We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, consumed by self.  Quite obviously, we are always in our own company and, therefore, cannot help but place ourselves first in our own worlds.  It is inescapable.  The world at large, or macro-world, is an amalgam of the billions of individual, or micro-worlds, of which it is comprised.

The English poet, John Donne, stated “No man is an island…”  And yet, in a sense, every person is an island – not in terms of complete independence from others, but rather in terms of total dependence upon self.  Nowhere is that dependence more critical than in the area of perception, for through perception we view, order, and generally make sense of the macro-world and micro-worlds surrounding our own.

The data from which our perceptions are formed is gleaned via the senses, the five portals for data recovery about which we all learned in elementary school, as well as that indefinable sixth sense that we intuitively understand ourselves to possess.  While data encompassing images and messages of infinite variety exists in the macro-world, we each depend upon our micro-world for its processing.

For those of us fortunate enough to have sight and the ability to distinguish color, we all have the capacity to see and identify the color “red.”  How “red” looks to anyone other than myself, however, is a complete mystery to me – likewise, all images, sounds, and other stimuli.  As evidence that images appear different to different people, I ask a simple question.  Have you ever seen a house painted a particular color and wondered to yourself how anyone could possibly consider it to be appealing?

If true of images, it is likely accurate that all external stimuli are defined by the perceptions of individuals.  Is not “beauty in the eye of the beholder?”   And so, the macro-world, far from being objective reality, is simply an extension of the individual micro-world that observes and perceives it.

Of course, it well may be that the perceptions of many or most individuals are either the same or substantially similar.  In that case, the macro-world, or portions of it, would represent a consensus of reality rather than an objective reality.

Since subjectivity seems to rule all micro-worlds as well as the macro-world constructs of each, can we truly know anyone or anything objectively?  If so, in the lyrics popularized by the band Chicago, “does anyone really know what time it is?”

And, do you see the baby in the picture atop this article?