闲人

这里亦复如是。痴者的痴见。

There is this phrase, "You're living in your own little world", sometimes used rather condescendingly. But the thing is, everyone lives in their own world. Most of the time, there is an overlap, or we assume there is an overlap, or we hang out with people who we have a considerable amount of overlap with, and this creates an illusion that how we see the world is universal, objective, and right. Maybe there is a universal, objective and right way to see the world; what I question is one's ability to see that.

There is an arrangement of atoms, or whatever units you choose, that exist. I can't throw at brick at you that somehow does not exist in your world. But the way in which we interpret these molecules are a construct. We construct our world in the ways we were taught since we were young. My senses tell me the flat white A4 sized sheet is a piece of paper, paper is used for certain things, so on so forth. And most people will know that, or at least can be convinced, that it is a sheet of paper. There is an overlap, we know that we are talking about the same thing because we have constructed this portion of our own little worlds in similar ways.

Things get messy when it comes to questions of right and wrong, good and evil. We learn our values from our parents, elders, heroes, media, peers. Pick a little bit from this because this person makes this value sound like it makes sense. Pick a little from that because if I believe otherwise I'll be less popular. Pick a little from this because that's the only way I've been taught to think about this issue. Pick a little from that because of enjoyable or painful experiences. Construct construct construct. Believing that what we know is right is right, while all it is is just a construct, created based on our experiences. And when there's conflict, we don't realize that it's because we've inevitably, through our unique experiences, created different worlds for ourselves. Instead, we believe that we live in the same world, and the other in not seeing things in the same way because their blind, or stupid, or crazy. Even if we have the same source material we might have different conclusions, let alone the fact that all of us have different source material that we've created our world from.

"You're living in your own little world". Yes, but aren't we all?