Do you ever feel like a proper alien? It happens to me all the time – misunderstandings, arguments, confused faces, but why does this happen, considering that we feel the same emotions and see the same things? Why is that we are so different?
Well, physically, we do work the same way, the process of visual perception is more or less the same with every human being. It is simply perceiving light particles, called photons, reflected from the surrounding objects. Then they get soaked by approximately 126 million light sensitive cells and translated by our brain into shapes, colours, and brightness.
The retina, located at the back of our eyeball possesses two types of photoreceptor cells – cones, which deal in colour, and rods, which help us see in grayscale or in low light conditions. Normally, we have three types of cone cells for the three main types of wavelengths – small, which we see as bluer, large– redder, and medium– all colour combinations in between. This system enables us to see approximately 1 million different colours, but there are rare exceptions, called tetrachromats. Mostly women, who are said to possess superhuman vision, owing to a genetic mutation, which gives them an extra fourth cone cell that enables them to see the world in around 100 million colours. The other exceptions are called dichromats, who only possess two cone cells and so are able to see approximately 10 000 colours.
Regardless of the amount of colours our eye can perceive, however, most important for the quality of our visual experience turns out to be the number of photons that hits our retina. Technically, even a single photon would be enough to create a primitive sort of an image, although another important factor for an object to be seen is the amount of light our eye is exposed to. This is the reason why we are able to observe objects of whatever size, from whatever distance, as long as they are bright enough. The absolute farthest we could see with our naked eye, for instance, is the Andromeda Galaxy, located 2.5 million light years from us.
Since we are physically able to observe stars the same way, from the same distance, why is it that we can’t look the same way at a book, for example, which is so much closer than a star? It is because there are a psychological and an emotional element to it. We are different in the very way we think not just because of the uniqueness of the morphology and shape of our brains, but also because of the way our psychology is shaped. It mainly lies in our environment, cultural background, upbringing, faith, values, and community, but also in various other factors, such as our choices, physical characteristics and genetic influences. All of this results in the way we think about ourselves, the others, and the world. Considering every person possesses their own unique thinking process, however, we could easily assume that we don’t actually see things as they are, but rather as we are.
But since it is clear that the way we think defines the way we are, how do we define the right way to be and so the right way to think? There is certainly not an estimated right way of being, let alone thinking, but our thoughts being based on our assumptions, we can logically change thoughts by changing assumptions. This is not an easy thing to do, as we have spent our whole lives building assumptions, but in order to think flexibly we need to question and change them if necessary.
Luckily, there seems to be a way we can switch our perspective, and this could simply happen if we learn another language. According to recent researches, learning foreign languages helps us better understand the psychology and perspective of people with a different background than our own. Their difference is strongly embedded in their sentence structure and the vocabulary they use. In English and Swedish, for instance, time is measured in length, so the word ‘break’ would be referred to as either short or long, whereas in Greek and Spanish it is measured in volume. The break there would be small or big. At first sight it is a minor difference, but this tiny dissimilarity is a reflection of the way people’s minds work.
Words, however various in meaning and big in number, are sometimes useless in our attempts to describe the way we feel – another thing that makes us different. Regardless of the vocabulary we use, we could never describe the way we feel to a person that has never felt the same way. We could say for something that it hurts, for instance, but unless the others have felt pain, we would be useless in describing it whatever words we use. It would be like describing colours to a person, who has been blind their whole life.
What am I trying to say with all of this? It is sometimes difficult to explain ourselves to others, it is even more difficult to explain others to ourselves, but we don’t really need to. What we ought to do instead is accept and embrace differences – our own and others’, because, after all, it would be quite boring if that woman over there didn’t see the world in at least 100 million colours, wouldn’t it?
Image Sources: cancer.gov; pagely.netdna-ssl.com; pinimg.com; scienceabc.com; wordpress.com
Web Sources: bbc.com; saylordotorg.github.io; scientificamerican.com
Video Sources: youtube.com: The Neuroscience of Creativity, Perception, and Confirmation Bias | Beau Lotto; Is Your Red The Same as My Red?; How Bilingual Brains Perceive Time Differently; Why Do We Get Bored?