WYSILMU

Once upon a time, so long ago I don't remember the year, I was startled by a bright shimmering light that appeared at the centre of my field of view and expanded into a crescent filled with bright coloured triangles. It lasted about twenty minutes before disappearing at the edges. I called the doctor and asked if I was having a stroke. He said it was a scintillation, a harmless neurological phenomenon; nothing to worry about.  It has recurred at intervals over the years. It happened again this morning. I consulted Doctor DuckDuckGo (my current search engine) for a second opinion. According to Wikipedia, the condition is known as scintillating scotoma. It is like migraine but without the pain, a mercy for which I am grateful.

My brain played a little trick on me. I am telling you about this because it may serve as an analogy to the more general human condition that might be called WYSILMU, short for What You See Is Largely Made Up. Our brains are always playing tricks on us. Reality is out of reach of the human mind. What we take for reality is a personal collage which each of us constructs from a shallow stream of fallible sensory data filtered and cobbled together in a way that ignores inconsistencies and invents missing details to make the world more or less comprehensible and predictable. We each live in a different universe. There may be some places where our universes coincide, but there are significant differences that account for disagreements. 

In particular, we disagree about whom to trust. A politician may be the Messiah or the Devil's spawn or just another person doing their best to balance self-interest against a desire to do something useful for society. A politician will necessarily get some things right and other things wrong because right and wrong depend on whom you ask. Reality is, in a word, complicated. The inner universe which each of us inhabits is, in a word, simple. Therefore we disagree. The points of disagreement may be important and worth some effort to resolve. However, knowing that our precious opinions are not always well founded may save us from unnecessary conflict and isolation. You don't get to be right by winning a slanging match. We should find common ground and work together to see things more clearly.

You know the old fable about the blind men describing an elephant based on the body parts within reach. "It's like a rope." "No, it's like a tree." That's us. We have hold of different parts.

So do the best you can to figure things out. Then go forth in the certain knowledge that your elephant has another end and also important bits in between.

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Photo credit:  © Can Stock Photo / BrandonSeidel