So how much can we really know anyhow. I have my perceptions about reality and yet I only have access to my thoughts, my experiences and my perceptions. Yes, I converse with others but none of us has direct access to how another truely thinks or feels. Our perceptions of another’s thoughts may be utterly in the opposite of the facts. Like what happened on my jog yesterday. I’m running (albeit rather slowly in the 85 degree heat) on the sidewalk in the typical suburban neithborhood. With my sunglasses on I can’t make direct eye contact with anyone. So I see this guy with a tatoo and what looks like a bag of beer and he’s on the phone. Now, I’m normally this cheery type, always saying or waving “Hi!” when I jog by someone. But this time the shadiness of the guy prompted me to keep my head fixed squarely in front of me. So when I actually do pass him he says into his phone “f….in jogger not even f…in” Well, I didn’t hear much after the two f_bombs.
So he clearly made assumptions about me as I was not courteous to him. So what is his vision of reality in the burbs such that I negatively reinforced his perception of reality? And is his conception, which would lay to waste the facade of suburban paradise, the more accurate one?
