Day #672 - Filters

Lenses, and Ambiguity

We project our expectation onto things: our anticipation of how good a film, or a party, will be, our anticipation of how a person, or system, will treat us, our hope of how a change, or challenge, will pan out.

We are not neutral observers of our systems, but rather participants within them. The body of our historic experience, alongside the lenses and filters of our cultural and intellectual makeup, all colour our picture.

Often these things are implicit: we do not even realise that we hold them, or are using them, and hence our surprise when our expectations are not matched by harsh reality.

This is important when it comes to holding ambiguity, which represents a general breakdown of cause and effect, or our ability to predict from precedent.

Use your sixty seconds today to catch a glimpse of a filter, or lens, that you hold.

These may be simple things: I am university educated, so my lived experience is of that reality, and hence I tend to filter my diagnostics through that lens. I can rely on water coming from the tap when I turn it on. I generally walk to the shops without fear of being mugged. These are all my lived experiences, but they are not universal truths.

Making the ‘implicit’ into something more ‘explicit’ is a useful part of our leadership. And a reminder not to generalise from our individual experience, into a systemic prediction.