2040's Ideas and Innovations Newsletter, Issue 39: Is Perception Everything?

Your Perception Defines Your Reality

What is Reality?

Your Perception Defines Your Reality

Some say that we live in a simulation. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Matrix popularized ideas long held by some physicists and game theorists. Some say that we will be living in a parallel reality, a metaverse dramatized by Ender’s Game, Belle and Ready Player One, to mention only three pop culture narratives. There are plenty of thinkers and philosophers who believe that reality is how you perceive it; beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. So, what does any of this have to do with running an organization? A lot.

Perception Isn’t Universal

According to Christina Catenacci, ethics professor, “Perception is the process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions to give meaning to their environment. What one perceives can be substantially different from what another person perceives, and both can be very different than the actual objective reality. In fact, behavior is based on one’s …