In The Farmer with the Blur, the farmer’s perception was manipulated so
heavily. He was so sure he saw something that was real but someone came along
and told him otherwise. He experienced what is called a psychological
manipulation. It is a social influence where someone or something tries to
change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive
tactics.
We all get caught up in our stories.
Most of us think we are our stories.
It is when those stories take on a life of their own, and that life is not the
one we want, and things start to suck.
If
there is no link between perception and reality, you could think that there is
no reality at all, that there are infinite realities, or that there are just
images that we mistake for the real thing.
Most of us are naïve realists at
heart. We assume that the external world maps perfectly onto our internal view
of it. But really there is no such thing as a reality. There’s only “your”
version of it, which is essentially just your perception. Remember that what
you believe to be true is only as true as your worldly experience and it does
not go any further than that. It is important to note that how you choose to
perceive things is how they come across to you. I believe that your power to
choose how to perceive things makes them appear that way to you. Your reality
is much more different than my reality.
So was it really just his reality, or was
it just his perception? Knowing what he saw was so real, will you let someone
come in and tell you otherwise? So many people will go a long way to make
others believe something. What do we call those people? Liars? Deceitful?
Conniving? Or just plain evil?
