Seeing is believing

It has been said, that “seeing is believing.”
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By understanding the fundamental flaws in our perceptions, we become more aware. Awareness brings us closer to the truth. Not just our own version of the truth, but rather closer to the truth as a system of facts that are not easily maneuvered by our clever brains that tend to treat facts like clay that can be massaged into our own version of the truth.

There are three fundamental flaws in the perception that seeing is believing:

We see what we believe.

First, most humans are more likely to see what they believe, rather than believe what they see. The quote, "seeing is believing" suggests that if someone sees something, he is likely to believe it. But the reality of the matter is that we are programmed to see what we already believe. I saw an awesome Facebook post this weekend that said, “I am 100% all for mandatory vacations. Fight me if you want but you are wrong.” This post was a joke, but in reality, there were several comments on the post with people debating over whether mandatory vaccinations should be legal. The post was a spoof about vacation, not vaccinations, yet very few people believed what they saw, but rather saw what they believed. This happens more commonly than you probably realize.

Willful blindness.

Second, we only really see a fraction of what we see. In other words, what we see, is not really what we see, so how can we believe it? Our brains subconsciously weed out information that may not be needed. There is a great experiment on this called The Invisible Gorilla. If you have never seen this experiment, CLICK HERE, and without reading through the dialogue below the video box, simply watch the video of 6 basketball players, three in white shirts and three in black shirts. Your sole job is to count the number of times the players in white shirts pass the ball. Once you have your count, write it down. Then watch the video again just for fun, without counting. Nuts, right? Call it selective attention, or call it willful blindness. In truth, we cannot believe what we see because we rarely see everything that’s happening even when our eyes are wide open.

Seeing what others want you to see.

Even beyond willful blindness, we live in a world where we are surrounded by that which others want us to see. Anything that is created, produced, and delivered by another human is created, produced, and delivered in the way in which they want you to see it. Traditional media and news, social media, photographs, conversations, books, education, technology, music, and most things produced by humans are jaded by he/she/those that created it. As such, you cannot simply believe what you are seeing because all you are really seeing is an interpretation of what someone else believes, which is flawed by selective attention/willful blindness (as is almost everything) or is simply the byproduct not of what someone saw but rather what they already believed.

The full quote from the 17th century English clergyman, Thomas Fuller, is "Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth." This suggests that believing and truth are two very separate matters altogether. In other words, when you see something (which we know is not everything), we believe something (which probably has no bearing on fact or truth, and is probably something we already believed before we saw it). "But feeling is the truth," which is the real interesting part of the quote which is almost always missing from the sentence which begins, "Seeing is believing." The preposition "but" may bring us closer to the truth by suggesting that what we believe is different from truth anyway.

In reality, we don't even know for sure if "Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth," is the entire quote. Google said it's the entire quote, but Google is influenced by man. Even if this is the entire quote, we are not sure in what context it was said. Are we absolutely, positively 100% sure, that the 17th century English Clergyman was the one to first say this? Why did he say it? Did he believe it? Why did he believe it? Who was the person who heard him say it and is the dictation accurate? I mean vacations can sound like vaccinations in a particular political climate!

These are the questions of life. These are the questions that bring us closer to the truth. Never stop questioning.

Constantly raise your own awareness by questioning what you see, examining what you believe, and understanding the flaws of your own perceptions as well as the flaws interlaced into the perceptions and beliefs of those who may be influencing what you believe.