The Filter of Perception

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i09LDKe6T7U

One of the many benefits of autonomy is that we can select how we perceive the external world. Our perception not only controls how we intake the external world but how we outwardly project the internal. If we choose to perceive the human race as a plague or pernicious parasite, well suddenly we're projecting our internal energy according to that filter, alerting everyone of how corrupt everything is and panicking over every minute instance of corruption, rather than seeking to solve the corruption. As another example, if we choose to perceive our peers in a particular way, we not only assign them a label but we also interact with them according to that filter, which then influences their filter of us based on how we behave towards them.

I'd like you to try an experiment: the next time you leave your house, perceive everything around you as a fragment of the cosmos, everyone and everything around you is a small fragment of this infinite cosmos. Everything is beautiful because everything is the universe manifesting itself in that particular form. Once you have tested this little perceptual game, record the way you interacted with your surroundings. I'd bet my chips that you acted according to that filter.

Each filter, in a sense, is a reality. We can choose the reality we participate in by selecting our filter from which we proceed. Filtration is a tremendous perceptual tool, enabling us to manufacture our reality. Furthermore, we can then proceed with our lives influencing others filters helping them alter their perception of reality. Essentially, the filter we choose to proceed from snowballs and infiltrates other peoples perception, either polluting or cleansing it, depending on the filter you have chosen to proceed from.

Now I don't want to delve too deep into conspiracies but imagine if the government was subliminally polluting our filter to entrap us in a particular reality that they deemed "correct." Propaganda isn't just a concept, it is a very real area of inquest with many dedicated minds seeking ways to influence our filter. Except, much to their chagrin, our filter is our own to select; autonomy lies with the beholder.

The study of philosophy has long been a risky pursuit. It's not inherently dangerous to question our world but it is when the general-filter is not chosen by the public. The fundamental goal of democracy was to bestow the appointment of the general-filter unto the public but it has been exploited to do quite the opposite. Socrates was many things, there are many, very contentious, views on who he really was, but fundamentally, he challenged the system by proffering a different, diverging filter. Regardless of how we want to filter his influence, he challenged the consensus in an era where that was threatening and deemed treacherous.

Your filter is your reality; your reality is your filter. How you interact with the world is contingent on your perceptual filter. Select it wisely and steer others towards beneficial filters, for that is all we can do with this life.