Reality is Perceived

This short article is actually one of my favourites!‎

Our senses and the devices we create to extend our senses, are filters through which we ‎perceive reality. We don’t get to sense all of reality. Our minds take in the streams of ‎information from our senses, and filter them further. Our attention or focus, our ‎preconceptions, our mood, all determine the way we filter information from our senses. If ‎we are feeling guilty, we may be more likely to hear other peoples’ conversation as criticism. ‎If we are feeling proud, we may be more likely to hear those same conversations as praise.‎

If our perceptions are wrong then no amount of logical ‎excellence will give the right answer. So it is a pity that almost ‎the whole of our traditional intellectual effort has been ‎directed at logic and so little at perception.‎
Logic will not change emotions and feelings. Perception will.‎
‎(Edward de Bono, Textbook of Wisdom, 1996)‎

Edward de Bono is one of my favorite authors. I was exposed to him in elementary school through a ‎system called CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) which teaches thinking skills. I then read quite a few of ‎his books including “Six Thinking Hats”, “Lateral Thinking” and, of course, “Textbook of Wisdom”.‎

[This article was originally published on Agile Advice on 27-May-2005]

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