Perspective

Aren't you seeing what I am looking at?

Donald Trump said he was with the people. Gloria Steinhem responded, "I've met the people and you are not them." She isn't any more one of his people than he is hers.

When he talks about women and immigrants, his people hear something different than I do. It gives them hope. I feel dread. How can we see this so very differently?

If you've ever read Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray, you know that what we see or hear is based on our personal bubble of belief. That bubble is built upon the theories you have judged to hold value; those theories are based on what you were focused on while experiencing life (your portion of reality). It's a complex structure that I am still getting a handle on. I've read the book twice and will return to it again, just to understand it more fully.

Anyway, the main idea is that all of reality is unknowable. There is so much going on all over the world that no one person could know it all. So we are limited by what we experience in life. Those experiences are further limited by the things we happen to be focused on during those experiences. If we are hungry, we notice food. If we are worried about the environment, we notice all the pollution. If you ever watched a selective attention video of people passing a ball around - the one where you are asked to count how many times someone wearing white handles the ball - you are likely one of the people who realizes that a gorilla could dance in front of you completely unnoticed. In fact you are likely one of the people who were in complete disbelief that there was a gorilla in the video at all. But when you watched it again your limited perspective was revealed. In your defense, you knew exactly how many times a person in white handled the ball.

That's what we build our version of reality on. That's what everyone has built their version of reality on. They know to be true only what they have focused on while experiencing what they have experienced. And they will reject anything that does not fit the truth of their reality. Even when faced with facts that show a different reality, they will defend their bubble. They will get angry. They will claim a conspiracy is going on.

They were seeing a 6. You are seeing a 9. They are seeing a hero. I am seeing a villain.