A polarizing filter changes the reality of light. Our natural cognitive filters are equally polarizing, often making reality unrecognizable.
Everything You Ever Experienced, You Experienced Inside Your Brain
Everything I am is known in my mind. The miniscule currents of electricity that dash willy-nilly between the synapses of my brain are me, are my mind. The organ called the brain both defines and is defined by those currents. Circuits are created, moved and removed as I experience input through any of my senses.
Nature, my predispositions, my pre-wiring, and Nurture, the rewiring that experience induces, work together to make me who I am. Everything I taste, smell, touch, hear and see affect my brain. Each effect stacks upon and modifies all that came before it. Sometimes it moves me toward a realistic perception of the world around me. Sometimes it drives me deeper into denial, seeking the refuge of fantasy.
No Perception is Ever Perceived Purely
Comprehension is a messy process. Messy primarily due to the fact that every input is interpreted by our brain based on what is already in there. Every perception, every sensation, every thought is filtered through the convoluted pathways in our minds.
We have no way of knowing apart from our brains. A new perception has no meaning until our mind compares it to what we already know, think, conjecture or believe. Most people never even differentiate between those levels of comprehension. They deal with new things based on how they feel about it, and that's good enough for them.
Here's the kicker: we are driven to resolve the unknown. We will examine a new thing, compare and contrast it to existing knowledge or speculation, and pigeon-hole it in the best-matching category we can find. Right or wrong is left up to how closely our assessment matched reality. What a scary thought.
Our assessment is ruled by our filters. Our previous pool of knowledge contains every tool we have. Even when we ask others for help understanding a thing, it is still our own mind that makes the determination how we will label and file the new thing under consideration. Our mind filters every perception. There's no way around it.
The argument between determinism and free-will misses the point altogether. We all are chained to our past. We all interpret today based on yesterday. It's all we have to work with. It's all we are.
Next time you start feeling all smug because you see things clearly unlike all the morons around you, take a pause and remember you only see what you see, and what you see is filtered. If you truly are wise, you will give room for the reality that your conclusions may just be wrong. Your assessment is almost definitely skewed. Your perceptions are always 100% filtered through the stuff that is already in your brain.
Reality is a a thing that works!. The problem is knowing it. Or knowing whether we know it or not.
