Evan Bortnick http://musa-vocalis.de/
Gesangsunterricht Wiesbaden
As we all know, there are COUNTLESS ways to perceive “Reality”. One thing’s for sure; how we perceive “Reality” determines both how we feel and how we behave. I’m sure you’ve also noticed that it’s MUCH easier to tweak the perception than it is to tweak the “Reality”! Some might even say there is no distinction between the two. In any case something’s going on ‘out there’ and something’s going on ‘in here’ and there is a map, or interface between the two. It’s this interface that I’d like to discuss.
Neurological research has shown that there are two basic ways we can perceive and react to sensory impressions from our ‘outside’ world. I’m calling these “Quick-and-Dirty” and “Slow-and-Detailed”. Imagine walking along a trail alone on a windy evening just after the sun has set. The path in front of you is bathed in shadows and just a bit of fog. Suddenly you hear a noise and see a quick movement towards you on the side of the path. Your body jerks, your pulse goes up, you feel your fists and your abdominal area tensing slightly. You slow your pace and as you get a bit closer to the figure, you see that it’s just a strangely-shaped branch moving in the wind. It takes a few minutes before your body can relax. This is “Quick-and-Dirty” — “Slow-and-Detailed” in action. Before you even had a chance of being conscious what was in front of you, your body reacted as if something life-threatening was in your path. Even after you actually see what it was, the heightened state of vigilance remains for a while.
As silly as that first quick-and-dirty reaction may seem, it is, evolutionarily speaking, in part responsible for the fact that you’re here. All your forebears, back to the beginning of time survived to bear children because they reacted (or over-reacted) just that fast. Most everyone knows what a ‘reflex’ is. In the neural pathway of a reflex the sensory neurons do not pass through the brain. They synapse directly to the spinal cord. Why? It’s faster…..less accurate, but definitely faster. These kinds of reactions abound in the interface with our world. Even sensory neurons which do pass through the brain are not always necessarily conscious.
What implications does this have in our interaction with others? You’ve probably heard the quote; “you only get one chance to make a first impression!” There is no way to avoid ‘first impressions’. There is always a ‘first impression’. The first impression is ALWAYS quick-and-dirty compared with later impressions. I’m a big fan of the instinctual. I’m a big fan of intuition. HOWEVER, as valuable as trusting first impressions are, it is of primary importance to maintain just a bit of philosophical doubt about them….at least enough to allow a modifying second and third impression. For someone who is primarily visually oriented, for example, and who finds veracity in quotes like “clothes make the man”, the visual impression, because of this orientation will inevitably be ‘quick-and-dirty’. Trusting implicitly in this first impression, especially if it’s negative, will rob such visual individuals of some very valuable transactions. Same is true, of course, for the auditorily oriented. How many of these individuals delete valuable information just because they don’t like the sound of some speaker’s voice? And so it goes through all of our senses!
Making this essential distinction in our perceptual systems conscious and really accepting that it goes both ways and that both ways are “OK” is an important step in keeping these systems as attuned to our “Reality” as possible.
Evan Bortnick http://musa-vocalis.de/
Gesangsunterricht Wiesbaden
