Being a Sunday, I was with the camera in the courtyard looking on to the farther end of the paddy field where it meets with the hillock of a wooded estate. I beheld the bliss which nature offers with shades of colours and the subdued space between two rows of tall trees.
When I receded to the proximate sights I noticed a Finch and a Magpie Robin not far from each other, breaking the silence of the morning with their birdsongs. After they flew away, my attention turned to the rose plants at the hedge of our courtyard. They too offered visually captivating sights with water drops resting at the edge of the leaves.
The distant sights and proximate sights have different messages, but what is common between them is the impressive events in nature.
I felt challenged by this in the morning. There is so much happening around us, but I seem to look for what I am familiar with or keen to look at.
This is confirmation bias in the science of psychology. You see what you plan to see. You hear what you want to hear. You read what you are interested in. Although that is inevitable, it is sobering to know that there is a lot more beyond my normal horizon.
The truth within us is often cultivated by our preference for them. But the truth is larger than this. In one version of the story of Tarzan, after this adult looking man who was behaving like a monkey in the forest was brought back to human setting, he needed a long period of adjustment and training to be fully human. His view of himself was that of being like a monkey as he was always in the company of the monkeys as long as he could remember.
If we were to be in the company of our thoughts alone, we shall remain stunted and limited.
As I listened to the bird songs of the Finch and Magpie Robin, I realised that the pitch, tune and loudness were different. I needed to get familiar with them to be able to be absorbed in the distinct patterns of each bird song.
I had to enter in to the bandwidth of another sound and tune, each time I listened to one of them. This is a journey from confirmation bias to open ended view.
Every person is different when we recall his or her ideas, behaviour or conduct. It is the difference which threaten us to withdraw and stay safe in our preferred bandwidth, which consequently increases the confirmation bias. To come to a state when we assume that what we believe alone is the whole truth is akin to living in darkness.
During this season of COVID, we have experiences how truth is concealed about the availability of vaccination. For almost for four months now, we have remained unaware of how there is a short supply of vaccine!
Not being able to know facts about major events would make us guess and propose ideas. It is likely that most of us live with such assumptions not knowing facts or the whole truth. So opinions are based on assumptions and not facts.
The way forward is look more widely beyond our usual horizon by extending the edge of our consciousness further into what is unknown now.
The journey of being and becoming our full self is by widening the horizon of our outlook. It is this which shall revise and renew our insights!
The fullness in life is becoming 'fully human and fully alive'.
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
No comments:
Post a Comment