Our Perception And Generalisation Of Those Around Us

Oftentimes within society, people will assign titles or characteristics either to certain groups of people or specific individuals. People will choose to believe in their preconditioned view of a certain person or group of people. For us it is much easier to comfort ourselves knowing that a certain person satisfies our one directional perception of them. However, mankind is much more complicated and contradictory than we'd like to believe. And ultimately, the classification of people rather than the true understanding of them can lead to division within our society.

Generalisation has become more prevalent within our society, partially due to the popularity of media. Be it social media or a creative medium which conveys fictional characters such as movies, TV shows, or books. Most of these entities have "character" in the sense that we are seemingly able to understand and can assign seemingly black and white perspectives to them. Our evaluation of a good fictional or created character is one who cannot be understood clearly.

Straying aside from the topic of creative works, we bring attention back to the main idea of this article. We as individuals are only able to perceive the behaviour and appearances of other people. That is not to say that the outer appearance and personality are what makes up a human. It would be an insult to mankind as a species, to say that man is only made up of our outward appearances and our personality. Humans are so much more than just appearances and behaviour but our perception of others is limited to just these concepts. We unconsciously create our own image of the people we meet and as a result fail to completely understand one another. It is common for our perception of a fictional character to change once we begin to understand their intentions and the lives which they lived in. Bonds are formed between people when they begin to empathise and understand each other's situation. In this instance, one could say that the previous image of the person perceived has died and has been replaced with a new one.

We do not understand the people we meet. We are simply constructing our image of them within our minds. The same person will be different in the eyes of different people. There is no single character which exists for that person only the character of how they are perceived. Our life is our creation and the people we meet are created from our own identity. If life is a book, we are the writers; the people we meet are our characters. If life is a movie, we are the directors; the people we meet are the actors we choose in our films. There is no issue with simply assigning your character of the person who is being perceiver, however one should understand that you image of a person is not solely who they are. When we judge other people, we subconsciously create the image of them within our minds based on what is observable to us.

On the other hand, understanding seems to lead to pain. It is far too painful to understand the lives and the situation of so many different people and how they have suffered. Only suffering awaits those who ruminate over the perceived "negative" impact they have on others and the world around them. This idea seems to contradict the statement made previously in this same article that understanding allows us to form bonds with people. These seemingly contradictory ideas may instead require a change in perspective for them to align. Understanding leads to suffering simply because it allows us to form bonds with the people we connect to. We cannot bear to see the people we love suffer and that causes us our own suffering.

You as the reader may also notice another contradiction in these opinions. How can we guarantee that our perceived "understanding" of another human being is not simply us reconstructing the image of them which we are satisfied with? What evidence exists that our "improved" perception of another human being is their "true self". The answer is that there is no answer. We cannot guarantee anything and we cannot guarantee that what we believe to understand fully of the person is their full identity. In fact, the concept of a "true self" is subjective itself. There is a misconception that one What is true however, is that we now have more information of the perceived person. Whether more information allows us to form more accurate perceptions of that specific person, is debatable.

The point of this article (and future articles on this website) are not to find answers to a question but to simply ask the question itself. There is no truth to questions like these and the "truth" of them cannot be confirmed. Providing an answer to a question simply leads to more questions and more answers being unfulfilled. These answers are unique to the individual : a convoluted product of their beliefs, values and experiences throughout their life.