To make matters worse, just as we are unable to test out multiple future scenarios, the belief in 20/20 hindsight is a myth -- and a seductive one at that. No matter how earnestly we search our psyches, we are subject to our own revisionist histories. From a neuropsychological perspective, our brains are designed to make our stories complete, whether the story is accurate or not. And a complete story that makes sense to us will always feel “right”. Believe me, I know what it feels like to have the strength of one’s convictions that one knows, without a doubt that they have clear sight, both forward and backward. I’m an oldest daughter with Greek blood in my veins. You don’t have to tell me about conviction. But the strength of conviction does not increase the validity of a perception.
How you form your perceptions is a physiological, neuropsychological phenomenon. If you see a round line drawing, looking like a circle with the exception of a gap just before the ends meet, your mind will see a complete circle. We expect the arc to continue all 360 degrees once we see the trend. We think we know the story of the line and the story is "circle". We don't expect the missing gap to jut out like a pointy party hat. We do the same thing with our personal histories, the stories of our lives. We fill in gaps and weave together memories into narratives that make sense to us, often including our own perspectives on the motivations and thoughts of those who act upon us. Our brains conveniently discard information that is inconsistent with the storyline it has chosen, much as we like to think we are objective.
The same thing happens in relationships. When you've been in a relationship for a long time it is easy to believe you know what your partner will say once they start a sentence and sometimes even before. You see a twitch of the eyebrow and you say, "I know what you are thinking." It's a brain thing. We all do it. We do it when we imagine the course of conversations or arguments we are anticipating having and we do it when we look back and try to understand how life got to be the way it is for us. What's the alternative? To reinvent the world anew every day by assuming that everything is unpredictable? We can't do it. We will always see patterns and once we see them, we start to plan around them. They provide a sense of structure in our lives.
So, if our ability to predict the future as well as our memories of the past are both flawed, why the dogged pursuit of insight and understanding?
Article comments