Truth and the Filter of Perception

Instead of simply showcasing that images and video can be changed, the very existence of digital technologies capable of such manipulations brings to the fore another phenomenon: that how we relate to the world is as much about what we believe as what we see.

What are emotions?  If you accept, as I have come to, that emotions are merely filters to determine relevance of a current scenario in relation to previous experience/genetic inheritance, then how you feel about something is really the most critical factor in whether you believe it or not. 

We see this in courts of law - it doesn't matter how much evidence gets weighed for a case, if you can insert just the slightest emotional doubt about it's certainty, judgement gets forestalled.  The same applies to politics - it's why attack ads work and why the emotionally-centered, reactive-emotion trigger messaging of the CPC tends to be so effective.

This all makes perfect sense, of course.  We like to tell ourselves we're solidly rational beings in complete control of our faculties.  It's only exceptions - the crazies, the rabid right or the bleed-heart lefties that seem off kilter.  But here's the rub - even those categorizations prove the point.  People can't help but stigmatize the world; the vast majority of our cognitive hard-wiring is designed to see the world through the filter of feelings.

How do we overcome these internal, often hard-wired biases?  When we are at peace, calm, patient, ready to question our own beliefs by thinking critically even about our own thought processes.

In short, by focusing on consciousness, not instinct.  Instinct is an important tool to have, but as is the case with the hammer, when it's the only one you wield, you merely limit your ability to fully harness the opportunities before you.

That's the challenge facing cognitive labourers and leaders in the Knowledge Economy - to live consciously.

Right now, the trend appears to be headed in the opposite direction, but the long-term trend of history shows us that can't last.

You can't stop the signal.

When society is indifferent, democracy erodes - and hate flourishes

"There is a limit which is transcended: you step over the limit and you can do more, constant escalation is possible."

A Hungarian philosopher states the great challenge of our times - people are turning inward and becoming indifferent to the plight of others or the subtle corruptions of our governing institutions. At all levels, it was this “take what I can get” mentality that fuelled the European debt crisis. It’s beginning to happen here, too.

Stephen Harper told us that Canadians "don't care" about the operations of Parliament; his subsequent majority government proved him right. As long as taxes get cut and programs that don't impact "me" get cut, why should I care?

As a result, the attempted bribing of Chuck Cadman, the utterly false robocalls implying Irwin Cotler was resigning, fake lakes, billions of lost funds, "political truths", stifled representatives and Senate entitlement draws ire, but not action.

Note the trend - like a kid testing their boundaries, these "leaders" are pushing the boundaries of to see what they can get away with. The more they get away with, the more they do. These partisan operatives may pat themselves on the back , but this isn't about increasing cleverness - it's about eroding ethics.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's team has boasted of creating fake identities and spreading untruths to further their candidate's cause; what's unspooling now in Toronto politics is seen as "a distraction" rather than the crisis it is.

Oh - and that's at least three City Councillors who've been caught in DUI incidents getting off with a slap on the wrist. Would an average citizen have gotten off so easily? Would a Somali Canadian have gotten off so easily? There are other examples out there, past and present, of Political Parties who knew they had Members suffering from substance abuse problems but chose to do nothing for the individual, so long as the brand wasn’t tarnished.

Elie Wiesel tells us that "the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." Edmund Burke said something similar: “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Mark Towhey, at the very least, tried to do something to help a leader in need. Can the same be said for others in political inner circles? Can it be said for citizens at large?

The wrong boundaries are being pushed – bitter, cynical and selfish approaches to politics are being overlooked while attempts at moving the ball in the opposite direction get ridiculed with attack ads.

We can’t turn our backs on these structural, social and personal problems much longer. Nobody is going to come down and solve our problems for us – it’s up to us, all of us, to take ownership of our society and make it whole again.

History provides countless examples of what happens when we don’t.

The TTC: The Truth Will Set You Free

Created in March, the blog has more than 40 photos of riders with everything from their lunches to purses, grocery bags, a hockey helmet, a mop bucket and a dog taking up an extra seat on buses, streetcars or the subway.

Photos aren’t just taken by Takasaki himself; he’s also receiving and publishing online submissions from other, similarly disgruntled riders. Takasaki, who works as a senior copywriter, said there’s been a bit of backlash to the public shaming, but for the most part the response has been positive — even from TTC’s head office.

It's easy to not pay attention, when the consequences aren't looking you in the eye; if you're confident the other guy is passive (or not as aggressive as you are) then you don't need to worry whether you're picking a fight on a streetcar, smoking in a no-smoking, standing at the top of a subway exit or putting your feet up on a seat.  

To some degree, everyone does it; to an even greater degree, we get annoyed when others do it.

But you know what's even easier and provides a sense of gratification?  Posting pics of thee offenders online.

Now, you can question the legalities of this - is it an infringement of one's rights to have your pics posted acting poorly?  But then, wasn't it infringement of someone else's rights that got you in trouble in the first place?

Particularly as we see top dogs getting off with crimes that would put regular people in jail, people are growing frustrated with our justice system.  Fortunately, thanks to modern tech, today's lynch moms are social posters. If there aren't enough police resources to catch minor criminals, there certainly won't be for this kind of infraction - unless, of course, it starts involving enforcement officials themselves.  There's a tricky line there that can shift in some interesting ways.

Social media is helping to bring village-level personal accountability from the individual to the community.  It's not just about what you get out of it, it's the price that access comes with.  This calls upon the individual, at whatever level they're at, to start thinking through the personal consequences they face (like employers being punished for posting drinking pictures on Facebook) but also start to see the value of being recorded by strangers doing things like practical giving up your seat to a pregnant woman or helping a stranger get their stroller down stairs.  

The Objectivists out there will hate this trend, but societies have always involved mechanisms of social control, ranging from the rite of marriage to the shivaree.

Of course, humans are social animals - always have been.  It has only been recently people have forgotten this.  Well, as they say:     The truth will set you free.

Heather Mallick Connects the Dots

 

On this blog, I try to discuss interwoven themes like the impact of social media and new tech on personal accountability, the importance of thinking through the broader consequences of one's actions and how in control we truly are of the choices we make.  I've even focused on Vic Toews as a study case.

 

I feel almost a sense of relief when I read a piece like this that makes all these connections in a clear, concise fashion.  Systems theory isn't about wasting time on "peripherals" - it's about efficiency and sustainability. 

 

Thank you, Ms. Mallick, for writing this.

 

Tom Flanagan puts personal liberty ahead of victims’ pain: Mallick

By:Heather Mallick Columnist, Published on Fri Mar 01 2013

Watching child porn no crime, says Tom Flanagan, former mentor to Stephen Harper

 

Tom Flanagan was Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s soulmate, his mentor, the architect of the plans Harper carried out to turn Canada towards the hard right.

 

But Harper must be mightily steamed today, apoplectic. Berserk maybe. Canadians are “either with us or with the child pornographers,” Public Safety Minister Vic Toews thundered last year. Who knew Flanagan himself was off-message?

 

Flanagan is presumably hiding in his basement until it’s safe to come out, which it never will be.

Flanagan said it. Someone recorded him on a cellphone and posted it on YouTube. It’s a sex tape, sort of, if you like your child porn arguments dry and theoretical. “I certainly have no sympathy for child molesters, but I do have some grave doubts about putting people in jail because of their taste in pictures,” Flanagan said Wednesday during a lecture at the University of Lethbridge. “I don’t look at these pictures.”

 

Flanagan has wondered aloud about this before, but not, I think, on air.

 

“It’s a real issue of personal liberty,” he said, amid cries of “That’s disgusting” from the largely First Nations audience who had come for another kind of discussion entirely. “To what extent do we put people in jail for doing something in which they do not harm another person?”

 

Flanagan was dumped from the CBC, condemned by Harper and rightly so. But that obscures a more important point, which is that Flanagan is sincere.

 

For he is an ideologue, and ideologues are always sincere. It’s what makes them dangerous. Concepts like untrammelled liberty are clear spring water to them, and real life, as it is lived by small soft-limbed splayed children weeping with pain and terror on camera, is irrelevant.

 

Take freedom of speech. Ideologues don’t think there should be limits, which is why they so dislike Human Rights Commission rulings for black people barred from restaurants. Take personal liberty, which ideologues say is infringed on by the long-gun registry, by border guards finding child porn on the laptops of travelling Catholic bishops.

 

Flanagan is saying that watching child porn is a passive crime. Police worldwide say with all the passion they can muster that it’s not. Online porn exists because there is a market for it. If pedophiles didn’t watch child rape and often pay for the privilege, there wouldn’t be a huge online porn-sharing network. Children are mutilated, psychologically and physically, for strangers’ pleasure.

 

Those who make it are bestial. Those who watch it are feeding the beast. Those who defend their right are free to do so but they should understand whose cause they’re serving. If you praise Flanagan’s logic, then you are saying child victims of sexual torture are being illogical. Why can’t they just get over it?

 

You have to put some real effort into a Flanagan level of naiveté about the extent of online child porn. Since the 1990s, it has spread like spores, like poison gas. According to American journalist Emily Bazelon, there are hundreds of thousands of child porn websites worldwide and 22 million public IP addresses “offering photos or videos via peer-to-peer file sharing.”

 

These aren’t avatars. They are images of real children, traded like baseball cards. New York Times MagazineBazelon wrote in the New York Times Magazine in January about a new attempt at victim restitution.

 

In 1998, when the FBI began tracking online child porn, Bazelon reported, they found one particular case, photos of a little girl with emails like this: “do me a favor . . . take a pic of her in nothing but stockings pulled down below her (genitals.) The photographer obliged.

 

The FBI traced the photographer to a small-town home and recognized the basement room where the photos were taken. But where was the little girl? The FBI agent saw her, playing in the yard across the street. “It something I’ll never forget,” he told Bazelon.

 

The little girl, Amy, grew up, her pedophile uncle jailed. And then she began to get crime-victim notices from the Justice Department. Every time a porn arrest revealed a shot of tiny, naked Amy, she was notified. Her lawyer came up with the idea of forcing convicted pornographers to pay “royalties” of a sort.

 

Such is the extent of file-sharing that the notices kept arriving and the payments mounted up from often wealthy defendants. Amy was paid a total of $1.6 million by more than 150 men.

 

If Flanagan thinks child porn is victimless, he should know that Amy will spend the rest of her life knowing that men worldwide are looking at ghostly images of her as a child, naked, trussed up, penetrated, bleeding. It will continue after she dies.

 

Flanagan likes personal liberty. There will be none for Amy.

 

Let Flanagan be vilified by former friends or defended by the distasteful. All that matters is that we understand “porn logic” for the heartless fraud it is.

Occupational Mental Health, Cognitive Labour, Mindfulness and Productivity

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 Mindfulness: an antidote for workplace ADD

Daniel Goleman

Co-Director of Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations

 

February 06, 2013

 

Some consultants tell me that the number one problem in the workplace today is attention. People are distracted. They're in a state of what's called "continuous partial attention" where even at meetings, your body is there but your mind is somewhere else. You have countless gadgets constantly sending you information: texts, phone calls, emails, and reminders. All buzzing and dinging for your attention.

People not being fully present is a big problem because the most effective interactions occur when two people are mutually present to each other. That's when rapport happens. That's when chemistry happens. That's when you're going to have the most powerful communication and mutual understanding. If your attention is over there, it means you're not over here with the person you're with.

Lack of attention also impacts your performance. Your ability to do your job on your own is directly related to how well you can concentrate and focus. If you're continually distracted, you just can't get it done, or get it done well.

That’s why one of the most important things to learn in the workplace today is how to focus. Mindfulness meditation techniques can help you strengthen your attention.

I’ve found that if you do these exercises, for example, 10 minutes before you go to work, you are changing your brain. You're heightening your ability to concentrate hours later. If you can find a way to practice strengthening your attention every day, it's like going to the gym and building your muscles, but it's a mental muscle.

Here’s an exercise from the concentration family of meditation. It's a good introduction to mindfulness.

- Sit upright, close your eyes and bring your attention to your breath.

- Don't try to control your breath, just let it be natural and easy but be aware of your breath.

- Notice the full inhalation, the full exhalation.

- See if you can feel it coming and going through your nostrils, or feel the rise and fall of your belly.

- When you notice that you've been distracted, simply start with the next breath.

- Tune in to any sensation any way you can. Be fully aware of the breath. Just keep your attention anchored there.

- Keep breathing in, and breathing out.

- Whenever your mind wanders, just bring it back to your breath.

- Watch the full inhalation, the full exhalation. Stay with the breath. Use it as your anchor for attention.

- Try it on your own for a few minutes.

It's really so simple and in some ways so hard, because the mind wants to wander. In a way the basic movement of mindfulness is anchoring your attention, keeping it there, noticing when your mind wanders because it's going to, bringing it back and starting over. What we find is that if you can keep doing this, and the longer you stay with your breath, the more relaxed your body becomes. It's a side effect of that full attention and letting go all those worries that keep us on edge and distracted.

For more about mindfulness in the workplace, watch my recorded webinar with Google’s Search Inside Yourself adviser, Mirbai Bush. You can also learn more mindfulness-based techniques for work with Mirabai’s latest CD Working with Mindfulness.

Pull Back the Veil to Reveal...

"It's as if Boorman were guiding us down a magic corridor and kept parting the curtains in front of us."

  -  Pauline Kael

"You keep telling yourself what you know. But what do you believe?"

  -  Mal, Inception

"I am all that was, is and will be, and no mortal has yet lifted my veil."

  - Inscription from a statue of Isis

Today, I read an article about how overconfident people succeed, frequently in spite of the limits of their talents.  Promotions, monetary success, etc aren't about skills in many fields, ranging from sales to politics to polling - it's about confidence.  When these people are in positions beyond which their skills are suited - say, management, they can actually impede success of their direct reports.  Mistakes aren't owned. they are trickled down.  Underlings get thrown under the bus, which continues to chug along the wrong trajectory.

I have also written about the cognition of confidence, too - people who are expert at a given task tend not to be hyper-confident.  There is always doubt that perhaps, they've missed something in their analysis, a better example could have been found, etc.  This is how expertise is developed - uncertainty and the need to do better drives these individuals to push beyond the limits of what they know.

If you're overconfident, there's no need to pursue new facts that will cloud the issue - you have the answer, the ability, the skill without modification.  You just need to keep doing what you know.   Which is why overconfidence is the enemy of expertise.

Ignorance is a veil blocking off the dark corners of our mind.  When we pull back those veils, we find new things, new facets, new capacities to build and connect ideas - then communicate them.  When we're overconfident in the model of us we've established, we're telling ourselves we've already pulled back all the curtains; there's nothing left to discover.  We're deluding ourselves we're the best at what we do, we know more than others, the answers are ours, if victory were solely up to us, it would be assured.

Yet nobody's perfect, there is always room for improvement.  The right push, the right crisis - the right motivation will shake our worlds enough to show the impermanence of the walls we've established as safe ground, forcing us to lift another veil. 

With the slightest disturbance, the dream's going to collapse.

Dreams make for another great metaphor.  By their nature, dreams are removed from reality and include impossible detail, but we don't question that while we're in the dream.  When we awaken, it becomes clear to us that the things we accepted could not be - nuance was missing, detail, texture.

Such is perception.  We imbue what we perceive with emotional value - it is that internally described value, not the nature of the thing perceived, that shapes our judgement.  On the surface, the employee who under performs is incompetent and that's all there is to it, or the boss is a superficial egomaniac who cares less about results and more about flaunting their position.  One level deeper, the employee might have been sold that they are something they are not - same too the boss.  There might be family, health, all kinds of issues that shape who that person is and what lineage they bring to a given moment of contact.  The same basic principle applies to someone who looks in the mirror and "feels fat" despite what anyone tells them; it's the feeling of the thing, not the thing itself, that resonates.

You can say that's all irrelevant - all that matters is the bottom line or the pay cheque.  You can tell yourself to keep home and personal and work and social lives separate, but there's just one person in which those worlds are equally grounded - you.  In experience, you find that it's hard to keep those worlds from collapsing in on each other. 

When you cling to your confidence and try to deny the possibility that reality has more depth than you've credited it with, confidence can quickly turn in to fear of the unknown and in response, anger.  When you come to accept that you are not perfect and have much to learn, you tear down another veil.

Maybe you don't like the metaphors; maybe allegory isn't your thing.  Try it this way:

Ambiguous visual images are fascinating because it is often difficult to imagine seeing them any other way--until something flips within the brain and the alternative perception is revealed. This phenomenon, known as perceptual rivalry, is of great interest to neuroscience. Because rivalrous illusions produce changes in perception that are independent of changes in the stimulus itself, they may help to understand how the brain gives rise to conscious experience.

Pay no attention to what's behind the curtain.

Office Politics:You Get What You're Looking For

"To paraphrase the old saw about suckers at a poker table, if you can’t spot the sneaky gossip at the office, it’s probably you. But you probably shouldn’t be looking for him or her at all."

How often do we hear someone say "politics is a bloodsport" or that "it's a dog eat dog world" out there?  Why is that when we fixate on troubles lapping at our shores, we seem to find foes aplenty?  When we act like pit bulls, why are there always more fights to be fought?  Why do control freaks or micromanagers always have justification that their direct influence is necessary to keep staff in line?  Heck, why is it that when we're convinced we're right, everyone who disagrees with us just seems unable to see our truth?

 

It's really not that hard - the world as we see it is a reflection of what's happening in our own head space.  If you've just lost the love of your life, the world can seem a grim place.  If you're going on a date with your dream partner, it can seem a place brimming with butterflies of opportunity.  Of course, if you're drunk, over-caffeinated or even sleepy, those states change how you see the world, too. 

That's what anger, fear, hope, despair, desperation, rage, ambivalence are - chemically induced states.  If you have a mood disorder, anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medications change your moods chemically.  Environmental changes (a walk in a park, playing music, etc) or conscious changes (exercise, thinking happy thoughts, etc) do the same thing to a lesser degree.  If you speak a few languages/have experience of different cultures, you'll note how those external/internalized factors change perspective, too.

 

The worlds we experience are literally shaped by our own, ever-changing human lenses.  When we're conscious of this, we can manage that experience. 

Self-control?  Consciousness?  Awareness?

Tell me those aren't things worth looking for.

"I am all that was, is and will be, and no mortal has yet lifted my veil."