Seeing things…

Sometimes when I post my blog I check on Google for visually similar images. It’s easy to do you just right click on the image and pull down to ‘search Google for image’. I don’t know why I started doing this, but I find it fascinating to see what pops up. Take yesterday’s frog for instance. It’s clearly a frog so maybe you might expect Google to bring up some frogs in its check. But no, instead it considers a duck, a wobbly elephant, a naked lady, a cow, a boy in dark glasses, a red haired child walking a goat, numerous birds, waves and monsters - but no frogs.

Maybe it sees my sad soul? I don't know.

It makes me wonder about what each of us see when we look at something. Google is obviously interpreting the image in some way, filtering and interpreting the image, and basically that’s what our brains do. I’m not saying that if I see a frog you might see a cow, but I’m sure the frog that I see is different from the frog that you see. Our eyes process light slightly differently so the colours will vary, very much so if you are colour blind, and we interpret what we see based around our own experiences. I quite like frogs, so I see a cute little creature. But if you once had a frog forced down your back by a bully at school or a shit of a father proving who's boss, metaphorically speaking, the reality is far worse, then you may see a frog quite differently to the way I do.

I don’t think seeing things is quite as simple as it seems, it isn’t simply a visual thing. Witnesses who give statements to the police are proof of this. The thief was fat, thin, of average build. He was tall, short, usual height. He had blonde hair, brown hair, no hair, was wearing a hat. They all saw the same man, but each of their minds interpreted what they saw differently. They all saw the thief and know exactly what he looked like. But in reality they saw what their minds – their experience and interpretation – made them see.

It seems to me that there is no shared reality. Seeing doesn’t necessarily mean believing and what is as plain as the nose on your face often isn’t. Even if you did see it with your own eyes and as clear as day we all see a different frog, and a few of us may even see a cow. It seems that illusion is all around and the only reality we can really trust is inside us.