Part 1 For several years now I have been puzzling over an aspect of human behavior, and I think I have finally found the key, and in one word, it is “volleyball”. Well, okay. I’ll explain. I have found it interesting how two different people can be presented with the same facts, or both witness the same event, or consider the same person, and yet come away with two totally different “takes” on what happened, etc. For example, I can state the name “Sarah Palin” and you immediately know what I mean. “Barack Obama” might be another one. Some people love them, and some hate them. Or the fact that there are astrophysicists that believe in evolution, and astrophysicists who believe in creationism. A great example currently is the whole Ferguson episode with the man that was shot by a police officer. How is it that normal, rationale people can have such divergent opinions of what happened using the same facts? So, what about volleyball? After I finished coaching volleyball a number of years ago, I then refereed high school volleyball for a couple more years. One thing became amazingly clear in a very short time. During the actual match, I was the ONLY one in the building that could see what really happened at the net and make the proper call. Why? Because I didn’t care anything about who one the match (you might want to write that sentence down). Everyone else in the gym cared about one team or the other winning, and what happened is it became difficult, at least on close calls, to not have their view of what had happened colored by their desire to see their team win. This was further illustrated to me in that during that couple of years while I was refereeing, one afternoon I watched the USA men’s team play another team in the Olympics on TV. I remember so clearly the referee making a call against the USA and I jumped out of my chair yelling profanities and other undesirable things. But then when they showed the replay, by golly, he had made the right call and I was wrong. Why? Because now I cared about the game and was no longer very able to see things as clearly. So here is our challenge. As we observe the people and happenings and issues swirling around us, to at least be aware that we have a propensity to see things in a way that aligns with our current beliefs. I’m not sure we can completely become objective in all cases and still be human, but maybe having this highlighted in our conciousness (however you spell conciousness) may give us a better chance to have reality thinking. Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow or sometime after right now…..
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 19:07:52 +0000