#phenomenologists

(brainyquote.com ; 31.10.2020)

- written in 50 minutes instead of 30. -

Let us begin with animism, a very ancient way to view the world, found at the roots of most religions. Objects and phenomena of nature such as the weather, climate, single mountains, trees, rivers, accidents or catastrophes are interpreted as actions of living beings motivated by specific intentions, that sometimes one had to find out. In Shintoism in ancient Japan for instance, local deities were present everywhere and had to be included in everyday decisions. They were said to have a good and a bad side, only one of them meaning well, and humans had to be careful to favour the nice one. Earthquakes could be the expression of the deity of the mountain, but so could rain, or being able to take a path safely, „under their protection“. Thus, the current state of mind of the deity, whether it expressed itself as angry or happy or calm, was directly, and almost exclusively, related to the consequences it had on humans. Assuming that those deities existed, they would have been perceived „as we (humans) are“, which might not always have been concordant with how they actually were.

Furthermore, the questions of animism leads to another aspect of human perception and interpretation, which is a tendency to seek sense everywhere, and more easily in ways that put ourselves in the center of the explanation. In shintoism, a mountain couldn’t just be a mountain, it had to be alive, like us, think, like us, and have emotions, sometimes irrationally so, like us. And not only that, but most of the time, all of this revolved entirely around human behaviour. It was angry? The village had done something wrong. Climate was very good for agriculture this year? The prayers and rituals had worked. If the explanation wasn’t about humans, the people wouldn’t have even known what to do with the information.

What’s interesting is, a similar thing happens for all humans during development. For very small children whose parents get a divorce, even if the latter explain the reasons to their child, the child is very likely to interpret all bad things that happen to it as its own fault. In psychology, we call it egocentrical reasoning (which has nothing to do with egoism) : at first, it cannot understand things otherwise, and it takes a long development to be able to inhibit this first intuitive reasoning style. So, a divorce might make the child see its own past actions in a suddenly very dramatic way („I didn’t always listen; I didn’t go to bed when they told me; I kept playing with the curtains when they told me not to; I wasn’t good enough at school“, …). This can of course be prevented through repeated explanations from part of the parents, and the child’s maturation processes will make it understand the situation in a new light later. But these thoughts can still be traumatizing, in the sense where if they were believed for a long period of time, they will have shaped the child’s personality in some way.

Later, we become able to interpret other people’s actions by identification with them. In psychology, this is called Theory of Mind. If I were you, why would I do that? Whereas the child under six years old wasn’t naturally able yet to put itself in other people’s shoes (thus putting itself at the center of everything), those over seven will gradually develop the ability to abstract their own perception and imagine what it would be like from another person’s point of view. I know the gloves are drying on the heater, but that doesn’t make the other child stupid for looking for them in the drawer : they didn’t see the adult put them on the heater to dry. If I were them, I wouldn’t have been able to know either. This ability is less intuitive than the egocentrism, but in most adults in becomes automatical too. Some neurological differences, like autism for instance, can complicate it though.

In a similar way, „I would never hurt someone on purpose“ can turn into „he didn’t do it on purpose“. But in fact, we have very little access to what other people think : maybe he did and maybe not. It is our own responsibility to evaluate what we think we know, and how we think we know it.

Last but not least, what we know and feel will always keep influencing our perception. If we are already anxious we are more likely to perceive someone as potentially dangerous – if it expresses as social anxiety for example, we might perceive a comment as being mockery, although a person was actually just trying to help. Anxiety levels are influenced by basic things such as food, working out, socializing, whether one got good sleep, etc. But also past experiences, our own personality, shaping our expectations… So yes, another time, „what we are“ makes up a very important part of how we see the world!