and respond to their to our sensory
input. And it's this concept here, this the concept of perceptual set that helps explain
why different people can perceive the same stimulus in very diverse ways. I mean, you can be in the
same room as someone else, have someone come in, create a commotion and leave and you're going to
have two different perceptions of that event. And it's all going to be based on your past experiences,
your attitudes, your own emotional state and everything else that goes along with who you are.
I'll give you an example because one of the key aspects of perceptual set is expectations. So
let's say imagine you are going in for a medical treatment, okay? And you have an expectation
that the medical treatment is going to be effective. So you may perceive an improvement
in your symptoms, regardless of the treatment's actual efficacy or effectiveness, because you
have that preconceived idea that the treatment's going to be effective. And this is along the
lines of how placebos work as well in medicine, where you're given a placebo and told us to
real thing and you have an expectation of a certain outcome, like a good feeling, you know,
a feeling better and then that occurs because it's in the mind. Another key aspect of perceptual set
is context. So the context in which a stimulus occurs also guides our expectations, in other
words, our perception. So let me give you an example here. Let's say a word you might read
differently in a sentence, depending on the surrounding words that provide context. So if
you're looking at a word, you may read it differently, even though it's not the word based on the
information, the other words around that context. And experience also is a key aspect of perceptual
set, because basically past experiences shape our perceptual set by conditioning us to, you know,
expect certain results. As an example, if someone has frequently encountered, well, let's say friendly
dogs, as opposed to vicious dogs, they've encountered friendly dogs, you know, they may
perceive a strange dog as friendly. How many people do you know that may go up to just a strange dog?
Their perception of a dog is probably like, Hey, I've had friendly dogs as dogs friendly,
I'm good with dogs. And they can do that even if the dog shows signs of aggression. I'm going to
give you a perfectly good example. In my house, I have a German shepherd. He is very nice and
loving wants me to pet him all over. But the moment a stranger comes in, he's vicious. He's a guard
dog. He's very protective. And we had a get together at my home one night. And one of the guests
felt that she was really good with dogs. She would say, Oh, dogs love me. Well, it was probably her
perception because she probably had good dogs and good experiences. Well, the moment she approached
my dog and tried to feed it a snack, it bit her hand very aggressively.
She learned real quick that not all dogs are friendly. So she was shaped by her past experiences
that all dogs are probably friendly. When she found out my dog wasn't, she probably realized,
Well, maybe that's going to reshape my thinking on future dogs. I'm going to go ahead and hold back.
And it's not think that every dog is going to be friendly towards me. And this applies walking
down in a in a city, a dark city at nighttime. I mean, I remember being in Milan, Italy,
a little paranoid because I'm walking through the streets at night and then I look around and I realize
there's women walking here by themselves. And they don't seem to be bothered by this here by by the
streets at night, midnight, one o'clock in the morning. And I realized it was pretty safe. I come
from, I don't live in LA. I live close to Los Angeles, California. And let me tell you, you
don't want to be walking, you don't be walking during the day in Los Angeles, California, let
alone at night. So my perception was shaped by that reality. I even went to university in
downtown LA USC. So my my perception is shaped by that reality of living down there and seeing the
crime. So every big city that I went to that I traveled to in Europe, or even in the United States,
I just assumed was very dangerous. Whereas other people that come from Europe, for example,
will come into Los Angeles thinking it's safer when it's really not another key aspect of a
perceptual set. And the reason I'm spending quite a bit of time here on the concept of
perceptual, perceptual set is that it's very important in shaping our perceptions as individuals.
And this all of that information in a perceptual set basically comes down to how we perceive
differently from one another, how we experience life differently. And that leads to a different
set of perceptions. So as I said, another key aspect is mood in your emotions. So I mean, it's
it's probably a no brainer, but somebody who's feeling sad will have a different perception
of a situation versus someone who's feeling ecstatic or happy, they're going to perceive
that same situation completely different. And a big one that a lot of us just don't really understand.
But it's culture, culture, your cultural background can influence your perceptual sets by
ingraining certain values, folks, you know, your beliefs and typical patterns of thoughts that
affect how information is processed, how you society comes together. Look, it's a reality,
you can be a Christian in an Islamic country, but you're going to be influenced by Islamic
cultures, because it's a predominant religion in the Middle East, for example. So you're going to
retain a lot of those cultural values, which are conservative, and that's going to spill over into
your life. Even if you come to America, I've known people that grew up Islamic in the Middle East,
they're conservative, they come to the United States, they're Christian, they're not even Islamic
there. But they still retain that ultra conservative Islamic mentality, because it's ingrained in their
culture and that drives their perception of how the West is. And it takes them a while to
acclimate to a whole different culture, whole different society. And some just don't do that,
they just retain what they have and try to adapt or change the rest of society. And that's what
we have today in our country. And once we have today around the world, people always trying to
change an influence. And something as simple as color perception varies between cultures and how
they categorize color. Not all colors transcend all cultures. And not everybody agrees that blue
is blue. So I mean, there's even a big discrepancy in discussion or argument or disagreement on colors,
folks, and how we perceive that from culture to culture. And all of this comes into play in how
you think and how you perceive the world and how you interact with everyone else. I think if you
can completely truly understand that, I'm not advocating change who you are. What I'm saying is,
have a complete awareness that what you're perceiving is not necessarily the same thing as
the next person observing the same event as you are is perceiving, because they have a whole
different perceptual set of reality of what's going on based on their own history, their own
emotions. And I think if we can understand that with people, we can get along a lot better.
You know, we can agree to disagree, respect other people's opinions, but not necessarily have to
agree to the opinion. I know it's a utopian dream, but hey, you know, we got to start somewhere,
right? And then there's a whole science, I mean, we're not going to get into the whole
neurological aspects of perception, because this is not a podcast on neurology specifically,
but you know, parts of the brand like the Ciprolobe, you know, for your vision,
temporal lobes for hearing all these come into play because of your senses. So the key takeaway
here is that your senses are highly involved in shaping your perception of reality of the world
around you. Before I move on into the philosophical context of perception, I want to give you some
real life implications of perception, kind of give you some examples. So you can kind of pull all of
this together in this segment here, this first segment on, you know, the reality or the, on these
psychological aspects, on the psychological aspects of perception. One of the most prominent real life
implications that we have right now is politics, folks, politics. I don't care what country you're
from. I don't care if you're in the European Union, if you are in Africa, if you are in an Asian
country or the United States of America or some South American country that I, that I catch them
all. I hope I did. I don't think Antarctica has a government. But people will perceive a speech by
a politician differently. You can have 12 different people listening to a speech by a politician and
all 12 are going to walk away with some sort of different perception. Now there's going to be
overlapping ideologies, overlapping perception from one person to the next, because they're all
like-minded if they're listening to the politician. However, they're still going to walk away. Some
may be very extreme. Others will walk away thinking, okay, well, maybe some of it's true, maybe not all
of it's true, but I still support my guy type of thing. So that's one area where perception
is critical. What about decision making? Are perceptions influenced? Are decision making?
I'm going to give you another example. This happened probably 10, 20 years ago. I don't
remember the exact date, early 2000s. And it was an airline coming into San Francisco. And it was
short of approach. And I forget it was one of these Asian airlines. It could have been Japan
Airlines. I don't want to really name it out, because I'm not really certain of what airline
it was. But I know it was Asian. It could have been Korean Airlines. But in any event, what happened
was the plane landed short of the runway crashing. And I think a person fell out and died. I mean,
not everybody on that plane died, but it was a was considered an airplane crash. And what happened
was the pilot was a seasoned pilot, but new to that aircraft. And the co pilot had more experience
in that aircraft. But yet didn't call out the pilot on what he was doing wrong. Now there's
a leadership bias there where you assume that the leader or the person in charge knows what they're
doing. However, it's also a cultural difference to in that the subordinate pilot didn't want to
question the senior pilot. And that was a cultural, a cultural communication gap in that
situation, the perception that this guy is senior, therefore I can't question him or I should not.
It would be disrespectful led to this crash. Because the co pilot knew that what was happening
was incorrect, but he assumed that the pilot would make a correction or fix it or knew what he was
doing. And then you crash a $100 million plane and kill a person or two. It's, you know, it's not a
good thing. So the perception played an important role in decision making. And that goes along,
even down to the lowest level within the household folks with parents with bosses at work,
your perceptions impact your decision making. I've had bosses that I wondered, where did you
crawl out from under? I mean, your perceptions way off. But I can't really say that in all
fairness, because my perceptions different with my upbringing in my in my history. I mean, and you
have again, there's a whole list of stuff workplace dynamics health and wellness, you know, interpersonal
relationships, education and learning, all of these shape your perception. And they all of them
have an impact on those areas of your life. And being more cognizant of that being more aware of
that can help you become a better thinker, better decision maker, and just better well rounded
leader, so to speak. And I'm not talking leadership as in the sense of becoming a leader of a country.
I'm talking the leader of your own sanity, your mentality of who you are as a person.
And one more before we go, because I think it's important, the legal and judicial system folks.
I mean, we talked about this in on the podcast about do we have free will and or is life deterministic,
in that if life is deterministic, and there is no free will, then our whole judicial system needs
to be revamped, because the person's not really committing the crime, it's already predetermined
in their neuroscience, their brain, that they're going to do something, you know, based on genetics
or whatever. So perception plays a big role, especially in eyewitness testimony. Can you
imagine how many innocent people are imprisoned over just eyewitness testimony, and how that
person that was the key eyewitness was biased in some way? I mean, it's it's a reality, folks.
It happens. And it has happened. And people have been vindicated.
Some 1020 years after the fact, that's pretty amazing. Just on a person's perception. And
remember, perception is reality. And there is no objective perception, objective reality in terms
of human perception. It's all subjective. That's that's pretty amazing when it comes down to it.
Now, you're going to get people who are going to say, well, you know, religion, Christianity,
God says this, look at again, that's your perception. Okay, that is your perception.
And you're entitled to that. Hallelujah. That's for you. I'm going to support you on whatever
you believe in. Because I believe that everyone has a right to their own set of beliefs. But don't
push it on to other people assuming that's a truth. It's your truth, it may not be their truth.
Because again, their perception is different than yours based on what we just talked about.
All of these other sensory factors. Okay, let's talk about the philosophical context of perception,
because we know our good buddies, the philosophers have a lot to say about reality and perception.
So we've touched on the neurological and psychological, well, mainly on the psychological,
we didn't get really too deep into the neurological part of it, what happens inside the brain.
We'll leave that if you want to go to med school and become a neuroscientist.
But we understand that psychologically and neurologically that our senses play a
big role in creating our perception. Now philosophers, philosophers
have historically considered perception more than just a biological or psychological process.
They consider it a fundamental aspect of human experience. It's fundamentally who we are,
which is not wrong to say because I mean, it's a truth, right? Having perception is basically
being human. So I don't think that was very, I don't think that's so thought provoking.
And it's been a longstanding view that philosophers view perception as basically a bridge that bridges
between the external world, what we see in front of us, and our internal cognition, well,
cognition would be internally anyways, but our own thoughts, it's a bridge between the real world.
And I say real world with quote, quotations, because what's real to you is not real to someone
else per se. And again, it goes back to perception. But what philosophers have long
stated is that perception is that bridge between the external world and our own thought process,
our own cognition. And it's basically this perception they suggest is a primary way we
access and interpret the world around us, which is very true. Because that's what we're constantly
doing. We're taking in senses, we're processing it based on our biases, our history, our knowledge,
our cultural input, and then we're spitting out some sort of a result answer to what we're seeing.
And we call that reality. And a lot of philosophical doctrines, basically, don't just say perception
just affects our understanding of reality, but that it actively shapes that reality through our
experiences. You see what we're doing here, folks, we're going from who we are, our history, our
background, all of our biases, culture, education, emotions, translating that into a perception
on how we see the world into our reality, what we think the world is. And remember, I said,
no people, no two people's realities are the same. There could be overlaps, but they're not exactly
the same. And then there's the concept of empiricism, the philosophy, the philosophical theory of
empiricism that suggests that all knowledge comes from sensory experiences. I mean, there's philosophers
like John Locke, we've talked about on other podcasts, who believe that our perceptions help
form our understanding of the world around us. And that's not wrong at all. I mean, it's just a
philosophical explanation of what it is. But really, when it comes down to it, it's a science
explanation as well, because all those senses, and we've talked about come into play when it's
creating that perception of us. And another philosopher I've talked about in the past is
Emmanuel Kant, who's the father of Kantian philosophy. Basically, his ideas that while
our perceptions are of the world, you know, the world in which we live in, they're shaped by the
innate structures of our mind. Thus, we can never, ever know the world as it is independently
of how we see it. I mean, you can't go out and say, I know this, when in reality, you don't know it,
you just perceive it based on all your senses, right? So what would be a truth? What would be a
fact? I don't know, we have to come to some agreement, right? But how does all of this
ancient philosophical theory or ideas play into today's relevancy? Well, it plays a lot because
look at folks, we have things such as ethics, art, science. All of that is influenced by our
perceptions. And our perceptions are influenced by our own ideologies, our own behaviors, our own
emotions, or past cultural experiences. So it makes it sometimes challenging to get along
or to understand completely. That's why there is really no objective reality when it comes to
human perception. So to say that human reality is a fact, I would say that it's not a fact because
there is no such thing as a greed upon reality with over 8 billion different realities on this
planet. That's fascinating to me. And I think it takes a very cerebral person to truly understand
that idea. It doesn't mean that you have to agree and accept everyone's ideology because I certainly
don't. But I do understand it and I understand it's their reality and they own that and they're
entitled to that. It's not wrong. It's not right. It's just who they are. And given that, I'm okay
with it. But when it comes to society, it's really difficult to try to manage hundreds of millions
of people in one country under one ideology. And that's where you have all this turmoil because
some people see it a different way while others see it another way. And then there's this conflict.
So can we really have 8 billion different little countries? I mean, wouldn't it be great if we can
simply say your home is your country, it's a sovereign nation, you know, and your laws will
apply only to you on that piece of property. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue after that?
My God, I don't know. I don't even know how that would, how would that would even play out.
But the reality is, folks, is that there is no objective reality when it comes to human perception.
And I think I've said that many times already. So we have to find a way to coexist with our own
realities, you know, kind of work work together somehow in that coming up. I'm going to explain
some get a little deeper into the factors influencing our perceptions when we come back.
We're going to recap a little bit on what we talked about earlier on the factors that influence
our perception. I mean, we can broadly categorize these these factors into cultural, emotional,
and psychological, as well as environmental influences. I mean, because that's a big thing
nowadays as well, the environment, right? Our surroundings, these all play a role in
generating or creating our perceptions for us. So first off, we talked about, we briefly talked
about color or cultural perception and color perception in different cultures. And really,
some cultures have more ways of explaining the color blue than English speakers do, which basically
leads to different perceptions of color. I mean, what does red signify in in China signifies luck,
for the most part? But what does red signify in the West danger, you know, and these colors
impact our perception or reality? It's when if you ever if you've ever known a designer,
graphic designer or a marketer, someone who who deals with with advertising internationally,
they have to be extremely cautious in how they word the type of visuals they use and the colors
they use, because they don't want to create a negative perception of their brand based on
that culture or a culture in which their product is in that market. They don't want to create a
negative brand or negative image of that brand. So they have to be very careful in creating the
visuals that help sell that brand without destroying, you know, the brand altogether,
because of some color that they perceive as positive, whereas another culture might see
as negative and taste food. Have you tasted multitudes of foods? I mean, the food in Africa
versus the food in Europe versus the food in the West, which is junk food, which is, you know, food
in Asia and the Middle East, they all have these different tastes, you know, there's different
levels of bitterness, different levels of sweetness, different levels of, you know, tartness.
And all these play a perception, a role in forming your perception, I should say, of reality,
and how you perceive the world around you. I mean, let's take, let's take, for example,
bugs. About a third of the world eats bugs for protein, it's a sustainable protein.
And there's really nothing wrong with eating the bugs if you grew up eating the bugs.
You could eat cockroaches or a whole host of other insects. But here in the West,
if you brought that up, people like, ooh, it's like the ick factor, even though it's not going to
hurt you if you've prepared it properly, like you would prepare any other protein and eat it.
But yet the fact that we are disgusted by the looks of insects, we don't want to eat it. And we
look at other countries as odd, other people as odd or primitive, when that's not even true.
That in itself is kind of odd to look at other countries as odd for eating something that they
find very nutritional and very sustaining, sustainable. And another cultural perception
would be moral judgment, how we judge one another. If we take a look at the Middle East, if we take
a look at the predominantly Islamic countries, they don't believe 100% in women's rights.
I'm not saying they don't have, they don't believe that women has some rights, but wholeheartedly,
especially in extremism in Afghanistan, where you have the extreme Taliban,
they don't believe women should be educated. Whereas here in this country, we advocate for
education. And yet that impacts the perception of people from that part of the world. When in fact,
Islam was a very, or the Middle East, I should say, not Islam so much, but the Middle East
was a prospering educational hub before Islam came along and changed the perception of people in that
region. I mean, the first university ran by a woman was in the Middle East, was in Northern Africa.
I forget the name of the university right now, but it was created by a woman and it was in the
Middle East and this predates Islam. So perceptions change within cultures as well over time. And
that changes other people's perception of that culture. It's like you're damned if you do and if
you're damned if you don't. Other factors, as we've discussed, are emotional and psychological
factors. I mean, your emotional state is probably one of the biggest factors of your perceptions.
Let's say, for example, you had somebody, a loved one in the military and went to war and was killed
by the opposing culture. That would change a lot of people's perception of that culture,
even though it's not really justified intellectually, but emotionally, it would have an impact on you
and how you perceive that other culture. You would probably hate them or dislike them or have this
animosity towards them. And that happens a lot, even optimism or pessimism. I remember
when I was in a country called Kyrgyzstan, it was a former Soviet country, and I walked around the
streets there with a bodyguard and an interpreter. And I noticed that everyone had a very, you know,
bleak look on their face. They didn't, they looked like they were not happy. And my question
to the interpreter was, why does everyone look unhappy walking around the street? And basically,
his explanation was, if you didn't have money, or you didn't have a good society,
you know, or couldn't feed your family, you wouldn't look happy either. They think that Americans are
crazy because they smile a lot. I kind of agree. I mean, I smile too, but, but I get the point now.
You see, I just needed someone to explain that to me, that perception to me, but our disposition
in life, how we see our reality in our own countries, shape our perceptions of other societies.
Does it make it wrong? I don't think it makes it wrong. It just makes it right for that person.
But I think they need to understand that not everybody's going to be the same. It's hard to
do that. I'm telling you, it's not that easy. Changing your behavior, changing your perception
is not a snap your finger type of thing. It takes time and effort, if that's what you want to
achieve. But back to optimism and pessimism, let's say you're an optimist and you move to a
rainy part of the country, you might look at rain as an inconvenience, just a slight inconvenience,
nothing out of the ordinary. I personally love rain, but to some people who are optimistic,
we'll go, okay, what's an inconvenience? But I'll deal with it. It's part of nature. Whereas a pessimist
would have a hard time with that, constantly complaining about the weather. Think about how
that would impact their relationships. So if you moved from your country or from your city
to a different part of the country or different country altogether, and the weather was going
to be completely different, and you viewed it as a pessimist, your whole perception would be
completely different versus being an optimist. And then you have environmental impact. People who
live in the city and love to live in the city, the hustle and bustle, the fast pace, will look at
people in the urban areas as slow, maybe sometimes lazy or backwards, so to speak. I mean, definitely
there's that stigma if you look at people that are on the West Coast here in the United States,
and they're looking at people in the Midwest as slow, lazy, maybe not educated. And that's not
even the case. But that's the perception they have because they're living on a farm, but they're
living in some rural area. They're not in the fast paced fake world of Los Angeles and Hollywood,
which to me, I don't like period, but but in any event, it shapes your perception, your environment
shapes your perception, whether you live in the city, or you live in the suburbs, or you live in
the sticks, the woods by yourself, you know, far from anybody else, you probably don't want anyone
near you at that point. So in the end here, cultural, emotional, psychological and environmental
factors have such a profound impact on your perception that helps shape your reality. I mean,
and no two people are going to experience the same. Again, as I said, they're going to have
overlap, but they're not going to experience it, experience it exactly the same. If you're from
the city, and you're a miserable person, and you go to visit somebody in the country, who seems to be
very optimistic, you're going to look at them as maybe crazy, you know, why is this person happy and,
you know, just content with his life out here, and it's so slow. Whereas the person that grew up
in the city and is shaped by that environmental impact and other societal and cultural factors
may end up in the city going like, wow, this is not for me. It's too fast. It's dangerous. It's
loud. It's noisy. I can't live with this. I mean, that's reality right there. And it's these,
and it's these perceptions that impact real world interactions and decisions that we make for one
another and with one another, especially if you take somebody out of the rural area, bring them
into the city for work. There's a big impact. I mean, there could be a positive side to it as
well, because it's a different point of view. But is that necessarily good? Have you ever heard
that saying perception is reality? You've probably heard it. If not, I'm telling you,
perception is reality because perception, or should I say, because reality is not a fixed
external landscape, but it's a personal construct shaped significantly by our perceptions. So,
so when someone says to you in an argument, that's not real, or that's not reality,
you can simply come back and say, well, it's my reality, because it's my perception.
And that's true. It is. It is your reality and you own it. You're entitled to it. Don't let
no one take that away from you. If you want to believe there's little green men flying around
in spaceships, then go ahead and believe that because that's your reality. And if you have proof
to yourself, then hallelujah, that's proof to yourself. Don't let no one take that away from you.
I mean, I celebrate the individuality of humanity and everybody's different.
I support that I support the individuality of everybody. I mean, there are some that are
far extreme to what I like, I don't care for, but I'm indifferent to it. I don't go around
condemning them. I say they're not right. They're not wrong. They're just right for who they are.
That's what they want. And that's fine. I mean, just don't try to control me. Now I think and what
I should do and not do other than that, we can coexist all day and all lifelong. But reality
basically is a construct through our sensory experiences and our cognitive processes, right?
I mean, meaning that our reality is subjective and it varies from person to person. This is
the theme I've been talking about. Everybody's different. It's not, I'm not going to change that
theme because it's true. And then you're probably thinking, well, that's your reality. I think
everyone has the same. See how this argument can go and go back and forth. It can get complicated,
too. And then a fight can break out. And if we're two countries, a war can break out
all over ideology, right? All over just how we perceive things. And none of it's really true.
That's just how we think it's true. But imagine for a moment how the idea, just the concept of our
own perception is reality. And just think for a moment how subjectivity challenges the concept
of a single objective truth. Seriously, I mean, have you ever sat down and thought about this?
How different perceptions lead to different understandings of what is true or real in
various situations, folks? It's a problem we have in politics, right? It's a problem we have in
government. It's a problem we have in education at work with family members. Just because you're
a family member doesn't mean you're all going to think alike. There's such great diversity
in genetics alone. And this whole perception of what is true or what is real in various situations,
there's a term called the Rashomon effect, which basically differentiates witnesses to the same
event. They have like witnesses have very distinct conflicting recollections of a
subjective nature in reality. They don't see the same thing. I mean, that's a problem, especially
in crime. I mean, key features of the Rashomon effect are subjectivity for number one, how our
personal experiences, motives and emotions, and as I keep bringing up your cultural backgrounds,
can shape your individual interpretations and recounting of the same events very differently.
Explains why not two people see the same thing always, when the same thing is being right in
front of them. It also counts for why there might be deadlocks and juries. Sometimes when
you've got nine people or 10 or 11 people saying one thing and one person doesn't see it that way.
The effect also indicates that multiple observe observers of an event may offer contradictory
and equally plausible accounts based on their perspectives, you can have contradictory perceptions
of the same event. He didn't, he did, he didn't, he did. That would drive you crazy.
And then there's the influence of self-serving bias within the Rashomon effect whereby these
differing accounts, alright, witness accounts are influenced by desire to present themselves,
these people themselves in a positive light or just to justify their actions. So basically,
the Rashomon effect questions the relativity of truth itself, suggesting that our understanding
of reality can often be deeply personal and can often vary influenced by subjective perceptions.
And again, this has an impact in legal areas when you have witnesses, multiple witnesses saying
different things. One side says, I saw him do it. The other person says, I didn't see him do it.
I saw someone like him do it. And then the other person says, no, it was him. And it goes back
and forth. And who's right? And sometimes the innocent guy gets convicted and the guilty guy
goes free. Go figure, right? Now getting back to perception and reality, I kind of went off on a
tangent there with the Rashomon effect. But I wanted to drive home that it's a it's a serious
problem when it comes to eyewitness testimony and to people's perception of an event that is critical,
that can have an impact on someone else's life. And think about your own personal relationships.
There's, there's misunderstandings. There's conflicts as a result of your different perceptions.
I've experienced the same thing in my own marriage, you know, or the opposite can happen. You can
even have deeper connections and acknowledge and and be understood. So it can go both ways,
depending on your perceptions and how shared how much of a shared perception you have. And again,
this expands not just to two people, but to a broader spectrum like society, these differences
and perceptions. And that's why I find it important to recognize and respect diverse perceptions,
because everyone is different in how they view reality, their perceptions are based upon their
own, you know, behavioral, emotional, psychological patterns. So can we punish people for how they
think and believe and find ourselves innocent? You know, we're as guilty if we're going to
condemn someone, right? If we're condemning the other guy for the way he sees and thinks about life,
we should condemn ourselves because we're no different if we flip the script,
and it's coming from that other person's perception and they're looking at us.
So we need to learn to respect this diversity. You know, again, we don't have to agree with it.
There's a lot I don't agree with, but I accept it. You know, it's just part of life. Just move on,
you know, here's a good exercise for you over the next few days, week, month, year, lifetime,
if you want to do it that way, you know, take a look at your own personal perceptions and how it
shaped your reality. What are some things that you see in others that you don't like that the
other person's doing? And stop and think about that for a moment. And I'll try to understand that
other person, maybe that other person, well, it's not maybe that other person has a different set
of realities, it has a different reality has a different set of perceptions. Try to understand
them, get to know them. Abraham Lincoln, former US president, I think it was a 16th president,
said in a quote, or at least a quote attributed to him, I do not like that man, therefore,
I must get to know him better. And that would be my advice to everybody with different perceptions
and realities from your own. You may not like them, but get to know them a little better.
I've done that. And it's turned out I've really like people who have opposite thinkers than me,
but they're really good people at heart. They're good souls, you know, if we take some time to
understand our own perceptions, and see how that impacts our reality and affects our relationships
and our perceptions of others, we can learn to navigate our personal, professional, and social
realms more effectively. You see, there's a benefit to challenge and expand our own perceptions.
It can lead to deeper understanding and appreciation for the complexity of the world around us.
It does, it really does. You know, they say traveling to different countries opens up your
mind and understanding of different cultures and societies, and you become more tolerant.
And that's true. I've done plenty of traveling around this globe. And if you think the earth
is flat, then I've done traveling along the linear part of the flat planet. But then that would be
your reality and you're entitled to that even though there's no science to prove that. But
you know, I'll let you have it. But my point is, in every country, whether it have been Belgium,
which I found the people very, very pleasant, and very nice, France, Germany,
Germany, okay, the Middle East, Italy, you know, Central Asia, Australia, it doesn't matter.
I've learned to understand these people just by interacting with them and getting to know them
and trying to understand their perception of my world. It helps increase your empathy.
It enhances your creativity. It gives you better problem solving abilities and improves
your interpersonal relationships when you begin to understand other people's perceptions, when
you broaden your perception, because at the end of the day, you get to go home and still be you.
No one says you have to take everyone home with you and listen to them all the time,
but at least understand them for your own betterment. If you don't want to do it for someone else,
I would hope you want to do it for society, but if not do it for your own betterment.
So how do we broaden our perceptions? Well, I'm going to go back to the same thing I say
almost every podcast, mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness meditation
really does help you observe your immediate reactions and thoughts about people life.
It helps you lead, it helps lead you to a deeper awareness of your perceptual biases when you
meditate and are mindful about it. And so how do you do this? There's mindful listening,
where you listen intently. It's like active listening. You're engaged with that person.
Focused observation, where you sit and you watch and you observe and then ask questions.
You'll be surprised. People would answer your questions if you asked them in a way that was
respectful. And another technique to broaden your perception is expose yourself to other
cultures and ideas. As I said, travel does wonders for the soul. But if you can't afford to travel
or you don't have the time, there's other ways around it. You can get knowledge through books,
you know, through films, having conversations with people. This is no lie. Early when Skype,
I don't know if you're familiar with Skype, but I remember in the early 2000s, when Skype was
just getting underway, I think it was 2003 when it launched, I would literally start randomly
dialing people over the internet using Skype and having conversations with them if they spoke English.
I mean, some people would think I'm crazy for doing that, but I found it exhilarating because
I wanted to understand the world around me. I wanted to understand people from other cultures
and what they thought about America, the United States to be specific. So I would randomly call,
I called Italy and I had already been to Italy prior, but I called Italy. I didn't speak Italian
that well, but I talked to a few gentlemen in Italy. I spoke to a woman in Afghanistan
who basically said that if her husband found out she was talking to me, he would kill her.
She had, she was working for the government at the time that the United States was in Afghanistan,
but I found that interesting that she was willing to have a conversation with me while she was at
work and I was just interested in her perceptions of everything and I would just do this randomly
weekly, just get on Skype and start calling random people just to learn a little bit about
where they are and what they're doing in the world. And I found that fascinating. So even that
exposure can help you understand the world around you because if you understand other people's
viewpoints, you begin to understand where they're coming from and you begin to understand their
realities and their perception and you'll find that everybody's pretty much similar. They just want
to get through the day, have peace and you know kind of live their life. And then again, there's
also workshops and educational courses that you can take to understand that. But I think the best
way is to get out there and communicate with people, even if there's people in your own community
that are not from your country, but like live from, live in your country from other countries,
connect with them. We have that all over the United States. I've seen that all over Europe too.
People from different countries come in to France, to Italy, to Belgium, to Germany,
to Finland, to the UK. It doesn't matter. Even artwork and the media play a big role in shaping
your perception and shaping your reality. I mean music alone. I listen to music from all over the
world. Every time I travel, I try to listen to the music that's local. And there's a lot of it
that's great. People would think I'm weird, but I love it. I'm a very eclectic listener to different
types of music because I've grown up that way. And I've embraced that and I accept that and I like
all kinds of different sounds and music. Media has a big influence on your perception too, not always
for the better. I mean there's always, there's a lot of propaganda and media, but you can gain
an insight into the thinking and what other people value in other societies by listening to their
media channels. If you are fortunate enough to have media from other countries, you know, playing
well nowadays you can stream stuff. So you don't even need to have it on cable. You can go to
YouTube, you know, and listen to news media from other countries, the US, the UK, you know, France,
and have it subtitled and understand their perceptions. Even China, you know, get a kind of
a feel for where their mindset is, what they're thinking, and what their perception of reality
is. That's an education in itself. The intake away on this here is that there is no excuse
other than not wanting to, to learn about other people's perceptions because we have a whole world
of tools at our disposal with the internet, you know, with video streaming, cable services, books,
you name it, that little phone in your hand that you're listening to this podcast on
is a tool that's come a long way that is a little computer that you can do research on and learn
from. So there's really no reason why you couldn't go out and understand other people's perceptions,
because it's only going to help you become a better you. I think we've touched on quite a bit
on perception and reality. And I think you understand by now the key takeaway is that
perception is reality and everyone has their own reality, and that no two people will share the
same set of perceptions exactly alike. And that everything that we touch see smell here has an
impact on our perception, which impacts our reality, the world around us, and how we see it and how we
act towards ourselves and towards one another. And I encourage you to reflect on your own perceptual
biases and expanding your perception could affect your relationships and understand the world around
you. As an exercise, I would just do that weekly, pick a different country, pick a different society,
pick a different topic to understand, engage in new cultures, you know, try different arts,
artistic experiences, practice mindfulness as ways to challenge and broaden your perception.
I promise you, if you approach this with an open mind, you will begin to see a change in who you
are and how you think about the world. Again, it's not compromising you. It's just helping you,
it's just helping opening your mind to a world that you would otherwise not want to look at or
have looked at or thought about. And that leads me to this, I want to thank you from the bottom of
my heart for listening. If you listen all the way through, you're a trooper. I appreciate you. I hope
that you've learned something. You've gained some insights that's going to help you become a better
person, which in turn will help society become a better place to live. And that you also have gained
some insight into the way we shape our reality. And I want to leave you with this thought.
Life is a matter of perception. Everything is a perspective. And what you see depends not just
on what you look at, but also on where you look from. Take care, my friend. Until next time,
I'm Alan Stafford for Life Unscripted.