Is it completely bananas to anyone else that we are ALL walking around with completely different versions of reality??
I think it’s cool (for the most part) & have always been curious and eager to understand other’s filters and programming.
There’s no way we could all have identical interpretations of life. That’d be impossible, considering nobody is exactly alike. That’s the essence of diversity, a byproduct of being individuals.
Small things, like habits or roles within groups, make things interesting. It’s not really a big deal when you call the Q3 weather ‘fall’ and someone else calls it ‘autumn’, or if one lady wants to work while another wants to be a housewife.
Things get kooky-wawa when there’s a huge distance between our versions of reality.
Small stuff is no big deal. Catholics and Baptists don’t have to fight over much anymore–their belief in a similar, important facet of their lives (God) doesn’t cause friction any more.
They can even reconcile with Jews.
But, you throw Muslims in there and… boy, things can get tense.
You can see this play out in public schools where some State Boards of Education try to include creationism in school curriculum because they reject the scientific notions of how the world as we know it came to be. (Side note: check out ‘The Revisionaries‘)
If someone were to say, “The sky is green, and dogs say ‘moo’…” plenty of us would have to disagree. I might be able to support an argument that the shy is purple, but there are just some things we can all agree on.
The word ‘blue’ was established long ago to describe a hue that human eyes can perceive; and we can all generally agree on what’s blue. The word translates to other languages to describe the same thing. There are just some things about which we have come to a general consensus.
It’s when we have huge variations in our perceptions of reality, like ohh the source of existence, that we get major friction.
These issues get debated. They’re hotly contested. They separate us. These competing and incompatible versions of reality are hard to reconcile. When something is closely-held by someone, part of their identity or central to their view of life, it can be damn-near impossible to find common ground with another, differing POV.
So, how do we reconcile issues when people’s Venn Diagrams on any given issue barely (or don’t) overlap?
If you were looking for answers to this, well… stay tuned. I’m still working that out. In case you can’t tell from the evidence, like the fact that I practice mediation or do d&i work, I’m on a mission to facilitate reconciliation…
We can see how differing views of reality have been politicized. They’re playing out in these impeachment hearings.
Here’s the PBS Live Feed: