Chapter One
THE FIRST PRACTICE
It's All Invented
A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying,
SITUATION HOPELESS STOP NO ONE WEARS SHOES
The other writes back triumphantly,
GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY STOP THEY HAVE NO SHOES
To the marketing expert who sees no shoes, all theevidence points to hopelessness. To his colleague, the same conditionspoint to abundance and possibility. Each scout comesto the scene with his own perspective; each returns telling a differenttale. Indeed, all of life comes to us in narrative form; it's a story we tell.
The roots of this phenomenon go much deeper than justattitude or personality. Experiments in neuroscience have demonstratedthat we reach an understanding of the world in roughly thissequence: first, our senses bring us selective information aboutwhat is out there; second, the brain constructs its own simulationof the sensations; and only then, third, do we have our first consciousexperience of our milieu. The world comes into our consciousnessin the form of a map already drawn, a story already told,a hypothesis, a construction of our own making.
A now-classic 1953 experiment revealed to stunned researchersthat a frog's eye is capable of perceiving only four types of phenomena:
· Clear lines of contrast
· Sudden changes in illumination
· Outlines in motion
· Curves of outlines of small, dark objects
A frog does not "see" its mother's face, it cannot appreciate a sunset,nor even the nuances of color. It "sees" only what it needs to seein order to eat and to avoid being eaten: small tasty bugs, or the suddenmovement of a stork coming in its direction. The frog's eye deliversextremely selective information to the frog's brain. The frog perceivesonly that which fits into its hardwired categories of perception.
Human eyes are selective, too, though magnitudes more complexthan those of the frog. We think we can see "everything," untilwe remember that bees make out patterns written in ultravioletlight on flowers, and owls see in the dark. The senses of everyspecies are fine-tuned to perceive information critical to their survival—dogshear sounds above our range of hearing, insects pickup molecular traces emitted from potential mates acres away.
We perceive only the sensations we are programmed to receive,and our awareness is further restricted by the fact that we recognizeonly those for which we have mental maps or categories.
The British neuropsychologist Richard Gregory wrote, "Thesenses do not give us a picture of the world directly; rather theyprovide evidence for the checking of hypotheses about what liesbefore us." And neurophysiologist Donald O. Hebb says, "The`real world' is a construct, and some of the peculiarities of scientificthought become more intelligible when this fact is recognized ...Einstein himself in 1926 told Heisenberg it was nonsense to founda theory on observable facts alone: `In reality the very opposite happens.It is theory which decides what we can observe.'"
We see a map of the world, not the world itself. But what kind ofmap is the brain inclined to draw? The answer comes from one ofthe dictates of evolution, the survival of the fittest. Fundamentally,it is a map that has to do with our very survival; it evolved to provide,as a first priority, information on immediate dangers to life andlimb, the ability to distinguish friends and foes, the wherewithal tofind food and resources and opportunities for procreation. Theworld appears to us sorted and packaged in this way, substantiallyenriched by the categories of culture we live in, by learning, and bythe meanings we form out of the unique journey each of us travels.
See how thoroughly the map and its categories govern our perception.In a famous experiment, the Me'en people of Ethiopiawere presented for the first time with photographs of people andanimals, but were unable to "read" the two-dimensional image."They felt the paper, sniffed it, crumpled it, and listened to thecrackling noise it made; they nipped off little bits and chewedthem to taste it." Yet people in our modern world easily equate thephotographic image with the object photographed—even thoughthe two resemble each other only in a very abstract sense. RecognizingPablo Picasso in a train compartment, a man inquired ofthe artist why he did not paint people "the way they really are."Picasso asked what he meant by that expression. The man openedhis wallet and took out a snapshot of his wife, saying, "That's mywife." Picasso responded, "Isn't she rather small and flat?"
For the Me'en people there were no "photographs," althoughthey lay in their hands as plain as day. They saw nothing but shinypaper. Only through the conventions of modern life do we see theimage in a photograph. As for Picasso, he was able to see the snapshotas an artifact, distinct from what it represented.
Our minds are also designed to string events into story lines,whether or not there is any connection between the parts. Indreams, we regularly weave sensations gathered from disparateparts of our lives into narratives. In full wakefulness, we producereasons for our actions that are rational, plausible, and guided bythe logic of cause and effect, whether or not these "reasons" accuratelyportray any of the real motivational forces at work. Experimentswith people who have suffered a lesion between the twohalves of the brain have shown that when the right side isprompted, say, to close a door, the left side, unaware of the experimenter'sinstruction, will produce a "reason" as to why he has justperformed the action, such as, "Oh, I felt a draft."
It is these sorts of phenomena that we are referring to when weuse the catchphrase for this chapter it's all invented. What wemean is, "It's all invented anyway, so we might as well invent astory or a framework of meaning that enhances our quality of lifeand the life of those around us."
Most people already understand that, as with cultural differences,interpretations of the world vary from individual to individualand from group to group. This understanding may persuade usthat by factoring out our own interpretations of reality, we canreach a solid truth. However, the term it's all invented points to amore fundamental notion—that it is through the evolved structuresof the brain that we perceive the world. And the mind constructs.The meanings our minds construct may be widely sharedand sustaining for us, but they may have little to do with the worlditself. Furthermore, how would we know?
Even science—which is often too simply described as anorderly process of accumulating knowledge based on previouslyacquired truths—even science relies on our capacity to adapt tonew facts by radically shifting the theoretical constructions we previouslyaccepted as truth. When we lived in a Newtonian world,we saw straight lines and forces; in an Einsteinian universe, wenoticed curved space/time, relativity, and indeterminacy. TheNewtonian view is still as valid—only now we see it as a specialcase, valid within a particular set of conditions. Each new paradigmgives us the opportunity to "see" phenomena that werebefore as invisible to us as the colors of the sunset to the frog.
To gain greater insight into what we mean by a map, a framework,or a paradigm, let's revisit the famous nine-dot puzzle, whichwill be familiar to many readers. As you may or may not know, thepuzzle asks us to join all nine dots with four straight lines, withouttaking pen from paper. If you have never seen this puzzle before,go ahead and try it ... before you turn the page!
If you have never played this game before, you will most likelyfind yourself struggling to solve the puzzle inside the space of thedots, as though the outer dots constituted the outer limit of thepuzzle. The puzzle illustrates a universal phenomenon of thehuman mind, the necessity to sort data into categories in order toperceive it. Your brain instantly classifies the nine dots as a two-dimensionalsquare. And there they rest, like nails in the coffin ofany further possibility, establishing a box with a dot in each of thefour corners, even though no box in fact exists on the page.
Nearly everybody adds that context to the instructions, nearlyeverybody hears: "Connect the dots with four straight lines withouttaking pen from paper, within the square formed by the outer dots."And within that framework, there is no solution. If, however, wewere to amend the original set of instructions by adding the phase,"Feel free to use the whole sheet of paper," it is likely that a new possibilitywould suddenly appear to you.
It might seem that the space outside the dots was crying out,"Hey, bring some lines out here!"
The frames our minds create define—and confine—what weperceive to be possible. Every problem, every dilemma, every deadend we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable insidea particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or createanother frame around the data, and problems vanish, while newopportunities appear.
This practice we refer to by the catchphrase, it's all invented, isthe most fundamental of all the practices we present in this book.When you bring to mind it's all invented, you remember that it'sall a story you tell-not just some of it, but all of it. And remember,too, that every story you tell is founded on a network of hiddenassumptions. If you learn to notice and distinguish these stories,you will be able to break through the barriers of any "box" thatcontains unwanted conditions and create other conditions or narrativesthat support the life you envision for yourself and thosearound you. We do not mean that you can just make anything upand have it magically appear. We mean that you can shift theframework to one whose underlying assumptions allow for theconditions you desire. Let your thoughts and actions spring fromthe new framework and see what happens.
THE PRACTICE
A simple way to practice it's all invented is to ask yourself this question:
What assumption am I making,
That I'm not aware I'm making,
That gives me what I see?
And when you have an answer to that question, ask yourselfthis one:
What might I now invent,
That I haven't yet invented,
That would give me other choices?
And then you can invent spaces, like the paper surrounding thenine dots, where four lines can do the work of five.
We now move on to the second practice, which entails inventinga new universe to live in, a universe of possibility.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Art of Possibilityby Rosamund Stone Zander Copyright © 2002 by Rosamund Stone Zander. Excerpted by permission.
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