Perspective…on perception

Reality comes to us courtesy of our five senses, and from the way our brains process the incoming stream of data. Our senses each receive observable data in a particular range of values according to the abilities and sensitivities of our human sense organs. We can see, hear, touch, smell, taste…we know what’s going on around us.

Let’s put that into perspective.

The key phrase in that opening: human sense organs. Turns out, because of our particular set of sensory organs, we humans have a unique reality. No animals on the planet are experiencing what we experience. Dogs, as we all know, can hear the high pitch of a certain whistle that is used to call them, and we can’t hear it. They also have a sense of smell that is hundreds of times better than ours. There is a hovering bird-of-prey that can take up a position over a field, hang motionless while looking down, and see only what moves…like for instance a mouse. When it looks at a fixed scene the stationary objects and background fade away to grey, and only movement is detected. Further examples abound…point being, there’s nothing superior or special about our senses; what we have are the ones that serve the survival of our species, just as it is with animals.

 

Another way to look at our perception can be seen here in the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum. Note that the color bar representing our visual range is a breakout of that little sliver between ultraviolet and infrared. Out of that  whole range of energies/wavelengths, we’re equipped to see only a tiny little bit. It makes our capabilities look so random-ish and insignificant, and by extension so do we find that our  perception of reality is nothing special. Maybe we don’t, so much, know what’s going on around us; there’s more to it than meets the eye!

And with all that, I think, larger points can be made:

   In the grand scheme of all the species on earth, and the millions of years we’ve all been here, we normally exaggerate how special and important we are.

   There are things happening around us all the time that are beyond the range of our senses.

From that perspective, that there’s always more than meets the eye, it is easier to think broadly and stay open to possibilities…to think outside the box.