How you see the world...

I saw this and started to think about information and its relationship to power.
But also about how we deal with information.


I think the mind is a mash-up thing.

It takes in lots of information every day. But it takes in that information in an interpretive way.

We do not just log information. We filter it through our view of the world.

We reject some information regardless of truth because we don't like how it clashes with what we already "know."

We accept some some whether it is true or not because we want to believe that which brings us peace.

That's how lies work - we want to believe them.
But remember that to believe in something does not make it true.
To believe is to say, "I cannot show this to be true, but I will act as if it is anyway."

We take in new information and mash it with what we already believe and then form a new world view.

Every one of us has a world view. And if you took each world view and compared it you would find that they are very different. Vastly different.

Consider the idea of perspective - where you stand when you look determines what you see.

The life you live detemines what you see.
Your gender, race, religion, income and family make-up are the beginning location of your point of view.
Your home town and education have an impact.
Your values - self-created or inherited - are a big part of the filter.
Your tastes will limit what you are willing to see and what you ignore.
Your age determines what you saw and what you were only told about.
We all know about Hiroshima but very few of us actually experienced it.

All this past experience will determine how you interpret new experience.
Experience is deceiving.
Experience is only that. It is not, in itself, truth.

Even your dreams at night are experiences. But you wouldn't call them true.

Don't confuse what is real with what you experience.

I think the only way to find truth is to accept that you don't have it yet.

Every idea is a mashup of past ideas and new experiences and each of them is a function of where you were standing at the time.

The Tao Te Ching says, "The master is free of their own ideas."

Don't cling to your ideas.
Get as much information as you can.
Seek out information that disagrees with your world view.
Be open to it.
But use your mind not to collect information.
Use it to filter it.
Not everything you see and hear is true.
And ask the question - "Why is this person telling me this?"
That question usually helps you see control and influence.
Because people use information more than anything else to have power over others.
Even friends and loved ones use power.

A Lie is only believable because you want to believe it.

And then go ahead and mash it up. I love hearing about people's different world views.

Check it out
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/08/maps-that-will-help-you-make-sense-of-the-world/