What We See, What We Don’t See
Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times
I can ask my thirteen-year old son to grab a jar of pickles from the top shelf of the fridge. He’ll open the door, stare into the fridge for a full five minutes, close the door and tell me there’s no pickles.
But there are, of course, right there on the top shelf like I said. It’s just that he didn’t see them because he wasn’t expecting to have to look behind the mayonnaise.
Our perception of reality is often distorted by expectations of what we think it should be.
Psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons studied this, looking at how intuition can mislead the mind, giving us a false representation of reality. They examined two phenomenon: selective attention and change blindness.
Watch their famous ‘selective attention test,’ here…
Their work culminated in the book, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. Here’s another test they developed.
Their research found that roughly 50% of people put into situations like this, and told what to look for, missed a lot of changes in details.
“Change blindness is a perceptual phenomenon that occurs when a change in a visual stimulus is introduced and the observer does not notice it. For example, observers often fail to notice major differences introduced into an image while it flickers off and on again. People’s poor ability to detect changes has been argued to reflect fundamental limitations of human attention.” [Source]
In our world today, perception is everything and attention is the most valuable commodity. Marketers know this. Crime scene investigators know this. Propagandists know this. Reality is whatever we perceive it to be, whether we are right or wrong.
“Your moment-to-moment expectations, more than the visual distinctiveness of the object, determine what you see—and what you miss.” ~The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
We’re being carried away together to a dark place, and the more people that go along willingly, the easier it is to get us all there. In order to get more of us to go along, it’s essential that we perceive the circumstances and responses as necessary to our health and safety… whether they really are or not.
And while our attention is directed to a certain curated conversation about Covid and the dangers it poses, many don’t seem to notice the basic fundamental and structural shifts happening in the background.
It’s not about masks or vaccines, it’s about a permanent cultural and legal shift into total physical and psychological submission to an untouchable class of elite institutions and corrupt governments.
But few notice this gorilla because they are busy counting how many time the ball is passed.
As we follow each new twist in this narrative, over time once important details become irrelevant or simply go absent. Most people have by now already forgotten what sovereignty really means to the individual.
People generally look only at what they are told to look at, and to make matters worse, we are also being told what NOT to look at. This leaves us with a dangerous hive whose behavior is based on illogical distortions of reality. There is real-time editing of the film we are all watching.
Think about it. It used to be safe to risk it through flu season without a mask. It used to be intelligent to refuse to put poisons or unnecessary medicines in your body. It used to be normal to earn money that had value. It used to be normal to treat your fellow citizens with respect and dignity, allowing them the choice to make decisions on health for themselves. But all of this is snowed under the foreground of the present crisis.
This is maximum Orwellian.
In the dystopian classic 1984, Winston Smith worked in the Records Department at the Ministry of Truth editing old news articles and speeches, constantly rewriting the most mundane details of history for anyone that had the urge to look into the past for info on why their world was so bleak.
This curating of information and knowledge was critical to the power structure because it confused people, gaslighted them, causing cognitive dissonance, and weakening their ability to engage in logic and reason. Plus it gave the appearance that Big Brother was always right. No one noticed. They all just went about their caged lives.
While Chabris and Simons call this mental process ‘change blindness,’ today I look at this as a form of self-delusion, given that information is being openly suppressed. Everyone knows this, and many applaud it. At this point, if you don’t see the full picture it’s because you don’t want to.
“…we easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we understand and can explain things that we really know very little about.” ~
Global events are taking a turn that none of us have control over. I sense that it is time to to develop our strength in areas of life where we do have power, and I help people to uncover the areas of their life in which they are caged and limiting themselves. Check out my work, here.
About the Author
Dylan Charles is a self-mastery coach, the editor of Waking Times and host of the Battered Souls podcast. His personal journey is deeply inspired by shamanic plant medicines and the arts of Kung Fu, Qi Gong and Yoga. After seven years of living in Costa Rica, he now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he practices Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and enjoys spending time with family. He has written hundreds of articles, reaching and inspiring millions of people around the world.
Dylan is available for interviews and podcasts. Contact him at WakingTimes@gmail.com.
This article (What We See, What We Don’t See) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dylan Charles and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.
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