The Basics of Perception

The Starting Point

It occurred to me over this life that people have different viewpoints. In fact, I feel like life has beaten this into me over and over again.  I have also taken note that a lot of people, not everyone, can sometimes get lost in their own perceptions and fail to see how limited it is.  

For example, if I was to ask you what the following was, I would assume most people would call it a triangle. 

Indeed, I would agree!  

Then, I could ask what the following was:

If you are like me, you might call that a square.  

The Allegory of the Cave

In high school I read a book called Sophie's World.  It was what hooked me into learning about philosophy.  It introduced various concepts, one of my favorites was the Allegory of the Cave. 

To copy and paste from the internet:

Plato used the analogy of the cave to illustrate his idea of forms. The analogy goes like this: Imagine several prisoners who have been chained up in a cave for all of their lives. They have never been outside the cave. They face a wall in the cave and they can never look at the entrance of the cave. Sometimes animals, birds, people, or other objects pass by the entrance of the cave casting a shadow on the wall inside the cave. The prisoners see the shadows on the wall and mistakenly view the shadows as reality.

However, one man breaks free from his chains and runs out of the cave. For the first time, he sees the real world and now knows that it is far beyond the shadows he had been seeing. He sees real birds and animals, not just shadows of birds and animals.

This man is excited about what he sees and he goes back to his fellow prisoners in the cave to tell them about the real world. But to his astonishment, they don’t believe him. In fact, they are angry with him. They say the shadows are reality and that the escaped prisoner is crazy for saying otherwise.

POINT OF THE CAVE ANALOGY: According to Plato, the world outside the cave represents the world of forms while the shadows on the wall represent objects in the physical world. The escape of the prisoner represents philosophical enlightenment and the realization that forms are the true reality. Most people are like the prisoners in the cave. They think the shadows are reality. Philosophers, though, are like the man who escapes the cave and sees the real world. They have true knowledge.

I have used this allegory in many different areas to describe how people can be limited by their own perception.  

Back to the Beginning

I want you to look at the triangle and the square again. I assume you agreed with me on what they were.  But... what if?  

What if they are limited perceptions on something bigger?  What if one group of people saw the triangle, and rightly called it a triangle, while another group saw a square, and rightfully called it a square?

What if they disagreed?  What if they were so set in their ways, they argued over who was right?  

Wouldn't it be possible that they might have been arguing over the same thing, but coming from different angles?

What if... what they were arguing over was the shadows cast by a pyramid?  Could we then say that they were wrong?  

Not necessarily wrong.  But maybe we can say they were limited.  Limited by their own social conditionings.  Limited by their society.  Limited by what they don't know they don't know?  Limited even by their own genetics.  Limited by their ego.  

If you were to look at the above object from the side, it would be a triangle.  From the base, a square.  

How often are you caught up in your own limiting beliefs?