I have had an itch lately, to put what is swimming around in my head on paper...or rather in 1's and 0's.
I have been dealing a lot with perception lately. Taking animal behavior classes has really opened a lot of doors for me so that I may look critically at what our own species is like. Also, I have been taking a class on the evolution of human decision making which has put me into a section of biology I am not familiar with but very happy I stumbled into.
In order to successfully interact with the external environment, an organism needs to develop a picture of the external environment. We will call that picture perception. This is critical to the organisms ability to find nutrients, one of the basic needs of any living thing. If you cannot sense food, then you will not get food.
How this is done can vary. Dogs use smell, cats use sight, the list goes on bla bla bla. But since animals only use the senses that best fit them in that current environment, other senses are never selected for. Dogs can't see as well as cats and cats can't smell as well as dogs. And this is where humans come in. We can't see as well as cats and we can't smell as well as dogs and yet we deem ourselves "higher" than both organisms. Our perception is vastly limited. Ya sure, we can process a lot of cool information...but the mechanism of processing the information we get was only adaptive to the certain environment that we evolved in. We are in no way these cognitively limitless beings with all sorts of cool tricks up our sleeves. We fall victim to our own perception constantly...
Hearing - The phenomenon of music is quite fascinating to me probably becuase I am so involved with it. Our perception of music is based off of the fact that 1) We can only hear a certain range of pitches and 2) Combinations of those pitches happen to resonate in such a way that it sounds pleasing to us. This is a difficult and complicated topic though and I don't really know anything about physics. My point, though, is that if there had never been a reason for us to ever hear anything then we would never have had this thing called music. Ever consider about what your animals think when they hear your music blasting in the background as you clean your room?
Sight - I don't know anything about art or fashion. What I am beginning to understand though is that we seem to be attracted to patterns and colors. Just the fact that there are individuals that are not only color blind but able to see only a couple of colors is fascinating to me. Our perception of light is incredibly limited and it dictates so much of society that I think people forget the fact that we are only seeing a portion of what is out there right now. I'm going to release my own line of clothing that is geared towards ultraviolet seeing people. If we could not see color and instead could only see patterns what sort of clothing would we popular today?
Taste - So do you like hot food? If you do you may be one of those people who get such a high off of pain-reducing hormones that you can't help but go back for more. I hate hot food...it just hurts. this is a fascinating difference to me becuase it shows me that the amount of receptors for certain hormones is different in every person which can then lead to different perceptions.
Touch - Not to get sexual on you, but imagine if we could not feel? How do you think we would initiate sex...or would we even have sex?
Smell - Smell is an incredible device that is affiliated so closely with memory that I can relive parts of my life by smelling things that are related to past experiences. Other animals' lives are dictated by a relationship between their environment and their nose. They see with their nose I guess.
What my whole point of writing all this nonsense is that I am beginning to see what I don't see. I am beginning to hear what I don't hear. When one is trying to stop a habit, one has to admit that they have a habit. Well I have a habit of looking too far into the roadblock that is our own perception. If we have only evolved in a certain way it is almost pointless to actually think that we are going anywhere with logic or science or anything at all. This is becuase there is no logic, there are no morals, there is no simple math to life. We create ourselves in our own image. Our cognition, which we think is so superior and able to conquer any problem we come across, is null and void when we consider the enormity of the universe. Our absolute basic thought process is limited by the narrow void where it evolved. Nature is a method of specialization and we are the product of that.
I am not saying that life is not worth living and we should constantly be sad and pity ourselves. Perhaps what I'm saying that there are other ways to thinking and seeing things. "Put yourself in their shoes". Animals perceive life differently than we do but we also perceive things different than each other. Every single cell in our bodies is unique and this allows each and every one of us to look at the world in our own unique way. Be considerate of other people's (and animal's) perception and you will see your own perception flourish.
