However, although these are tools to interpret our surroundings, they can also be obstacles in our endeavor to acquire a clearer vision of our surroundings as for example, emotion can drown reason, reason can lose its significance if it doesn’t consider emotion, our perception might deceive us, and language’s inaccuracies in describing the world might lead to deep misunderstandings.
Also, there are many reality filters such as media, moral, education, society, religion and emotion.
Even though human beings are so complex, and their behavior depends on so many things, people are often categorized and grouped… just like oranges.
Consequently, a man can be categorized by some, according to this man’s clothes, and because of that, a whole lot of assumptions are instantly made, such as the type of music this man must listen to, the political views he must have, etc. This guess of the man’s personality, is a pragmatic hasty generalization, because probably the one making the assumption knows a few people that dress in that particular way who happen to share political viewpoints and musical taste. Or even worst, one can just assume people classification by appearance is accurate because society and TV dictate it, and this would be authority worship.
Society imposes that one must have a determined personality, and that he who changes his or her behavior in the presence of different people, is a hypocrite.
The issue here lies upon the definition of the word personality. Personality according to society are predisposed behavior patterns that determine how you ought to be if you dress in a particular way, or have certain beliefs that supposedly come hand in hand with a bunch of other beliefs and behavioral aspects.
From a less black and white perspective, context is extremely important in human behavior, as for example, the way you behave with a baby is very different from the way you behave with your best friend. This involves emotional reasoning, as you would figure it would be reasonable to treat the child gently as he might be more vulnerable to complex words and rough treatment .
The human brain has many neuronal connections and it is true that there are certain routs that we normally use. Nonetheless, the fact that our brain is used to a certain neuronal rout, for example, being very quiet and polite, does not mean that it is impossible for that person to be suddenly rude or burst out yelling. This is a very basic example, but it also means that one does not have to behave in one way and no other to prove one’s personality.
Pigeon holing someone basing your belief on one thing you know about that person, reveals your own incapability of seeing beyond your limited paradigms, as you implicitly deny the existence of deepness in someone’s personality. But it is much worst to pigeon hole yourself, because you’re blindfolding yourself. You’re drawing your limits on your approach to the world itself, to learning, and to other people.
When you’re with someone, you tend to express yourself in the best way possible in order to approach that person according to his or her particular, say tune. And I don’t believe that is false or hypocrite at all, because it is a matter of a vital connection with a particular person, which is never the same with someone else.
All these society paradigms, although implicit, are followed with the most meticulous discipline by many people, in terms of what is expected of you as a member of a certain social class, as a woman, as a 17 or 45 year old, and as the overall “type” of person you are. I found that it is actually looked down upon to get along with different “types” of people, as you’re seen as a hypocrite. Through experience, I’ve noticed that if you restrict yourself to one way of thinking, one way of relating to your unchangeable circle of friends, etc, you develop very strong defense mechanisms through which you see what you want to see, your paradigms become much more difficult to break, and true learning becomes very difficult.
Learning itself is the rearrangement of our neuronal structure that changes our behavior one way or another, and the fact that we change, does not mean we’re not being faithful to our personality, or that we’re hypocrites, but, as Chesterton said: “a very popular error- having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions”.