When you walk into a door...of perception!!

Perception is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, aside from gravity and the other laws of physics. Words like "Good" and "Evil" are based upon forced perception. So let us examine what perception is and what it does to us.

Because I love quoting from the dictionary so much here's dictionary.com's definition of the word 'perception':
"per·cep·tion   [per-sep-shuhn]
–noun
1.
the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.
2.
immediate or intuitive recognition or appreciation, as of moral, psychological, or aesthetic qualities; insight; intuition; discernment: an artist of rare perception.
3.
the result or product of perceiving, as distinguished from the act of perceiving; percept.
4.
Psychology. a single unified awareness derived from sensory processes while a stimulus is present.
5.
Law. the taking into possession of rents, crops, profits, etc."
Seems unusually convoluted, huh? Well it really is, but for the purposes of this writing, we'll only focus on the first two uses of the word.

Now a big problem with people's perceptions is that they can be conditioned. As I've mentioned earlier, words like good and evil are based upon perception. How can we intuitively know what is good and what is evil? Well outside of civilization, we can't. In the wild, other animals understand that surviving is 'good', though they don't comprehend the concept. More interestingly, in the wild, 'evil' does not exist. There are of course, genetic and socially deviant behaviors; but using words like 'evil' implies that such behaviors are performed with malicious intent. When a new male lion rises to dominance in a pride the first thing he does is kill all of the cubs. To us, this might seem wicked, but to him it's simply preservation of the species.

Words like 'good' and 'evil' were created by early society's leaders to make sure people felt rewarded for following the laws set before them. Otherwise, as we gathered together in groups, we would have fought each other for dominance and property (and probably more unsavory reasons, such as mental illness). We were taught from a young age to perceive actions such as stealing and murder as being evil and to refrain from being evil. In similar fashion we are taught to perceive our home nation as being superior to all others and worth killing for.

The more frightening thing about perception is that even when it's not controlled, it's still wildly chaotic. A good example is from Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet...kind of. I maintain that the movie West Side Story is a modern (for the time) musical remake of Romeo & Juliet. I've known people who claim that this isn't so, due to a few differences in the story. I believe that they're wrong. But when you look at the ending of the movie and the hero dies, but not the heroin you could say that it isn't Shakespearean at all. Maybe it's not, but from where I sit, West Side Story is Romeo & Juliet set in NYC with a bunch of fruity looking synchronized dancing (if only gangs really fought like that, we might just be living in a safer world).

Another interesting thing about perception is that it is the root of all justification. If you're at a bar and someone spills a drink on you, you could easily justify breaking his nose, if you perceive the spilling as being intentional and/or insulting.

That's yet another fascinating thing about perception is that if you can observe the way someone perceives things, you can get to know him very well without even exchanging words with him. For example if a man were to be dumped by his girlfriend via a "dear John" letter, and the man reacts angrily and violently; you could note that he is probably a very aggressive person who doesn't handle loss very well at all. In all likelihood, though the man's girlfriend just fell out of love with him. Or maybe she found someone better. Another great example of this is nearly any Abrahamic religion (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism). All of them have conflicting messages somewhere in their holy texts, or have some clergy who corrupts the messages of said texts. Christians can justify hate, condemnation, torture, death, misogyny, or almost anything just by turning to the right page of the bible (a book I use in this case because it is the text I'm most familiar with). Meanwhile another Christian can pick up the same book and use it to justify universal love and peace to all living things.


What you must keep in mind though is that perception is highly individualized. What's black and white to some may be shades of gray to someone else. What you need to remember about perception is that just because someone doesn't share yours doesn't mean you should tell him he's wrong. Perception, like faith is dependent on belief (or lack thereof). So unless someone's perception is hurting you, you should probably just leave people and how they see things alone. Everyone's entitled to two things: their opinions and their perceptions...even if they're wrong.

*credit for this essay's idea goes to PuNkTuReD*