| Nature
abhors a vacuum. Likewise your brain needs to fill in the blanks,
and it will. If the ‘facts’ aren’t available,
it’ll just make stuff up. You have to watch it, keep your
eye on this one. Most of what we know and most of what we see is
actually totally made up by our own minds.
Don’t believe me? Close your
left eye and stare at the left margin of a page of text. You are
not conscious of the large hole in your vision about 15cm to the
right of the margin. Keep staring with only your right eye and trace
a finger along the line of print from the margin to the right. You
will see the top of it disappear momentarily and as you continue
moving it, it will re-appear. This is because we have a two-millimetre
gap on the side of the retina where the optic nerve fibres collect
in a cable that connects to the brain. This is normally called the
blind spot, but this is a misnomer. If it were a blind spot we would
have a dark patch on our vision. Even a blind person sees their
darkness. It is a nothing spot. Our perception has discretely knitted
up the hole in such a clever way that we’re not aware that
it even exists. Other blanks and questions in our minds are dealt
with in the same way.
So what does all this prove? Well,
your mind does not like unanswered questions - it must have an answer
and if it can't find one in its databank it will make one up. An
example of this is if you ask yourself a question like, "why
does this always happen to me?" when something doesn't go to
plan. Your brain then searches through its databank and looks for
evidence of 'this always happens to me' and comes back with the
answer: "This always happens to you because you're a useless
idiot." Is that the right answer? Well, not exactly.... it's
a made up answer for a stupid question. Try to ask your mind better
questions instead like, "how can I stop this happening again
in the future" and you'll get a much better answer.
Now take a look at this and answer
this question: how many white dots do you see?
Don't believe what you see - your
brain makes stuff up!
If you want to see more optical illusions click
here. |
