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.

Great Leaders Decide With Their Guts, Not Just Their Brains (By Mark C. Crowley)

The limbic centre of our brain is ancient; it is the repository for both genetic memory (fear the dark, fear snakes) and learned experiences.  The limbic system allows us to react to stimuli by pulling out related memories from the hypothalamus and filtering them through the amygdala, centre for reactive emotions.  If you had a bad experience with a tattooed man in your past and meet someone new with tattoos, it's this process that will give you a negative bias.  It's an incredibly useful tool, but it doesn't allow us to overcome reactive urges - that's where the neocortex comes in.

 

The neocortex permits us to apply executive function, overriding instinct, take risks, innovate.  This is the part of our noggin that humans have to a larger degree than other species and has allowed for social development, science, etc. 

 

The best decisions, of course, are made through a balanced approach of reaction and foresight.  It's a tricky line to walk, but one we can do when we do it consciously.

 

Great Leaders Decide With Their Guts, Not Just Their Brains

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Mark C. Crowley

 

“Dig up all the information you can, then go with your instincts. We all have a certain intuition, and the older we get, the more we trust it… I use my intellect to inform my instinct. Then I use my instinct to test all this data. ‘Hey, instinct, does this sound right? Does it smell right, feel right, fit right?

General Colin Powell

 

 

The idea of using intuition when making important decisions is greatly frowned upon in business.

We’ve been taught that conscious reasoning alone is the sure-fire way of choosing the best course of action, and that our intuition is impulsive and inherently misguiding. Stand up in a meeting and say, “I feel this is the right decision even though the financials don’t fully back me up,“ and expect an immediate backlash.

 

While we’ve all learned to be publicly dismissive about intuition, I’m absolutely certain you can quickly recall an experience when an inner voice steered you away from a disastrous outcome. Is it logical that this voice doesn’t also speak up when workplace dilemmas need resolution? Is that inner guidance untrustworthy in our jobs but fully reliable in our personal lives?

 

I’m guessing you have a hunch on the answers to both these questions, but if your mind isn’t yet fully able to reconcile the conflict, I have good news. Science is coming to your aid.

 

According to Dr. Rollin McCraty, Director of Research at the Institute of HeartMath, human intuition – flashes of insight that can’t be judged by reasoning – is real. More importantly, there’s compelling new research that proves leaders who act on their intuition achieve greater success.

 

Through the research performed by HeartMath and other organizations, we now know there are three unique types of intuition:

 

(1) Implicit Knowledge: We learn something and forget we learned it. While we’re taking a shower or are out for a run, it sneaks up from our unconscious into our conscious. Voila, the insight we need in the moment pops into our heads. About 95% of what’s written about intuition relates to “implicit knowledge.”

 

(2) Energetic Sensitivity: Our nervous system literally is sensitive to environmental signals (it’s like a big antenna). Psychologist, Gary Klein, tells the story of a team of fire fighters that entered a house where the kitchen was ablaze. While hosing down the fire, the commander suddenly heard himself yell, “Let’s get out of here!” without knowing why. The kitchen floor collapsed immediately after– but not before all firefighters escaped. Only after the experience did the captain recall the impressions that prompted his “sixth sense of danger.” The fire had gotten unusually hot and quiet, and his intuition discerned it.

 

(3) Non-Local Intuition: “Everyone has an experience of it,” says McCraty. “You drive down a road you travel all the time and have the sudden impulse to slow down. As you round the corner, you see a small child in the street or an accident that just has happened. In situations like these, the heart senses the nature of events ahead of time, before they actually occur…. This intuition stuff about unknown future events that you cannot explain through implicit learning is nevertheless real. The central core of every religion on the planet is the heart is our primary access point to wisdom and courage. Science is now supporting what’s always been believed.”

 

For many years, the Australian Graduate School Of Entrepreneurship has been studying repeat entrepreneurs, people with long careers who’ve built businesses multiple times with great success.

In looking for common characteristics, the researchers discovered something amazing – and especially useful for business leaders. 80% of the entrepreneurs acknowledged relying on their intuition when making important decisions. When weighing their options, in other words, they relied on their cognitive capacities and intuitive capacities – heart and mind.

 

In his recent book, Onward, Starbucks CEO and hugely successful entrepreneur, Howard Schultz, admits to routinely consulting his intuition and to taking frequent action on the guidance it gives him. Overruling financial analysis that strongly panned both these ideas, Schultz chose to remove a very popular breakfast item from the menu and to close all Starbucks’ stores for three hours of employee training. Had he relied on his mind alone to guide these actions, he never would have pursued them. Perhaps not coincidentally, Starbucks’ stock is up 400% over the past decade while the S & P 500 average return is a mere 60%.

 

As Daniel Kahneman points out in Thinking Fast And Slow, making important decisions tied to intuition alone can prove disastrous. But what science now has proved is that we have two sources of human intelligence, and letting them both have a say is a very wise move.

Don't Be Afraid of The Other

The other aspect is that the Sikhs were targeted by the apparent “White Power” sicko, ex-soldier Wade Michael Page, because they are identifiably “different” — not because there is any reason to be upset at what Sikhs do, or represent.

Peter Worthington writes a heart-felt piece, heart-breaking in its simple honesty.  We don't let people buy and uses bombs or landmines because they serve one purpose - to kill people in quantity.  Gun rights activists aren't crying foul over this fact.  Well, assault rifles are just that - rifles designed to assault multiple parties.  By the same token, we don't allow people to walk around streets with swords strapped to their hips - again, because those swords would serve one purpose - duels, revenge, combat.  Handguns serve the same purpose - they are designed to kill people.

Make the argument that more people with guns will lead to less violence due to a leveling of the playing field.  But then provide one example in history that backs that assertion up.  You can't; the history of weapons is the history of increasingly powerful violence.  As weapons have broadened their scope from killing one to killing millions, we use them less because the risks are less.  The more firepower you have, the more powerful you feel - and the more strongly you feel the need to defend that power.  It's psychological; if you walk around with a gun, the temptation to use it either assertively or defensively multiplies.  The same rule applies to office politics or political attack ads; if you go looking for a fight, you're sure to find one.  It's that simple.

This is a world you'll never understand. And you always fear what you don't understand.

But there's a much deeper message in Worthington's piece, one of understanding.  We fear the unknown - we're programmed to.  It's a genetic fail safe that protects us from threats that emerge from the darkness faster than we can consciously process them.  Truly, that's all that instinct is; the triggering of pre-programmed or learned experiential biases that kick in an immediate, reactive response.  With aggression comes threat and with threat, the need for rapid response.  You will get anxious about public displays of gay behaviour for the same reason a you would be suspicious of a man in a turban or a woman wearing a veil - a hormone called cortisol.  This is the same hormone that will make you feel uncomfortable in the presence of a leper or burn victim; your limbic brain is perceiving something it registers as a threat and preparing your body for a fight-or-flight response.  It's no different from being afraid of the dark.

As we learn to populate the dark with knowledge rather than confabulation, it loses its terror.  The exact same truth applies to people.  I've been around the world, literally, exploring the ways in which people are similar and different.  Like many others, I've studied language, culture, history, geography, even neurochemistry to figure out where the commonalities lie.  I've spent nights with street people in Lima, Peru, watching them exhibit the most basic tenet of society - altruism.  I've laughed at the way in which an Arab Moroccan university professor stigmatized Italians in the same way an Italian grape grower stigmatized Moroccans.  Kids in small town Korea or post-war Sarajevo or downtown Toronto all want the same things from life; to have opportunity, to be happy, to be loved, to leave something behind.  We all feel the same way - what changes is the Way in which we express those feelings.  To me, there are no monsters in society; just behaviour, what causes it and how that behaviour can be influenced.

If I could have one wish, it would be for every person on earth to have the opportunity to be a stranger in a strange land and experience first-hand the kinship that connects all of us.  Homo sapiens are one species; there is far more that binds us together than there is separating us and where the differences lie, so to does opportunity.  Back to guns - where did gunpowder come from?  Thinking of China - where did pasta noodles come from?  What does the First Nations medicine wheel have to contribute to Western approaches to medicine?  Why is it that cultural groups from around the world land on the same metaphors, symbols like the tree of life, fire, the snake, the pyramid?  These aren't externally imposed things - they're internally derived.

JFK hit the nail on the head: "For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal."

We can continue to focus on killing or dominating each other over personal fears, or we can learn to move forward together in understanding.  If we limit ourselves to looking through the lens of one political or cultural tribe, or even as one nation pitted against others, we are blinding ourselves to our shared birthright as human beings.  The true enemy we share is not external troubles, but internal fears.

When understanding is achieved, violence becomes unnecessary; threats cease to hold power over you and instead become opportunities to be seized. 

Fear can be overcome, but only by doing so consciously.