The Way We See the World The ever-present psychological goal | Human Nature

The Way We See the World

The ever-present psychological goal that determines all our activity also influences the choice, intensity and activity of those particular psychological faculties that give shape and meaning to our picture of the world. This explains the fact that each of us experiences a very specific segment of life, or of a particular event, or indeed of the entire world in which we live. We all ignore the whole and value only that which is appropriate to our goal. Thus we cannot fully understand the behaviour of any human beings without a clear comprehension of the secret goal they are pursuing; nor can we evaluate every aspect of their behaviour until we know how their whole activity has been influenced by this goal.

Perception, impressions and stimuli from the outer world are transmitted by the sense organs to the brain, where certain traces of them may be retained. These traces form the foundations of the world of imagination and the world of memory. But a perception can never be compared with a photographic image because in the case of a perception something of the peculiar and individual quality of the person who perceives is inextricably bound up with it. One does not perceive everything that one sees. No two human beings react to the same picture in quite the same way. If you ask them what they have seen they will give very different answers.

Children perceive only those elements in their environment that fit into a behaviour pattern previously determined by a variety of causes. The perceptions of children whose visual sense is especially well developed have a predominantly visual character. The majority of humankind is probably visually biased. Others fill in the mosaic picture of the world they have created for themselves with predominantly auditory perceptions. These perceptions need not be strictly identical with actuality.

Everyone is capable of reconfiguring and rearranging their contacts with the outer world to fit their own life pattern. The individuality and uniqueness of human beings consists in what they perceive and how they perceive. Perception is more than a simple physical phenomenon; it is a psychological function from which we may draw the most far-reaching conclusions concerning the inner life.

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