It’s all perception

Exploring Happiness Blog - It's all perception

Recently, I discovered a German podcast (in German) called Das Leben des Brain (The Life of Brain) inspired by Monty Python’s Life of Brian. It’s an entertaining educational overview of scientific studies about how the brain functions created by the journalist Bent Freiwald. I binged myself through all episodes within a few days and here are some revelations about perception.

The brain and reality

I’ve heard it before and it makes total sense – our reality is delayed and includes cheating. We perceive reality and what happens in our lives through our sensory organs with the eyes being most dominant. From the sensory organ, let’s say the eyes, the perceived data needs to be translated to the brain (from the optic nerve to the visual cortex to give this information a scientific touch). This transmission takes about 0.1 sec. That’s quick but also delayed. We perceive what happens now in 0.1 sec. We never perceive the Now now.

Additionally, when we move our eyes, we can’t see. So, the brain pieces information together. Yes, our brain makes stuff up. Usually, it’s probably what happens or is close to “reality”. But much of what we “see”, we don’t actually see. Crazy, hey? Still attached to the importance of reality, truth and right or wrong? Well, they are not invalid, just more relative, right?

Bent Freiwald explains this in the podcast with how we try to get a fly. The brain can’t calculate and make up the exact eradicated way in which flies fly. That’s why it’s hard to catch or slap flies when you use your eyes. You will see the fly in places it has never been and never will be although it’s of course still close to the actual path of the fly.

Memories and Perception

The other interesting piece in this context is that our memory is very unstable. It is quite widely known that witnesses see things that didn’t happen or can’t remember exactly. Here, again, the brain makes up stuff. One psychiatrist also tested memory by suggestive tactics rewriting the memory of people who then believed that they killed someone and were able to tell the story which completely made sense. The brain also likes to pick up pieces of information and create memories from that – like early childhood memories which don’t exist in our brain but maybe in images or stories.

Bent describes remembering and talking about this memory as if we read the memory from an index card (remember those?), then throwing the card into the bin and writing the memory on a new card – from memory. Memories – just like perceiving “reality” – have a lot of space to become more illusion and fiction than what actually happened.

Truth or dare

What’s with the truth now? Should we give it up? Does it not exist?

I believe that truth is often relative and a question of perception. With the information above, we also know that we make up most of our “reality” although it is usually based on things that happened in this or a similar way. Just almost never this exact way. I think if some truth is important, we should always consider that we cannot find out the exact truth. Of course, if the crime show wants to find the killer, somebody did kill the victim and that is some truth. But if you get into the muggy world of motives and intentions, it will get much more difficult. Which is also where right and wrong get foggy.

How does this relate to happiness? Since happiness is strongly connected with letting go, you might want to let go from insisting on knowing or finding some truths or evaluating situations with a general right or wrong. We make our reality up and truth, right or wrong and reality may not be as important as our society makes us believe. Embracing fogginess and the colours of the rainbow between black and white makes much more sense in most situations. Insisting on knowing the truth or what is right or wrong is a game without benefit and maybe even without an answer. Letting go, makes space to live this half-made-up life with all our senses and more joy. In my world, that’s right and the truth.

What do you think? Do you agree, disagree or let this one sink a bit in? Let me know.