Several different sets of people I email with have lately raised the issue of who really perceives reality. Someone may question someone else's mental competence (ability to perceive the world "accurately") or question someone else's ways of living or how they choose to spend their time as reflective of too-small a segment of ordinary life to give that someone an accurate picture of what "reality" really is for the "ordinary" person. Others find that abstract intellectual constructs don't match the lived experience they are observing, and they have no ways to connect the two.
(Wrongly) I have usually smugly believed that I had a pretty good handle on ordinary experience through my daily encounters with regular folks in my prior job. After a single day in the country, I am not so sure now. I can't repair the simplest thing (e.g. my bike) and I am too out-of-shape to handle the constant physical labor involved in many "ordinary" jobs. Come disaster, I would be toast: no one will be calling for people who can theorize post-socialism!
It seems to me that the cognitive failure to understand other modes of lived experience is the biggest barrier to really having equality or equal opportunity or even justice. As long as people say, "This is how _I_ live, therefore this is reality: thus others should live like this," we will have people asking, "well, why didn't the poor blacks in New Orleans just get in their cars and drive out when they were told to?" Empathy (and thus action) requires understanding, not just pity or sympathy.
Posted by otto0114 at September 18, 2005 12:33 PM