[MD] Remembering our filters

[plattholden at gmail.com]

All:

"Writing history is largely a matter of what filters you use. Different-
coloured filters bring out different patterns. For most recent chroniclers 
and analysts of the Anglo-Americanization of the world in the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries, the filters used have been those that show up 
the "imperialism" of the process. The most startling novelty of James 
Belich´s Replenishing the Earth: The settler revolution and the rise of the 
Anglo-world is that it scarcely mentions imperialism at all, except to 
marginalize it."

Thus begins a book review in the UK TImes, bringing to mind the 
emphasis Pirsig put on static filters that color our interpretations of 
experience. You'll recall his anecdote about the Cleveland Harbor Effect 
where while sailing he had closely followed a chart and ended up in a 
harbor that he thought wasn't Cleveland but was. He explained:

"Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static filter, 
an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not fit. 
Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing." (Lila, 26)

Of all the many insights Pirsig had this is probably the hardest to 
swallow. Yet, when you stop to think about it, how true. We see what 
we're looking for. Those filtering glasses we all wear convince us that we  
know what we're talking about even when the preponderance of 
evidence shows us to be wrong. (Even the evidence we allow to bear on 
an issue is filtered first.)

I think this is one reason why Pirsig encourages us to not to seek  
absolute truth (though such may exist) but instead view truth like 
paintings in an art gallery, choosing  those of value "with the knowledge 
that if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken 
provisionally; as useful until something better comes along."

He is saying in effect, "Remember your filters."

I'm reminded of my favorite Ben Franklin saying: "So convenient a thing 
it is to be a rational creature, since it enables us to find or make a 
reason for everything one has a mind to do."

Otherwise known as "spin." Even reason conspires to keep our static 
filters rigidly in place. 

But, lest we get carried away, our filters to a large extent define who we 
are. Doing away with them would change us so much as to render us 
unrecognizable. Divorce would shortly follow. 

Anyway, it helps to reminded once in awhile that our filters are like 
ignored bodily parts -- they go where we go.

The Times article can be found at:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls
/article6845826.ece 

Regards,
Platt,