What is perception?
Perception is how a being receives & organizes data about the world around it
I think it differs from animals and humans and another important thing here that we should take into consideration is that every being has unique perception,because there are billions of people in this world but no two persons have the same perception even the mono zygotic twins.So we can come to a conclusion on this one that perception is not of biological nature completely.By this we know that each & every individual is unique no matter how ,even they are born & brought up similarly.
Now what defines our perceptions ?
Psychologists say that our behavior & personality is a 50:50 ratio of our genes & how we are brought up,so i do agree with that because we tend to see a lot of common behavior among family members who shares the common genetic material , but apart from that perceptions are different, here i state that perceptions are mostly defined and molded by the way we brought up and genes here have a pretty much lower amount of significance in defining our perceptions.
Suppose , a being which experienced a particular kind of felling or pain or threatening from a particular thing or being perceives it the same way until it has a new experience with the particular thing or being, but to have a new different kind of experience with the same thing or being there must come an opportunity, but the being which had the particular experience previously will oppose to have an experience with the particular thing or being as it was painful & threatening,this does not applies to human beings, because our perception is much lot different than other beings,i think so because of the dual nature of our personality ,here we should quote the sigmund freud`s theory "TRIPARTITE" the more than one aspect of our personality,that is "ID" "EGO" & "SUPEREGO", which is not widely accepted ,i also want to mention a remarkable ideology from "BHAGAVADGITHA" which used to be a great Hindu spiritual doctrine, i think personally about it as a supreme personality development manual, lets cut about it here.The BHAGAVADGITHA also states that our personality has three aspects ,they are "MANASU" "BUDDHI" "CHITTHAM".Here i find a great similarity between these two and want to elaborate it.
1) ID (or) MANASU :- One aspect which craves for fulfillment of needs & desires
2) EGO (or) BUDDHI :- Second aspect which think of the ethical & moral values and a check to id
3) SUPEREGO (or) CHITTHAM : - Third aspect which stores our past experiences which in turn helps us to make correct decisions based on the past experiences & as per freud, it is a counter check to id.
Here i want to make contrast that the first two ID (or) MANASU & EGO (or) BUDDHI plays a dominant role in shaping our perceptions so i stated above the dual nature,the third one SUPEREGO (or) CHITTHAM can be excluded here ,i think.As explained above i think only human personality has these three aspects, which the other beings lack,that made us the dominant & supreme species on earth,animals which lack these aspects ,the dual nature of personality can survive but not efficiently like us,this dual nature or aspects of our personality made us pioneers,masters & thinkers.
EMPIRICAL DATA:- I used to observe a couple of dogs closely for a period of 40 days near a small grocery store,one of the two approaches people who visits the shop waging its tail appeasably,the customers fed it with biscuits and some stuff available there,but the second one was fearful and non-appeasable ,the two dogs were in the same environment but with have different perceptions and the reason behind it is,the first dog which is approaching the customers received love & pampering from it`s earliest days and that kind of conditioning made it so , it developed that kind of perception,when coming to the second one which is fearful of humans received beats & thrashes from humans developed that kind of perceptional nature and it fears even from a smallest reflex from humans. They remained like that at the time period of my observation,here the second one never got a chance to know that humans are kind too,because the conditioning previously it got from humans shaped it`s perception so that it can never approach a human and it remained like that,it will never know until it too has a good experience with humans,but it will never approach humans because it can`t think ,the aspect(EGO) which is the base to think is not there for it,it lacks dual nature of personality which humans have, animals can only think of their biological needs, they don`t need any second thoughts or improvisation ,there is no good & bad in the world they live,only humans have.
In our case we have the advantage of our dual aspect of our personality,we humans can think,differentiate,we have second thoughts,we think rationally,we know what is good from bad,we make decisions,we improvise ,but most of us don`t make the use of our dual aspect of personality,we keep doing mistakes,we make wrong decisions,because we need pleasure,of course we crave for pleasure and we live for it , but i think when we had a painful (or) threatening experience we withdraw from the situation (or) people and never want us to be in that position again ,but the other part of our personality advises that there are infinite possibilities,this time it might not happen so ,or may happen in a favorable way,that is the most crucial aspect of human personality,that is what keeping us humans,differentiating us from animals,that is the crux of our nature, so i suggest we shall have new experiences,we shall not get lost like that poor dog,we should improvise,we should be open.
I think our past experiences determines our perceptions ,but don`t let them alone define your perceptions...listen to your inner voice.
