An important factor that influences the way people perceive things that surround them is the knowledge they have acquired throughout their lives that controls their actions and thoughts. From birth, a person absorbs everything that surrounds them and this information is stored in the brain. The fundamental factors that influence our way of developing are the places and conditions in which we are raised in, since according to these main factors we begin to create our own rules that will control everything we do. For example, a child that was born in the countryside and has a rural life is used to being with animals and plants and therefore knows more about them than a child that is born in the city. In this case, if the two boys of the same age, but with different life conditions, are exposed to a wild animal, the boy from the countryside will know how to handle the situation. The boy that was born in the city will not know how to manage the animal and will probably be terrified by it because of his ignorance and lack of experience with wild animals.
Ignorance makes two people analyze the same thing in different ways. An ignorant man has barriers that prevent him from seeing beyond, while a wise man has sufficient knowledge to make connections in his brain and interpret much more than a fool. For example, when seeing a river, an ordinary person will look at its physical beauty, while a geographer will analyze each characteristic the river has and will have a lot more conclusions than an ordinary person would, because of his previous studies and personal interests. This also happens in William Blake’s quote because a fool does not concentrate or focus on things that a wise man could because it doesn’t catch his attention. Instead, the wise man might focus on specific aspects of the tree because maybe he has studied them before so he knows information about the tree.
Through the sense of sight, both the fool and the wise man see the same tree, but when the information gets to their brain, the two have their own way of interpreting what they have captured by their senses. This happens because a wise man has more previous knowledge and has a lot more past experience than a fool has. It can be said that the two people see different trees as a matter of how they interpret it because in the wise man’s brain there are a lot more links or connections between this tree and other things that have something in common with it that have already been stored in the man’s memory. The wise man knows a lot of more things so as soon as he sees something, his brain makes a lot of links between this new image and everything that he had learned on the past.
The wise man has a broader knowledge so he is more able to deceive something that a fool man cannot. These “rules” a person follows unconsciously are known as the Laws of Configuration. These are patterns that human beings tend to follow unconsciously, even though they enclose our perception by enclosing us boundaries. However, a wise man is able to be aware of these laws, realizing they are fooling him and therefore trying to avoid them. This means that both men are looking at the same things; however, different factors influence their perceptions, making them see things from a completely different point of view.
To conclude, different people see things that surround them in a different way. Personal knowledge, culture, experiences, etc are the main factors that influence the way in which each individual’s brain recreates the world inside their skulls. This recreation might be extremely different, taking them to interpret their whole worlds in a distinct way, from things that happen every day to abstract ideas to converse points of views and thoughts.
