If only you could see it my way.......

As part of my university education in a pre-architecture program there were several mandatory arts electives: English, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy. After two years of ‘intro’ courses I opted for a third year course on the psychology of perception instead of Philosophy 101. Since then I have had a continuing internal dialogue around the question:

   

Is the reality I perceive the same reality you perceive?

We learn our realities by experience and positive reinforcement. When I see something I call ‘green’ my reality is affirmed if everyone else also calls it ‘green’.  I still have no way of knowing if our sensory experience of ‘green’ is the same, I just know that we agree the experience is ‘green’.

Ambiguity creeps in when the object is teal. Does it tend to blue or to green because of a unique reaction to lighting conditions or a variable number of colour receptors in the retina, or...? When compared to the general population taste testers are said to have more physiology relating to the sensation of taste. At other spots on the spectrum: is it possible to understand what creates reality for an autistic person or someone with ADHD? 

Nature prepares each one of us to construct different realities.

For some teal is a new entity called teal.

The significance of an element in our environment also affects how we define it in our reality. 

In an environment where the quality of snow affects survival: how you build shelter; how you walk when hunting for food or how you travel, this white stuff is much more vital. Pre-technology Inuit used multiple terms for what the rest of us call snow.

The tachistoscope, a device that displays an image for a specific amount of time, demonstrates that we are quicker to perceive something if it is familiar. There actually is an exposure time required before we can even ‘see’ a completely unfamiliar object.

Nurture prepares us to collectively define a reality.

My tribe’s reality might be different from your tribe’s.

Differences in how we perceive reality creates our culture. This is the reason for the 'generation gap' and could be the foundation of the struggle the education system has meeting the expectations of students today.  Effective communication starts with an awareness of these differences and is amplified when there is translation into a culture. Cross-pollinating cultures is complex when value laden issues arise. What is polite behaviour? What is an injustice? What is fair? What is truth?

Some say up to December 31, 1999 humanity modeled a competitive paradigm and the 21^st century, enabled by new technologies, is the dawn of the collaborative age. Collaboration draws us out of our tribe. Understanding how our own reality fits into the reality of others allows awareness to shift beyond the self and ultimately to the global ecology.