April 24, 2026- The filter

A man is a bundle of instincts, feelings, sentiments, which severally seek their gratification, and those which are in power get hold of reason and use it to their own ends, and exclude all other sentiments and feelings from power.

~Herbert Spencer

Our powers of observation are greater than our capacity for recognition. We take in so much information that we are forced to send it all through a filter. We simply don’t have the capacity to devote conscious thought to all the incoming stimuli.

How is the filter created? How do we decide what to think about and what to let go? Much of that has to do with our instincts and our feelings. Both of these filters work well out in front of our conscious brain. Our instincts and our feelings create a lens through which we see the world around us. What we think we observe is really what is left over after it has passed through that lens. We don’t think we see very many confusing things, partially because our instincts and our feelings protect us from confusion.

Can we at least consider how much we’re missing? We can’t necessarily see all that we aren’t currently seeing, but we can accept that. It is an incomplete picture, telling us an incomplete story. We can accept that there is much to learn. We can accept that others are observing the same world through a different lens. We can open our hearts and our minds to a different perspective. We can evolve into a wiser version of ourselves.