Today we’re talking about a super important topic, one that can really change for the better how you see things and how you understand yourself.

There are two key insights that we’re going to cover today. The first one is that you only experience a finite part of objective reality, of all the possible input that you could receive, of all possible human experiences.

And the second one is that your psychology is so unique and so powerful that it basically puts a particular slant or filter on all of the input that you receive, on the particular life that you live.

If you combine these two insights, this in short is why we all live in our own little world. But we’re going to dive into a deeper look at why this is true. In doing so, we’re going to cover a lot of crucial aspects of human psychology.

What is the Standard Paradigm?

When I say the standard paradigm, I just mean our common view of how we see the world and what the world is in relation to us.

The standard paradigm is that the world exists in a certain way. We might have different opinions about the world, but the world just is as it is.

So when someone disagrees with your worldview, you think that they are simply wrong. It’s not that the world is different for them, but really you two are experiencing the same world and they’re just holding the erroneous view. You have the right view, they have the wrong view, and the underlying reality is the same.

Another part of the standard paradigm is that people basically desire the same things and deviations of this are rare. And when people do deviate, they’re usually crazy in some way or have some kind of fault in their personality.

Another common view is that we are all the same. You know, aren’t we ultimately all the same? We want the same things, we all value the same things. We just want to be happy. We just want to have a family and be comfortable, have a stable life.

Equating everyone to each other like this can seem noble and lofty, but actually it’s very misleading and very disempowering in terms of understanding other people and understanding yourself.

So that’s the standard paradigm: thinking that the world just is a certain way and that though we have slight deviations in how we see the world, there is one world and we should all see it the same way.

The standard paradigm is very self-centered because you basically see everyone as yourself and then you judge everyone according to your own psychology.

And if someone happens not to see as you do, then you condemn them, you don’t understand them, and you make an enemy out of them. That’s usually how it goes.

Because the world just is a certain way, right?

What is True About It?

Now you might have guessed that I don’t agree with the standard paradigm and that is true, but let me talk about what is true about the standard paradigm.

The fact is that there is an objective world with properties that apply to all of us. For example, the sky is blue for all of us. Obviously when it’s cloudy, we don’t see that, but the sky is fundamentally blue.

The grass is green. You can debate that the grass is drier in some countries. But grass is still green, when it’s fully allowed to grow.

It’s the year 2024. Objects fall downwards, not upwards. Your body has certain needs that you need to satisfy, otherwise you’re not going to be alive very quickly.

These basic facts of life apply to us all. That is objective. It’s part of objective reality.

And the standard paradigm is also true because our realities do crisscross. Otherwise you wouldn’t be seeing the video right now. You have access to the internet, and so do I, along with millions of other people.

So we do interact with an objective reality. There is no doubt about that. Our lives aren’t just one giant subjective soup as some will try to convince you. I really don’t think that’s true.

And there is a lot of structure behind our worldviews and how we interpret things. It’s not just completely random or completely subjective. You can look at them as, again, particular slants on the raw information that we pick up from our reality.

And in that sense, they are based on objective reality and we do share them with others. They also fall into certain categories and exhibit patterns and there are very good reasons why that happens.

So the standard paradigm does have a certain truth to it, but it also falls radically short of explaining how our psychology works.

In the next post, we’ll look at the major flaws in the standard paradigm.