The most ironic thing about only wanting to believe what one sees, is that what we see is primarily tarnished by what we already believe.

The most basic error is the belief that you are seeing the truth and you know the truth because you see it. Seeing is a sense, like other senses, its hard wired through the mind and therefore influenced by the mind. Seeing, as we are talking about here, is not the action of sight but rather the interpretation of the sight.

Let me give you an amusing example. For those you watch rugby in South Africa, you will know that we have a variety of magazine shows each week where they analyse the weekend’s games and discuss the upcoming fixtures. On top of this, our tri-nations rivals, Australia and New Zealand have similar shows and we see theirs and they see ours. Now if there happens to be a big moment in a particular game from the weekend, such as a controversial referee decision, try or yellow card, all the shows will discuss it. The most laughable thing is how all the rugby experts will look at the exact same evidence, they will replay it over and over and nine times out of ten, each side of the pond will see the identical events in completely opposite ways. If a South African player got the yellow card, the South African rugby experts will say that the ref was being tough and unfair and it should not have been a yellow. The New Zealand rugby experts will say that it should have been an immediate red card and the player should be banned for life.

So why do you think this occurs? Do you think it is because one or both sides are not experienced enough to know the rules or know what is happening? Of course not, the panels that make up these magazine shows are usually famous ex-players, couches and the like so of course they know the rules, far better than any of us.

The issue, of course, is that even in the action of watching some piece of live footage and actually “seeing” it unfold in front of you, we are still unable to remove various bits of conditioning, bias and even patriotism when looking at a situation. It is neither a good nor a bad thing, it just is.

I see it every day, in almost every conversation around me, at work, at home, with friends, with colleagues, with parents, with everyone.

We like to believe that we are somehow objective and impartial but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Being genuinely objective about any situation is truly a rare feat and if was able to it, I would tell you how but since I am human, it is probably impossible to remove all the shackles of societal, cultural, religious and financial conditioning.

To a certain extent, it does in part, aid to defining who we are and makes us unique. It is part of having a definable opinion. After all, if we all saw things from an objective standpoint, we would all see things exactly the same and life would be pretty dull.

The important thing here is to try be aware of when an opinion is designed to hurt/diminish/see the failure of/degrade others or prove others wrong for the sake of making yourself look right. What is needed is more genuine, albeit different, opinion, whose value is measured by each others success.