The way things seem and the way things are
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
We've all watched the sun set. It seems to us from our point of view that the a small circle of warm light, is lowering down below the horizon. The way things really are is a massive ball millions of times larger than our planet that radiates heat in the millions of degrees, is in a fixed spot 93 million miles away from us and we are spinning away from it at hundreds of MPH/KPH depending on your latitude.
I've recently taken to, while watching the sunset, trying to imagine the reality of the event and for brief moments I've been able to and it's pretty trippy.
Another type of thing that often seems one way but is in reality another way are extremely improbable events like someone winning the lottery, not once or twice or even three times, one person has won the lottery 7 times. The odds of winning two lotteries at 1 in 14,000,000 odds each time is 1 in 200 trillion (200,000,000,000,000). I don't know what the odds are for winning it many multiples of time but the odds are so astronomical that it happening to one person should be considered a miracle. And that is how it often seems to people, God had to have a hand or it was karma or some sort of magic involved. The way things really are though is different and has to do with the law of truly large numbers. We think of things in a small, isolated context. For example the odds of flipping a coin and it landing heads, I think, is 1 in 128 but if we flip a coin 100 times the odds of it coming up heads 7 times in a row is more like 1 in 13. Hit a golfball down the fairway and the odds of it landing on any one blade of grass is unlikely, but the odds of it landing on a blade of grass is pretty certain, but after the fact that blade of grass looks around and thinks, out of all these blades of grass what are the odds that the golfball landed on me, that is unbelievable! It must mean my good karma/god has blessed me. Whats more, over the entire earth people are interacting and things are happening billions of times every day, so the odds of something 1 in million happening to any one individual is unlikely but it will happen many times each day to many people. It seems like a miracle if something seemingly impossible happens to any particular person at any particular time, but the way it really is is that the odds of no particular seemingly impossible thing happening to no particular person at no particular time is more than certain, it would be a miracle if it never happened.
Whenever I encounter something that seems strange or unlikely I always make sure to ask myself if the way it seems is really the way it actually is, because believing things to be other than they actually are has real world implications in our individual and collective behavior and could effect the quality of our lives in negative ways.
Comments
Things appear to be beautiful and enjoyable or not. That is what the mind generally focussed on. These are 'signs' (nimitta) that the mind picks up.
The long blonde or dark hair looks good on the head but if they happen to fall on one's food or if left unkempt would evoke a different set of feelings.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
Oh, love that. ^^ Am pinching it.... ^^
Misinterpretation is commonplace on a forum, when we read the typed words of another member, and fail to understand that the nuances are all missing, because verbal/visual contact is so much better.
We read and interpret, and assume too much.
We baulk, bristle and bridle, and take umbrage, when all the other person was trying to do, was communicate a point.
This is the one thing I can't control, and that makes forum perusal difficult for me, personally.
Yes, so much of communication has to do with tone and body language. Hopefully over time we'll all learn to get better communicating and hearing those subtleties over text. With things like better words or emojis, etc.
ETA: Also, I think the concept of engaging in good faith rather than bad faith is a vital attitude to have. In both our attempts to communicate and receive.
Excellent quote, I'm applying that to the idea of a sunset. We see it from our perspective.
My football team is in the midst of a minor conspiracy theory and it made me think of this old thread.
Our normally reliable kicker, had a bad miss in the London game, it hooked (sliced?) rather than just missing. Later on a different camera angle looked like it hit a wire which knocked it off course. People have been complaining and even the NFL agreed that it hit a wire.
The thing is though, on critical investigation it was just an optical illusion from a camera angle that just happened to line up the hook with the sky cam wire. The YouTuber Isaac Punts did a great breakdown.
The thing that is getting to me, is that even after pointing it out there are so many people that are sticking with their gut reactions. They're stuck with their perceptions of the way things seem rather than investigating to understand how things really are.
Do you suppose these people never went through a period of questioning their perceptions? I mean, just watching Sherlock Holmes (the Jeremy Brett version in the 1980’s) was enough to do it for me…
We see the world through our conditioning: we are never truly free from it. We may fool ourselves into believing we perceive things as they are, yet even this “what is” remains tainted by our conditioning.
It is sports fans, so I suppose my expectations for critical thinking are too high.
I feel this is part of the Buddhist path, to free ourselves from that self view. Until enlightenment though its always a matter of degree, its true us unenlightened folks are never really truly free from our biases, but we can be more or less free.
I found this interesting ...
Hmm, killing just for the sake of it, does seem quite barbaric.
Our idea of barbarism might need rethinking.
What we see as “civilised” can seem cruel or absurd from another perspective, and what seems shocking to us may have its own logic within a social system.
Different strokes for different folks.
I think this is sort of what I'm talking about. The ability to see beyond our own perspective. Though I don't think I would be able to buy into cannibalism as a way of life.
Like my avatar picture, one perspective sees the cylinder as a circle, while the other sees it as a square. Can we step back and integrate one perspective with another to get to a less wrong view of things?
Gee!
Its hard to understand the way things are when I can't even be sure the way they seem. Whatever do you mean?
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Is your mind padlocked maybe rather than open?
The mind set that I aim for is a sort of open skepticism. So rather than a padlock I'd say I have a filter that needs to be gotten past, which is opposed to an open sieve that lets in everything.
So to be more specific, I have a perspective but am willing to look at things differently. To then change my mind I'd want evidence and compelling arguments rather than a claim or statement. Just acknowledging or understanding that other perspectives exist doesn't mean I adopt them wholeheartedly, often its more like there are bits and pieces that expand my view or move me a bit one way or another. Maybe a simpler way to state it would be that listening and understanding isn't the same as agreeing or believing.
I feel like in the past I've been too open and believed in all kinds of stuff that later on turned out to be false.
I completely agree. I too have been like this previously.
I liked this. It goes into a framework of how "reality" appears/operates at different levels of investigation. Somewhat in spirit of what I was trying to touch on in this thread.
'...we see things as we are'.
I am repeatedly wowed by what I call the (public transport) 'tram test'.
Depending on my state of mind, I will think/see/believe the random people commuting with me in a totally different light.
Eg.
If I am depressed, I will see everyone as sad and find 'confirmation' of how difficult and sad life is.
If I am happy, I will see everyone as happy, and find 'confirmation' of how fun life is.
If I am in a work-mindset, I will see the people as traveling to work, commited to work.
Etc.