Perceptions, Reality and Misconceptions

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one,” once said Albert Einstein.
So much of life is played out in our own mind, isn’t it? We ponder - ‘if only this happened’ scenarios, or ‘what if this happens’ scenarios. Sometimes we imagine the best happening but more often than not our first thoughts go to the worst possible outcome. Maybe it’s human nature, part of our primordial instinct to imagine the worst, because after thousands of years of evolution our brains have developed highly honed instinctual survival strategies. Surprisingly, more often than not, the worst does not happen and there is a far more positive outcome than we anticipated. Sometimes, our perceptions about how life will unfold simply do not eventuate, despite all our thinking about it.

It begs the question though, ‘what is reality?’ Most of us think that, what we see and hear is reality. It seems real to us, because of our own personal experiences, or our own ‘history bag’. We tend to translate the world through our own eyes, which may or may not be real or true. There is a common expression that ‘perception is reality’ but if we all have a different take on the same incident, how can everyone’s perception be the right one or the real one? Clearly we can’t all be right. Or can we?

Many years ago, a geneticist Lionel Penrose designed a physical model of an impossible staircase. It was the first impossible object ever made and served as an inspiration for M. C. Escher's famous print that incorporates this staircase, "Ascending and Descending.". The actual model is separated at the right stair, but you can't see the split, because your visual system assumes that it is seeing this model from a non-accidental point of view; hence, it assumes that the stairs are joined. Hard to imagine but the ‘ascending and descending stairs were actually created by Lego builders and there’s a very clever Youtube clip that reveals its secret at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxDtNgW4Gy4

There are many examples of ‘impossible objects or scenes’, like René Magritte’s 1965 painting of the paradoxical Carte Blanche, which shows a lady riding an impossible horse through a forest. The image is impossible because the horse is split by trees. Logic tells us that such horses don’t exist but still the picture shows us that our mind can perceive it to be so.

According to Professor Gregory, from the psychology department of Bristol University: ‘perceptions are hypotheses, depending upon both on rules, which may conflict, and on assumptions, which may be wrong.’ This is a profound statement because it applies not only to optical illusions but also to life in general. Yes, our perceptions are based on our own assumptions, prejudices and previous experiences, which may be wrong.

Did you know that all humans have a ‘blind spot’ in the retina where the optic nerve is found? No, not a metaphorical blind spot, but an actual blind spot. One of the most amazing natural illusions is that we don’t see black in the blind spot, our brain actually ‘fills in’ the space, using surrounding colours, patterns and other visual data. Our mind fills in ‘missing parts’ in our thinking too – our conjecturing and permutations of what might be or what is, or what we think we understand.

Stephen Covey refers to these personal perceptions as a ‘paradigm’. This paradigm that we all have is the way we see, understand, and interpret the world; it’s personal and it’s what he calls our ‘mental map’. No two people will have exactly the same paradigm or mental map, because all of us have experienced different history, conditioning, families, emotions, in fact we all have very different genetic makeup. So over time we need to check and test our perceptions to see if they are real or merely a misconception that we have made from our own observations.

This is important for adults and for students too. Perceptions about our personal ability and achievements are often contradictory. We know that all of us have a real and sometimes a metaphorical blind spot to identifying our own strengths and weaknesses. Families and schools are good for that little ‘reality check’ from time to time. Suddenly some people find, that ‘the scales fall from their eyes’ as they realise that they have made the wrong assumptions or drawn the wrong conclusions from events that they have heard about or witnessed or worried about something unnecessarily. Perception is not necessarily reality. Covey makes the point that, if you want to make small changes in your life, work on your behaviour; if you want quantum leap changes, you need to work on your paradigms.

Optical illusions are fascinating and compelling, we are drawn to the enigma of them and in a strange way we can learn a little about the way we internalise things and view the world. Yes they can be deceptive,yes the real world can be deceptive too, but more importantly they allow us to look at the world a little differently. Take, for example, this transitional optical illusion - where does the reflection change to a lady? Life's a little like that too. We need to be wary of drawing false conclusions with limited information. We should keep our mind open to the infinite possibilities of the world and just like Alice from Alice in Wonderland: imagine at least six impossible things before breakfast every day.

What is reality? Is reality an illusion, like Einstein suggested? Like the eternal questions: who created the earth or where did matter come from, there is no easy or definitive answer. All we can do is to check our own reality. Never assume that we are right and everyone else has it wrong, and above all keep an open mind, keep an imaginative mind, and believe that all things are possible. See things from different perspectives and be a good listener, it's amazing what we learn when we listen and remain inquisitive about other people's realities.

Karon Graham

Principal

Caloundra City Private School