Vividness in the ordinary

Habits of perception aren't unique to humans. Sometimes the cost of seeing-as-usual is steep — and sometimes it's just that we missed what was there.

The Australian jewel beetle

The male Australian jewel beetle has evolved to recognize females by their dimpled, glossy, brown shells. Then humans came along and started leaving beer bottles in the desert.

The beetle's recognition system can't update. When the bottles outcompete females, the beetles die out locally. The pattern that worked is now the trap.

The feeling of not recognizing something

Here's a question to bring into the next clip: what does it feel like, in your body, when you don't recognize what you're looking at? Notice that moment. How does it relate to seeing something fresh?

There's a tendency to apply concepts immediately — to say "oh, that's a red pepper" the moment we recognize it. We do this to reduce a potentially infinite array of possibilities into something manageable. Useful. Also expensive: before you knew what you were looking at, you may have noticed more vividness, maybe even wonder.

The dial

What follows is a guided experiment from the original course. The dial below is here to help you do it. Use the play button to hear the instructions while you look around your space.

Drag the slider as your experience shifts. The number describes what you're noticing — it doesn't cause it.

Habits of perception often lead us to engage mostly conceptually. Sensory experience is the way back to the vividness obscured by the rush to understand or define.

Where this is going

Next: how concepts overlay our perception like a heads-up display. We'll spend time noticing the layer of interpretation that runs constantly underneath what we think of as direct experience.