Self-Deception: The Perception Lie

The view of the world comes to us warped through a prism. The prism is our mind, built from past experiences and of our long and short-term paradigms.

That is how the mind sees the outside, but how does it see itself? In my opinion, the prism through which we view ourselves is significantly more skewing than the already misleading one with which we see the outside environment. The main reason is that the view of ourselves is not based on who we actually are – but on whom we learned that we are.

So, recently a number of questions came to my mind in regards to this theory of mine.

To what degree does the difference between who we are and our perception of self vary from person to person?

At first, I thought that to a large degree since the discrepancy is affected a lot by the level of importance we assign to the opinions of others and to how many of others we listen. This is very different from person to person. Then, however, I took a more controversial consideration as my final answer to myself. This degree has very small variance. That is because our perception of self is so much affected but what we learned that we are, that the actual correlation b/w our opinions and reality is probably 20 – 30%, if not less. If almost everyone hypothetically fit within that range, then the variance is small – we are all largely mistaken in how we view our own selves.

A different thought is that our view of ourselves alters ourselves to be more compliant with what we think. If we think that we are confident in ourselves then we become such. If we think we are pretty, then others learn to perceive us in that way too. This self-fulfilling prophecy factor is not considered by me when thinking about these questions.

The second question I thought of – how to we make the view of ourselves more accurate?

My personal answer is that we don’t need to. Since ourselves aligns with what we think of ourselves and so does the opinion of others then why do we need to see the truth? Truth hurts.

Finally, if what we see is so much affected by ourselves and we are effectively put in the “centre of the Universe” sort of speak, then how do we prevent self-absorption?

This is a concern I had to face in a number of transitional stages of my personality and its growth. My own reaction to when I have noticed that I would become too self-absorbed would be to forcefully “bring myself down to the ground.” That would usually encompass a significant loss in self-confidence at the given period of time. I do realize that this is not the way. Now, when in danger of becoming too self-absorbed I just switch my attention to my friends. I begin thinking of them and how they are also individuals, all of them better than me in one thing or another. This reminds me that everyone is superior to me in something just as I am superior to everyone in something as well. That puts me on the same level as people around me.

To conclude, our self-perception is very rarely reflective of reality. Reality does gravitate towards self-perception though. Self-perception and perception of us that others have mutually gravitate to a common point. Because of this, we do not need to make our self-vision more accurate. And self-absorption can be prevented at will by simply thinking of others.

I have also discovered that I already wrote about this in Facebook Notes. The post was called “Paradox” and I posted it in the previous week as a reference to this one for you to see J

Paradox

What you see below is my account on social interactions written when I was 16, 2 years ago, to reflect my thoughts on something which was bothering me at that moment. It has to do a lot with the post which comes above; so I thought Ill cite it here as well.

Paradox

I have came to believe that the society - referring to people around you - see you the way you see yourself. If a girl thinks she is pretty and acts like she is then other girls and many guys will be convinced of that as well. If a guy is all everything - hot, strong, smart whatever but he has no confidence whatsoever then people won't notice him as anything special. On the contrary if someone who is not that great is fully confident of themselves and project that confidence on those around them then people will only notice the best of the qualities they possess.

However there is a majority of people who see themselves the way others see them. If everyone will think you are a loser - then guess what, that's what you will become (unless any special unaccountable factors occur). If everyone tell a girl she is pretty then that's what she will be convinced of and vice versa.

With the above two points being true - what do we get? You see yourself as the society sees you which sees you as you see yourself? A never-ending circle where we have two dependent variables and not one independent. However somehow people still have an opinion about themselves and others. So what comes out from all this is that you have two choices - whether you will let others decide what you are and see it their way or you decide what you are first and let others see you that way as well. This shows that you are in control of your life if you choose to take that control - its your choice whether you are a passenger or a driver. So no matter how someone feels at the moment and no matter how screwed up people think they are and how unaccepted they are - they can always turn this around if they feel bold enough to. You are in control to make things better.

Ah, All the Blogging!

So far, I have been casually sharing my thoughts on interesting things I find every day while browsing the vast backwoods of the internet space. My posts have been centered on politics and business. That is until now. Now, I've been giving it some thought... Are those the right topics to write about? Sure, the blog is a reflection of me and I can write about whatever interests me personally - but many things do. I only wrote 5 posts to this date so I cannot say that I have a clear direction for my blog, and that raised a question - what should the direction be?

Next to news and business (my direct field of study), the best alternative is just to record my everyday life. But then what is a difference between that and a diary? Wayyy too many blogs are doing this already! Do you want to hear a diary? Hm.

So what do readers want and where do those desires intersect what I'd write about? Readers want comedy. We are often chasing a good laugh, trying to get away from the mundane reality of responsibilities and pressures in that one or more moments of chuckles. However, I was not born a clown and I cannot forcefully entertain. I can be funny - sure, but sitting down and just writing on paper...No. I tried before. Succeeded. The effort it took was ridiculous.

Therefore, I decided that this blog will be about me. Not my life but me. My thoughts. A reflection on life but not fully. Sometimes about business. Sometimes about politics. Sometimes just about things that come to my mind or which matter to me the most. Anything I feel like sharing. So now you know the profile of my blog :). You can now push the Next Blog >> button or, subscribe if you will. The choice is yours.

Disability Is Profit-Making for the Corporate World

Well. Today I chose quite an inconvenient location to blog – on my weekly bus trip which lasts around an hour. I am typing in the slightly laptop-illuminated space, surrounded with 3 bags and one case of water bottles. Yesterday I heard for the hundredth time that art requires sacrifices and blogging can be art? Right? Anything can be art, depends on how you deliver it… Okay, here we go.

Today’s post is about an article I read. It was in one of those useless cheap magazines through which one skims to get disappointed, wrongfully realize that life has no meaning, close it, and continue staring into a wall while waiting for their haircut appointment. Surprisingly, today something caught my eye as I desperately tried to procrastinate doing accounting, as much as I like doing that.

The article talked about Rich Donovan, a graduate of my University. Some Wall Street big shot quit Wall Street because he thought that making money on disabilities is more profitable. He even created a company [Lime Connect] which had a goal of convincing other companies that this is true. That intrigued me since usually disabled people are respected on a personal level, but are marginalized on a socioeconomic one.

First, the argument states that “disability dollars” are mostly spent on extreme cases, which is true. He argues that if we re-direct a portion of those dollars to helping people with minor disabilities in the workforce then it will be a major boost for everyone. True, but what exactly does he suggests would be criteria upon which to help? An insignificant question perhaps, considering that the implementation of this social policy will not be executed – it would just piss off too many social workers.

Second, Donovan argued that hiring people with disabilities isn’t a burden but an asset. He says disability is a radioactive brand which is dissociated with value. However, usually people with mild disabilities are as capable of performing most tasks as regular people are. He even went on to say that he himself has a disability, cerebral palsy to be exact. Yet he is better at what he’s doing than many healthy born individuals. By ignoring candidates with disability because of the disability, employers potentially lose value since these people may turn out to be better workers than others.

Third, Donovan provides the readers with some statistics. 1.1 people globally report having a disability. Two billion additional people are either friends or relatives of those people. Also, people with disabilities control an aggregate annual income of more than $1 trillion in the United States.

The point is clear. We often judge too quickly. That is not what I took out of this. What surprised me is the following quote in the middle of the article: “How many times do you get the opportunity to be a global expert about a marketplace the size of China?” Donovan is referring to himself. That is true, disabled people seem to be indeed a marginal niche to many, but in reality it is a HUGE market. My question is – how many other markets do we ignore in a similar manner?

WHAT?! Faith in humanity is restored.

Something amazing happened. Perhaps, we come across miracles every day. Perhaps, our whole life is a miracle. Maybe miracles are created by those closest to us, but as tradition follows – we do not see what is closest. Something happened that astonished me today. It was far from me but it was astounding.

All of us are aware of the Egyptian crisis, am I not right? So not only are there the angry and violent people, who want to take Mubarak down, but there are also the pro-Mubarak forces. Surprisingly the crowd that supports Mubarak is the one which is armed with machetes and guns. That is in addition to behaving in a highly organized manner. Many conclude that this is undercover police. I don’t quite know enough to jump to conclusions.

This is just the setup to what happened. So a number of Muslim protesters assembled in the Tahrir Square for their routine prayer. That is when the pro-Mubarak forces decided to attack them. However, CHRISTIANS formed into a human shield around the praying people, allowing MUSLIMS to finish their prayer!

I know that we are all the same and that Christianity mandates that we must help one another but really THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN. And to see these courageous people protecting another group of people whose beliefs they do not share, simply out of niceness and solidarity – that is just wow! One of the comments I saw on the internet is: “faith in humans = restored.” Well said.

Sadly, this is more visible amidst all the killings and violence. I wish for all the victims of the revolt to rest in peace, царство им небесное, and I am truly thankful that through the darkness sometimes shines the light of what human nature is. It is unimaginably corrupt but at the same time it is capable of heroic deeds like no other.

To follow the story: http://makkah.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/christians-protecting-muslims-in-egypt-during-prayers/ It's a short one.