Our body has a number of similar filtering systems in place.
The mouth will immediately spit something out that is unbearably hot, the nose has little hairs to filter out unwanted particles, the skin experiences pain as a warning signal when exposed to that which is harmful and our ears filter out sounds in certain ranges. Without any conscious effort on our part, the body is constantly attempting to filter out that which is harmful or toxic.
Mind chatter is a mental filter which can often block out an experience. The brain, too, often filters out trauma, only allowing it to resurface at a time when the individual is able to deal with it. Very convenient and handy feature of our human system 2.02.
At the same time, on a subconscious level, our egos filter our experience, cultures have membership filters, and all these filters give rise to perspectives and worldviews which may keep us limited and “small”. We see things as we want them to be or as we are socially conditioned to see them. Life is viewed through these filters and accepted in this form as the only reality.
Technology is full of filters. For example, when you go onto a website to purchase a book, there are filters in place which note where you are from, what books you have purchased before and what subjects you have shown an interest in. These filters enable the site to recommend similar books and thus have the power to influence your buying.
Until we become aware of them - an analogy these days would be taking off our 3D glasses as we exit the movie theatre - these filters remain in the subconscious, affecting how we feel about things and giving rise to various emotions.
Imagined boundaries separate us from others and from ourselves.
“Boundary” has up until now perhaps been the most appropriate word to discuss the imagined separations that need to be overcome as growth takes place, barriers are broken down and more and more of the Universe is included in one’s embrace.
I have a suspicion though that, with the current emphasis being placed on relationships and processes as the collective “we” comes to the fore our focus will change from an awareness of “boundary” issues to an awareness of “filter”.
Time and distance are no longer barriers to communication. Space is becoming more spacious as it were. At the same time, space is becoming smaller as we have friends instantly connected virtually anywhere in the world. (Much of the work I do is with people in Prague, Czech Republic…and it’s almost like they’re here…)
Information is easily accessible. Almost overwhelmingly so, at least in my case. What news RSS feed to check first? I really have to devote some effort to managing it all. Our current technology has ushered in a time where more than ever before we are conscious of the need to filter out certain information if our balance is to be maintained. So much is coming at us that one cannot possibly click on every link, listen to every video or read every article. There is so much one can “tune into” that discernment is necessary if one is to listen properly and not be all over the place. Without this discernment, information overload is difficult to avoid.
Open sharing is on the increase, in ways people had not really experienced before. Yesterday there was a fascinating article on the psychology of social networking that I reposted on my FaceBook page. Information has been set free as it were, except in certain countries where social media is being threatened by the blocks or filters on certain websites.
Technology is in a sense is making us reconcile what before we might have considered total opposites. Cultures are meeting and different perspectives on the same topic are becoming readily available. Another way of putting this is that we’re connecting. That’s a very powerful tool we can use to change and expand our filters.
Will Wright, the Sims creator writes, “If you actually look at the amount of data coming in through all your senses, there’s something like 100 million bits of information coming in every second through your visual system and another 10 million bits coming through your auditory system and another one million bits coming through your tactile system.”
There is a cry going out for an effective filtering tool, similar to what the News page on FaceBook tries to do - a means to cope with the stresses of sensory overload, information overload and even emotional overload.
At the same time we need to open ourselves to be more without filters. The wonderful paradox is that both these processes need to be happening at the same time!
The time has come for filters to be consciously chosen.
Whereas technology has removed many of the filters put there without our doing, we now have to put our own filters in place to protect ourselves and expose ourselves. That is the marvelous two way function of a filter. It allows some things entry while preventing others things from getting through.
We have to learn how to establish effective, healty filters. I was shocked (or at least really surprised) at a story on Google News today about a new movement to the Far Left in Texas schools. The only effective work I can do with filters, requires that I know all, or at least as many as possible, of my options and evaluate which ones work best for me. Cultural indoctrination doesn’t work, no matter what the political bent it comes from
There is also a great interest being shown of late in mindfulness as a tool to enable one to be present without filters so that necessary filters can be put in place.
In a sense we have “come full circle”, or let us rather say, we have spiraled above where we started. In a sense we are in another Eden where once again the wisdom of the serpent is required to offer us knowledge of ourselves and of the particular nature of what we filter as good or evil.
Language limits. In its present form it is very suited to linear, three dimensionality. Nouns dominate our current sentence structure with the duality of subject and object. You might be amazed how much this structure effects our worldview of how things “are”.
As many perspectives are simultaneously held and moved beyond, and subject and object begin to be more commonly recognized as being two halves of a common, connected or - sensed as being one, verbs are often more appropriate ways of expressing the reality being experienced.
In which case instead of “filters”, “filtering” will become perhaps the apt term. Not all that different than “Friending” on FaceBook. I’m only sad that in so many schools across the nation, and now Texas – will more closely and ideologically regulate the filters used by young people to see the amazing world at large. The world just got smaller in Texas.
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