Is there such a thing as the world as itself? What can we experience purely as it is by nature? I know, hitting your head hurts and the table you bumped into is obviously real. I'm not aiming for solipsism or claiming that you can make the pain disappear by simply deciding that it doesn't exist.
What I'm claiming is that we can never truly purely experience anything without distorting it with our perception. Even physical pain is subjective. We have different pain thresholds, what is excruciating pain to someone is just a flesh wound to someone else. Even more we distort mental and social phenomena. A person is a friend only because of our perception of her, there is no objective existence as a friend without our perception.
Why care? After all, friends are still friends and a punch in the face still hurts - what changes with this perspective? The key idea here is that by accepting constructivism one opens up new possibilities and sees more clearly the underlying forces that shape one's life. It's no good to fall in despair over bad events. Better just to accept the fact that they're bad due to our perception, due to us not liking that event. That opens up two possible solutions: 1) change the event or 2) change one's perception. Both are useful in various situations. For example, if a stranger insults you and you get annoyed, it's probably easier to change your perception of the insult than the behavior of that stranger.
Another good thing to realize is the fact how much other people affect our perception. And by affecting our perception they also affect our life. Simply knowing that fact will make it much harder for someone to manipulate you. I claim that it's a lot nicer to do one's own decisions and then see who your true friends are, rather than try to do it the other way round.
You seem to be pretty optimistic about our ability to see the real stuff (stuff "an sich" ;)) behind our personal experience if we just try hard enough... Personally, I wouldn't necessarily call perception "distortive"; I think the only way to live this life is through subjectivity and selective perception. But I do agree with you it's important to pay attention to what shapes our feelings and ideas.
ReplyDelete"It's no good to fall in despair over bad events. Better just to accept the fact that they're bad due to our perception, due to us not liking that event." Hehe, have you been reading the Stoics? I get to hang out with them and their Christianized followers almost more than I wish, and this sounds like a textbook example of Stoic emotion theory :)
Actually, I don't think we really can see things "an sich". I think we can never see things as they truly are, and in that sense our perception is always going to distort our view of the world. Even though I have to agree that "distort" is probably really not the concept I should use due to its negative connotations.
ReplyDeleteBut even if our perception is not of things "an sich", I don't find it problematic. After all, there is no "perception without percpetion". Best we can do is use different points of view to get as good a view as possible.
As far as Stoicism goes, I'm not sure how to comment. Personally I've always been one of those relatively level-headed guys, so obviously Stoicism has its lucrative side for me. But still, I'm not sure if I'd define myself as a Stoic. I think I find life a lot more happy and exciting than they ever did ;) But I guess I'll have to read some Stoics and then decide afterwards! :D
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ReplyDelete"Better just to accept the fact that they're bad due to our perception, due to us not liking that event. That opens up two possible solutions: 1) change the event or 2) change one's perception. Both are useful in various situations. For example, if a stranger insults you and you get annoyed, it's probably easier to change your perception of the insult than the behavior of that stranger."
ReplyDeleteI think there is also third option accept the event/ the moment as it is. Like if ones wife behavior is not to ones liking. It might be best to accept her as she is, than change her personality or broke up. Accepting the moment as it is can have profound way of changing people's life.
"Accepting the moment as it is can have profound way of changing people's life."
ReplyDeleteYep, I definitely agree here. However, my view is that "accepting something as it is" is equal to changing my mental response. I'm accepting the event as it is, just fiddling with my own synapses. The logic being, if nothing changes, I will still feel bad, should the event happen again.
Hence, if my wife behaves in a way which I don't like, I can either change her behavior (not gonna happen) or my own mental processing. That is, naturally, only if I want to change the status quo in the first place. But if my reaction was negative to begin with, I feel it makes sense to try to change it.