The way we see things - Excerpt from Re-Think

Book: Re-think How to think differently
Author: Nigel May Barlow

"Most of the time, for comfort's sake, we are trying to fit the world into our own map. While this works quite well in a literal sense for finding our way to the cinema or restaurant, in more complex areas of our lives, it's about as accurate as old maps that say "There be dragons here" or "Large amounts of ocean omitted".

Of course just becoming aware of and changing our inner map doesn't necessarily amend the laws of physics in the outer world. Nor am I saying there is no such thing as objectivity. There is an apocryphal story about a group of Chinese philosophers who sat down on the banks of Yangtze to discuss whether or not the river really existed. During their seminar the river flooded and drowned them.

The three most important things we need to remember about the way we see things are:

• we see the world selectively; seeing what we expect to see and hearing what we expect to hear;
• our perceptions are based largely on past experience and conditioning; and
• we often mistake our perceptions, our map of the world, for the world, and assume that others are working from the same map."