Relativity of Perceptions

RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTIONS

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.   2-11

ABSTRACT:  The challenges of passing on values and beliefs to those who come after us, in a world of change, are discussed.  The implications of this for passing on our values and beliefs and for finding the best solutions for societal problems are explained:  for us to know our own values and beliefs better, for us to become better able to express our values and beliefs verbally, and for us to become better able to listen to and seek to understand and use the values and beliefs of others.

KEY WORDS:  values, beliefs, assumptions, definitions, generational differences, objectivity

The smooth operation of societies depends on having considerable similarity among all members, in terms of their values, beliefs, explanations for events, and definitions of words.  Clearly, those who value family solidarity will differ from those who value risk-taking and adventure when it comes to legislation and tax structure.  Those who believe that strict fidelity is essential for marriage will differ from those who think that “open marriage” is feasible.  Those who believe that any fetus is a human being or a person will differ from those who believe that personhood begins at birth or late in pregnancy.  Differences in values, beliefs, explanations, and definitions produce most of the conflict in society, and the more diversity there is in these matters, the more conflict there will be regarding adoption of expectations and rules that must apply to everyone.

We are relatively aware of differences on these matters in the present moment, when issues are discussed, but we are poor at understanding the contextual differences that lead to cultural evolution across generations—i.e., changes over time in values, beliefs, and explanations.  For example, those who share a particular set of values and assumptions about violence may find violence in movies or songs stimulating, all the while assuming that their underlying abhorrence of violence will be absorbed and taken forward identically by the next generation.  However, the next generation grows up viewing more violence than their predecessors, and this shapes a changed attitude toward violence.  They will find it more acceptable and less abhorrent, because they are more used to having it in their lives, even if only through the media.  They would still “vote against” violence, but it will be just a little more acceptable and less abhorrent to them than to their parents.

The important point is that each of us judges things from our present vantage point, and those judgments are based on our particular lifetime of experience, so unless the next generation has exactly the same (particularly early) experience, they will be “coming from” a different base when they make their judgments about things as adults.  We tend to assume that everyone has the same base when we make predictions about what others think and feel and what they will do, when in fact they do not have the same base that we do.  We make this assumption of similarity for ease of thought, since it is much more difficult to empathically understand those who are different from us, in order to make predictions about them, and it can be upsetting as well when we recognize these differences.

The rate of change in society has increased greatly over the last fifty years and may still be increasing.  This means that the next generation is guaranteed to have a significantly different assumptive base than we did.  Some parents are concerned enough about these changes to home-school their children, but even this will not shield them from the changed world outside.

The current generation of young people is involved in social networking, which means that they are much more in touch with others through electronic means than their parents were growing up.  They are getting used to others knowing about their lives and making details about their lives available to others (sometimes to unintended others) that would seem to parents matters that should be kept private.  Thus, the meaning of “privacy” and perhaps the importance of it will be different when today’s young people are running society.

Similarly, the current experience of communications being short and therefore necessarily more “shallow” (e.g, the Twitter limit of 142 characters in every Tweet) will mean that current young people will be less interested in in-depth analysis of issues, because they will have no (or little) experience of such in-depth discussions and won’t view them as valuable.  (This may mean that good thinking will become a job in itself, since it will be a specialty activity done well by only a small group of persons and will still vw valuable for some purposes!)

Because of the greater frequency of divorce these days, the words of commitment in marriage vows or promises of one lover to another already mean less, because young people (and even middle-agers) see that there is very little chance of “forever” or “always.”

Adding to divorce the observation of the frequency of affairs and adultery will mean that fewer young people are entering marriage with hopes of fidelity, and many young people also see less reason to avoid something they want to do simply because it is prohibited or violates a promise they have made.  Thus, people are likely to become less trustworthy and behavior less predictable, because promises and doing what is expected have become less valuable.  The relative anonymity of electronic communications and relationships also makes promises to others and the impact of our behavior on others seem less important than in face-to-face relationships.

A further complication in making good decisions about future consequences is that most adults “forget” what they thought and felt twenty or more years ago, “remembering” instead something constructed more out of the present than out of the past, so that they cannot meaningfully assess the results of certain changes or proposed changes in society.

One implication of this contextual or “base” change issue is that if we wish to hand on our values and beliefs to those who come after us, we will need to be much more explicit about doing so.  In centuries past it was relatively effective to just let people observe what was around them while growing up, because it was quite similar to what their parents observed, but now it is quite different.  (We could also slow down the rate of change, but given human beings’ penchant for novelty and reduction of pain, it is very unlikely that this could be accomplished.)  Unfortunately, young people do not have the breadth of observation to know when change is good and when it is bad, and our society’s worship of “the new” makes the wisdom of age something believed to be worthless, when in fact it might be very accurate.  (It takes a long time and much observation to know that most medical research and breakthroughs should not be believed when first reported and will undergo considerable change before being confirmed, if they ever are, just as it takes a long time to know that the government is actually not in control of the economy, despite the promises of candidates to change this or that about the economy.) 

Parents in particular must do more “teaching” about values and beliefs, if they want their children to adopt them and understand them.  As a consequence, they must be prepared also to explain themselves when questioned by children, rather than saying only “because I said so.”  The vague and often contradictory teachings of churches and schools regarding values and beliefs can no longer be relied on give children a good base from which to make decisions.

The ability to think clearly about what we believe and why we believe it is also essential for public debate of issues in a democracy.  Discussions by people who can do this are searches for similarities and differences and for understanding the emotional sources of the other person’s views.  They also stimulate us to revise our own views, based on what we learn from and about the other person.  This is far different from simply trying to convince the other person to change his or her mind (or give up).  (The non-cognitive nature of our assumptions is one important reason why discussion of societal and other emotional issues is so difficult for us, because so few people can state what they believe and can only try to shout down those who are expressing something different.  The biggest challenge here is to see clearly what is emotion and what is fact—what we want to believe versus what the evidence supports.)

This state of affairs (the difficulties of empathy when others are different from us in basic assumptions; our wish to assume uniformity in basic assumptions, even when untrue; our inability to stop change; our inaccurate belief that the “new” will always be good) challenges us to be able to state what we believe and explain why we believe it or prefer it, something that few today can do (because their values and assumptions were adopted largely by observation and imitation and not by more cognitive or verbal learning).  All members of society are urged, therefore, to begin a much closer examination of what they believe, to find out what flaws it has and if it is “really” what they believe.  It will take considerable effort for many of us to become able to say clearly what we believe and to listen patiently to others’ statements on the same issue, in order to objectively and seriously evaluate those other points of view and use them to improve our own views.  This is as key for making our democracy function well as it is for passing on the values and beliefs that we wish to preserve.

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