Do You See What I See?

You may not see what I see, figuratively or literally.

Long-time subscribers may recognize some of this TBL. I used a version of it years ago when I had many thousands fewer of them. I thought the point was worth sharing again for the beginning of Advent.

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Do You Hear What I Hear?

We misunderstand the world and say that it deceives us.

 A photograph of a dress became a viral internet and global sensation in the winter of 2015. It became the “drama that divided a planet.”

The phenomenon began on the small Scottish Isle of Colonsay when a mother snapped a picture of the garment and sent it to her daughter as a potential dress to wear at the daughter’s wedding (the couple got their 15 minutes of fame, but he is now awaiting trial for trying to kill her after terrorizing her for over a decade – a classic Milkshake Duck). However, based upon the picture, there was vehement disagreement over whether the dress was blue and black or white and gold, which disagreement only became increasingly contentious as more and more people saw it and stated their perceptions of reality. 

The BuzzFeed article that launched the dress to extreme virality was visited more than 25 million times in 24 hours and spawned over 10 million tweets.

What was going on is that our brains fill in gaps in what we perceive. We don’t passively receive reality – our brains actively construct it. And different brains do so differently. Therefore, even though the dress is really blue and black, most people saw it as white and gold.

Our brains, whether operating consciously or unconsciously, are not noted for epistemic modesty. When faced with profound uncertainty, we confidently fill in the gaps in our understanding by making assumptions – sometimes bad assumptions – based on past experience (see here and here for more). And, as Daniel Kahneman warned, “We systematically underestimate the amount of uncertainty to which we’re exposed, and we are wired to underestimate the amount of uncertainty to which we are exposed.” Accordingly, “we create an illusion of the world that is much more orderly than it actually is.”

There were 4.4 million tweets about #TheDress in less than 24 hours. Esquire called it “The Single Worst Day on the Internet in 2015” (a llama chase was involved, too). Over 150 broadcast networks around the world covered the controversy. It even led to a sci-fi novel and some soft-core Harry Styles fanfic. Oh, and the dress sold out in minutes.

Among those weighing in included Taylor Swift (“It’s obviously blue and black”), Mindy Kaling (“It’s a blue and black dress. Are you f—ing kidding me”), Anna Kendrick (“If that's not White and Gold the universe is falling apart. Seriously what is happening????”), Katy Perry (white and gold), Reese Witherspoon (also white and gold), Lady Gaga (“it’s periwinkle and sand”), and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“It’s blue and brown. Period. Next?”). Kim and Kanye were a split family. I’m a Swiftie on this one.

The controversy over the dress is a perfect metaphor for the current age. We quite literally (used correctly for once) can’t agree on what we’re looking at when we’re looking at the same thing. 

Our beliefs about the way the world is may seem compelling or even self-evident, but it ain’t necessarily so. As scientists say, the threat of “overinterpretation” – thinking you know when something remains uncertain and “seeing” something that isn’t there – is a major problem. 

Our view of the world is highly intransigent. What we see, hear, and feel is strangely persistent. Even when we recognize (at least intellectually) that what we are perceiving is “wrong,” we can’t just mute our perceptions. We saunter through life convinced that we are essentially right, essentially all the time, about essentially everything.

After all, if we thought we were wrong about something, we’d change our minds, right? 

Our default status is personal omniscience. We all (begrudgingly) concede that we’re wrong about things, perhaps many things. But we can never come up with current examples. We can all recall our past selves and the many mistakes we made and crazy views we held. But that was then, this is now. 

Age is irrelevant in this context. Young people, older people, and everyone in between all recognize they had changed a lot in the past but are convinced that they will change relatively little in the future, regarding the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives. This idea applies much more broadly, too, even if some still deny it. As the literary critic Harry Levin expressed it: “The habit of equating one's age with the apogee of civilization, one’s town with the hub of the universe, one’s horizons with the limits of human awareness, is paradoxically widespread.”

When the things we see are more complex or less clear, the disagreements become greater, even when the stakes are depressingly small. As with the dress. And, since facts without interpretation are useless, when the interpretation isn’t obvious, the problems compound. Our interpretations of facts are vitally important too. Indeed, as the English poet Stevie Smith recognized, the same facts can be interpreted in diametrically opposed ways, with potentially disastrous consequences. 

Stephen Jay Gould, the celebrated 20th-century paleontologist, in his most famous work, argued persuasively that prejudiced scientists routinely allowed their social beliefs to color their data collection and analysis, especially when the scientists’ beliefs were particularly important to them. He then went on – inadvertently but conclusively – to prove his thesis in that very work. After all, as Russell Warne argues, “if you believe that the universe is made of cheese, you’re going to build a cosmic cheese whiz detector.” 

Ursula K. Le Guin’s brilliant opening line to her groundbreaking science-fiction classic, The Left Hand of Darkness, is directly on point: “I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.”

You may not see what I see, figuratively or literally.

Politics provides ready examples. For Republicans, lying to the American people is impeachable when Bill Clinton is the liar, but not when it’s Donald Trump. For Democrats, President Clinton’s ongoing and dreadful treatment of women is excusable while President Trump’s is disqualifying. There are many, many more examples.

But the problem extends far beyond politics and involves much more than mere hypocrisy. In her account of the death of democracy and the rise of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explained the attack on truth. 

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true….”

The totalitarian goal is for the masses to respond to every truth claim and every challenge to truth claims with the cynical indifference of Pilate: “What is truth?” Sadly, this outlook is all too prevalent today. The latest thinking claims traditions, elders, experts, and the “tried and true” are not to be respected or trusted. The wisdom of the age says nothing matters, that we are mere cosmic accidents doomed in a meaningless universe. Ironically, that makes us prey to fanaticisms and conspiracists of every stripe. We desperately want to matter, desires totalitarians manipulate for their own ends.

While I recognize that anything like mutual agreement on these points is impossible, here is what I see, hear, and know this Advent season.

Do you see what I see?

There is a hint of hope. Way up high in the sky. A glimmer of light. An unnamed but crucial star.

Do you hear what I hear?

I hear music. A song. Singing. Try to sing along.

Do you know what I know? 

A child is the center of the story.

Frank L. Culbertson, Jr. was the only American off the planet on September 11, 2001. He boarded the Space Shuttle Discovery for a 125-day mission on August 12. On the morning of 9.11, Culbertson called flight surgeon Steve Hart on the ground to check-in. Dr. Hart replied, “Well Frank, we’re not having a very good day down here on earth.”  

For too many of us, if we think of God speaking at all, much less speaking personally, it’s as if from a spaceship. Notice how Culbertson described his 9.11 moment. 

“About 400 miles away from New York City, I could clearly see the city. It was a perfect weather day all over the United States, and the only activity I could see was this big black column of smoke coming out of New York City, out over Long Island, and over the Atlantic. …I [saw] the second tower come down.”

Every 90-minutes the shuttle passed over the United States. Culbertson said, “Every orbit [I] kept trying to see what was happening.” Utterly impotent, all he could do was take pictures of the smoke plume.  

We tend to think of God as trying to see what is happening from a position far removed from Earth, like on a spaceship, out there somewhere. Impotent. Aloof. God seems to be silently orbiting or as the poet Malcolm Guite writes: “Our prayers just break | Against what seem like walls of silent stone.”

A view from space isn’t helpful when buildings are collapsing on people we love…or on us. Watching is not helping. It is not being there. Unlike quantum physics, watching events on earth changes nothing. We need real human touch. We need a person.   

This Christmas, as candles flicker, pushing back the darkness (barely – just barely), Christians worship a Baby-God who comes not in power but in exposed and fleshy vulnerability.  

The Christian God does not orbit our lives taking video from outer space. He runs head-long into our chaos and pain, exposing Himself to all the mess and sorrow of our lives.  

Christmas tells us the silence has been broken, the darkness rolled back, and the creator of the universe has joined our fight. This is what we proclaim on and for Christmas. It is not about a cute baby. It is about a Baby-God who comes to redeem a broken world. Emmanuel — God with us.

Listen to what I say!

“Said the king to the people everywhere, | ‘Listen to what I say! | Pray for peace, people, everywhere, | Listen to what I say! | The Child, the Child sleeping in the night | He will bring us goodness and light, | He will bring us goodness and light.’”

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Totally Worth It

Feel free to contact me via rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or on Twitter (@rpseawright) and let me know what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see changed, and what you’d add. Praise, condemnation, and feedback are always welcome.

With an average age of 78, the Rolling Stones are hitting the road again in 2024 with a 16-city tour. It is being sponsored by AARP (really).

You may hit some paywalls herein; many can be overcome here.

This is the best thing I read in the last week. The sweetest. The most terrifying. The most significant. The least surprising. I loved this. Anne Lamott on aging. RIP, Charlie Munger. RIP, Douglass North. Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Day address. A statistical puzzle: How many people do you know? McDonald’s is getting less efficient ... on purpose. What if you met your future self? The 100 greatest BBC music performances – ranked! How the mighty have fallen.

Please send me your nominations for this space to rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or via Twitter (@rpseawright).

The TBL Spotify playlist, made up of the songs featured here, now includes over 270 songs and about 19 hours of great music. I urge you to listen in, sing along, and turn up the volume. The TBL Spotify Christmas playlist is here.

My ongoing thread/music and meaning project: #SongsThatMove

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Benediction

This week’s benediction comes from Alabama Shakes (h/t Mark Newfield, whose newsletter you should read).

We live on “a hurtling planet,” the poet Rod Jellema informed us, “swung from a thread of light and saved by nothing but grace.”

To those of us prone to wander, to those who are broken, to those who flee and fight in fear – which is every last lost one of us – there is a faith that offers grace and hope. And may love have the last word. Now and forever. Amen.

As always, thanks for reading.

Issue 160 (December 1, 2023)