Hardwired: Stuck With Perception

The greatest bane/boon to the human condition is perception. Perception is a very difficult internal struggle, a reason exists for this, though it seems an unfortunate one, we are slightly hardwired to perceive what 'beauty' is. We, as humans look for patterns and symmetry, we follow things that we, as animals, search for. We look for what is familiar, we imprint what is known onto that which we experience. We do this in literature, often what is considered great in a literary sense is a thing which references, in a way, the depths of human creative history and rearranges it into a new creative work. So, in a very real way, all work is a form of plagiarism and fragmentation of previous human views and perceptions of the world; bound and solidified into a frozen state.

As such, this is the place where nostalgia is forged, for good or ill in our creative endeavors, where the human heart beats with memory and past experience. These things are powerful personal and collective motivators towards self and cultural identification. People build their identity, individual and cultural, on their perception of both factors of individual perception of things along with the collective perception of the same things. This in no way means that one necessarily eclipses the other, but that the general view held will and is influenced by both factors; individuals can influence society in as much as society can influence the individual, though the collective has more effect in the instance of pressure in the general sense, while the individual has the power to use the scalpel to carve out the specifics.

But perception is a very problematic thing, as we are all prisoners of ourselves, we cannot 'feel' what it is like to be another, we cannot 'know' the experiences of another person, 'we cannot 'know' what another sees in the very same world we both inhabit. All of these things are barred from our own experience, we can infer, we can empathize, we can try our hardest to place ourselves into the shoes of others, but all attempts are just that, feeble attempts at an impossible task of true understanding; as best we can acknowledge this very real problem, as worst we are completely unable to see any of the problems that our perception grants us.

At every turn we find, should we look, that we are unconsciously repeating what someone else has said, did, thought, ect. We are riddled with unoriginality, our best attempts, when analyzed, seem feeble pretenders and pleaders for originality; it is the same story, just retold in a different time to an audience, one hopes, does not know of the previous incarnation. Yet, this is because we cannot perceive it, others can, as they may yet recognize the hollowness of the scene placed before them, but the vast majority will not perceive it, and in fact will laud it as 'well done' or some other lauded position; unearned in the halls of humanity, yet praised no less.

Human perception, like it or not, is untied to total knowledge; the only way perception could be unbound from the excess of repeating the same thing, over and over. History repeats for much the same reason, people do not know of what came before, or their understanding of the brief synopsis of what was given to them was vapid at best; lacking detail and nuance. This makes the human condition of perception a great problem in understanding, because many forms of thought are all too common to reach, too easy to find, they repeat easily and often are divest of much intelligent insight; yet they rear their heads endlessly. We repeat because we are perpetually plunged into the unknown, generations die and their experiences are lost, new generations take their place and emulate the previous; repeating the same notes with differing inflection or emphasis, yet little or no change. And, more often than not, we do not even perceive that we are doing nothing but spinning in the hamster wheel of stagnation, we continue the ride to nowhere; with exuberance, as we perceive that progress has been made by walking forward, yet on a stationary devise.

We do this because we look for patterns, simple, as patterns grant animals the ability to infer what will happen next which then grants them the ability to make predictions and survive the next event. Pattern seeking is a wonderful survival technique, yet, our seeking of patters, and even generating of patterns, can and does lead us into mental and artistic traps; the perpetual repeating. We will repeat the same patterns as they, real or not, are perceived as being successful models of behavior and or thought. And they may indeed be successful, in the sense that it works in a less civilized or more individualizes society, or in the effect that using the same material will still hit all the right notes; so why bother to write new ones? This is by definition stagnatory, and may keep the hamster wheel spinning, but to the uncanny observer, it is seen for what it is; fake progress and innovation.