Percieving is Believing ... Knowing is Growing

I want to start off by looking at the title of this blog, “Perceiving is Believing ... Knowing is Growing”. While it is very true that the title is a run-on, cliché, and maybe even just the slightest bit corny, it is in fact, very true. Perceiving is what one person sees and computes but does not know for a fact. Perception is what we believe with a strong conviction to be true or hold for a fact even when its not. On the other hand, knowing is ones comprehension and/or understanding of facts. As an example, many people perceive that people from an affluent community are snotty and crude, but until we get to know them, we will never be sure of this for fact. Therefore, as to the second part of my title, a person can only grow when he has overcome his biases, looked into the situation, and learned the facts.

Now, there are several similarities between the two which make them hard to differentiate. Both relate to how we think and make decisions. In fact, every decision we make is based on the knowledge we have or do not have or our perception of the situation at hand. It is through our knowledge or perception that we eventually come to a conclusion and are then moved to act. As well, both knowledge and perception can be refuted. While knowledge is considered to be factual, knowledge is innocent (true) until proven guilty. Perception on the other hand, while it indeed may be right, it can also be refuted and if ones perception is wrong also proven to be wrong.

To be a little more specific, perception is humanly tainted. Perception is based upon every person’s own biases and will always remain that way until that bias is overcome with the hard cold truth. This differs very greatly from knowledge, as a person’s knowledge is factual information, backed by science, laws, or human nature. Unlike perception, one’s knowledge is unbiased and much simpler as it is right or wrong, black or white. When a parent tells their child that when they come to a problematic situation they will know what the right thing is to do, they can say this because the child will know that he has only two paths to follow: right or wrong.

As for the paradox which is perception and knowledge, one can not perceive an ideal unless he knows something before hand. An example of this, is one does not simply hate another person because he perceives that he is not good enough. He or she knows that somewhere along the line someone in his family might not have liked this other person or some other confounding factor. Very simply, our perceptions are based on parts of facts that we do not know the whole story behind, however we still know some of the background. And even if we do not know the whole story, what we do know is fact. Even the biases we have are based upon some knowledge. While it may not always seem obvious to us, we do in fact know why we do what we do. As for knowledge being first determined by perception, this is not always the case. Our perceptions can certainly evolve to become knowledge. We can first perceive something to be one way and then learn it to be another (hence knowledge), but knowledge can also arise by simply learning something new without having any original biases.

Here, my perception comes into play. Through writing what I am about to say and learning about it further, it might eventually become speculation and maybe someday even knowledge. For now, I do in fact perceive that there are different levels of knowledge. Some are in many ways superior to others. For instance, while knowing the batting statistics of every New York Yankee might be something you enjoy, it does not have a profound affect on ones life. In my opinion, knowing oneself is the ultimate knowledge any one person can attain. Through self knowledge, one can learn not only about how they work, react, think, and feel, but also how others do the same. By knowing ourselves, we can learn a lot about others and thus survive together. Also, knowing the truth is another one of the most important pieces of knowledge. If one does not know reality, one can not adjust to it and will eventually succumb to it. It is only through our knowledge that we can succeed. Hence, knowing is growing.