The futility of “Seeing things as they are”

July 6, 2017 by Joshua
in Models, Nature, Perception

Do people understand what they’re saying when they talking about “seeing things as they really are?”

Do they realize it makes no sense?

Let’s say you’re seeing things for not what they are. Do they imagine you have some special faculty that you were not using but when you decide to, you can just use your reality-seeing eyes instead of your what? false-seeing eyes?

If you misperceived or were deceived before, you didn’t know you were, or else you would have corrected for the misperception or deception. How do you know you aren’t misperceiving or deceived now? You don’t.

And what if someone sees things differently than you? If you believe you see things as they are, then you believe you’re right and they’re wrong. Why don’t you tell them, “I’m right and you’re wrong. I can tell because I see things as they really are. You don’t.”? You don’t because it sounds ridiculous. They can tell you the same and neither has any way of disproving the other.

Your senses are faulty and the information they receive gets distorted by your mind, which works on memories of your perceptions not the perceptions. Those memories are faulty. Faulty memories of faulty perceptions.

Why not just accept that you can never know that you’re seeing things perfectly, but that you’re always interpreting what your senses send you, and that even if you do have perfect knowledge, that you have no way to make others believe you if they disagree, so you have to deal with others’ perceptions anyway?

Why not celebrate that limitation?

Read my weekly newsletter

On initiative, leadership, the environment, and burpees

We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit

Leave a Reply

Sign up for my weekly newsletter