The more integrated we are in society, the higher position our sense of morality occupies within the hierarchy of our self-perception. Being per se our signature under the contract with our community, our morality has the supreme power to elevate or sink any circumstance in our perception of the environment. The people from that poor neighborhood (chapter IV.1.) – no matter what their count was – would have acted differently, were their sense of morality strong enough to put the gangsters’ crime at the top of their personal perception of the environment.

The opposite relation, though, is also valid: the perturbations in our perception of the environment can significantly influence the position of our morality in our self-perception hierarchy. As Karl Marx has said, people’s “social being determines their consciousness”. Once our self-preservation drive is triggered due to misfortunes, we are more willing to abandon some of the behavioral codes comprising our morality. Since we often blame the community – or a certain part of it – for the situation we have gotten into (our turned-negative perception of the environment), we are willing to take action against it in order to restore our previous status. Therefore we secure ourselves with a selective morality, justifying our deeds as necessary and right. Deprived from some of its “ingredients” our “old” community-oriented morality becomes a hollow form, a feeble circumstance in our self-projection hierarchy, which guides us only when we have to shield our new life philosophy from the others, and preserve the authority we have in front of them.

The phenomenon of disintegrating morality into separate parts is the closest we can get to introduce its very essence. The behavioral codes mentioned above are nothing more (or less) than separate circumstances constituting our sense of morals. Morality is not a monolithic term; it is an entirely new conglomerate of circumstances within the conglomerate of circumstances forming our self-perception. These circumstances are also bound in a dynamic relationship; they fight for supremacy too. You don’t have to go far to find an instance. “Honor your father and your mother” and “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife” are the first two frequently clashing notions that come to mind. Both are crucial parts of our moral system, occupying a very high position in its hierarchy. Yet, often some of us have to choose between them, obeying one and inevitably neglecting the other.

When Steven got kicked out of his job he barely suspected the scale of rough luck that had overtaken him. He still had his investments, his resume and his professional knowledge, all of which were impressive enough to keep him optimistic. He took his time fiddling around for a while, and only when his wife started talking about the impossibility of booking the same vacation package as last year’s,  he started shopping for a new job…

It is November already, and Steven is still unemployed. Long gone are the yacht, the mountain cabin and the plans for two week leisure time in Aspen. Since no one has taken interest in him, neither his experience nor his professional knowledge as an engineer seem so solid anymore. Then there are the investments, which have been almost completely wiped out by the general economic downfall. Feeling the uncomfortable tickle of panic Steven starts calling long forgotten classmates and colleagues from his first jobs whom until recently he used to consider completely out of his life. After the first three awkward sentences of reminding them who he is he asks for any job opportunity they might have to offer. Several of his acquaintances agree to meet him. With some of them he has to stay late at night enduring their drinking and their sleazy sex memories; to others he should do some small personal favors like writing an article about their achievements or introducing them to his influential friends… Of course, Steven wouldn’t humiliate himself with any of these chores if he weren’t in a dire, hopeless situation. But the worst part of his job-seeking nightmare starts when he has to give some insider information from the database of his former company. The friend who asks for it promises that Steven will be hired by the end of the fourth quarter. As for the information, he claims that this is an innocent inquiry conducted for purely statistic purposes. A desperate Steven continues to provide the guy with information well into the first quarter of the next year.

Pressed by the circumstances Steven has gone far beyond what his morality normally would allow him to do. Yet, he doesn’t feel guilty. His self-preservation drive has come up with a version of his morality according to which his new behavior seems totally acceptable. This version contains behavioral codes like “You shall not commit adultery”, but completely omits the immediately following “You shall not steal”, farcically substituting it with, say, “showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

A perception of the environment topped by negative circumstances always suggests leaning to a self-centered individual morality, because our self-preservation drive is put on the alert. The more permanent the negative circumstances in our perception of the environment are, the more inveterate our egotistic morality would be. The loss of the job can seem to blow up our world, but usually this is a temporary situation. It doesn’t stay as our top outer circumstance forever. One day we come back to our senses and to the larger picture of our life. But if our upbringing is accompanied by ceaseless threats and punishment we inevitably start viewing the environment as something evil. Unfortunately, due to the strength of the first impression on an innocent soul we can be haunted by this notion forever. As a consequence we completely reject the community morality; to us it is a system of restrictive codes, whose acknowledgment means nothing but humiliating obedience. Instead, we develop an alternative, self-preserving morality that could last much longer than those temporary downturns in our morality caused by crises later in our lives. This is why smart parents educate their children by means of persuasion (as opposed to compulsion), thus appealing to their self-projection. They do everything to kindle the children’s instinct for socializing, which turns following community morality into a natural part of the self-expression of the youngsters. In their little minds the common interest ceases to compete with their own, and what to others looks like encroachment on individuality, to them becomes a rewarding experience.

As for adults, morality is independent of all outer cataclysms and occupies an immutable high position only in the self-perception of people who have “the general idea” (chapter IV.4.). Driven by high ideals and principles, they have the guts to face their own role and responsibility in the negative turn of their lives.

There is a very strong interdependence between self-projection and self-preservation (chapter II.2.). Every incoming bit of outer information activates one of these drives and disables the other. The moral codes we have to follow are not an exception of this rule. Depending on its essence , every incorporeal, spiritual demand which community imposes on its members, from manners to political ideology to religion, either “clicks” with our self-projection and mutes our self-preservation, or limits our self-projection, thus triggering our self-preservation. The results form two completely opposite trends. Self-projection produces individual morality that connects with the community; the groups which the person joins are not antagonistic but an integral part of a larger society; this individual believes in common morality and enriches its power through her own contributions. When triggered, self-preservation alienates the person from her community; even when its moral values happen to be worthy, once imposed by force they are met with mistrust and are never embraced; her individual morality defines itself mainly through the extent to which it opposes the larger morality of the community.

Developing and following a sense of morality in accordance to the commonly acknowledged values of humanity as a whole is an investment, the dividends from which arrive only if we don’t expect them. If we do, we violate the very core of morality. Being the reason for thinking and behaving unselfishly, morality takes its revenge when we start playing around with it and adjusting it to our own ends. Remember King Lear?

© 2010 Peter Budevski

A very common deviation from the harmonious model of individual moral development is the opposite syndrome to the one described in the previous chapter: that of the deflated ego. It occurs simply because in the process of discovering our convergence with the rest of humanity we lose the grounds for our sense of uniqueness; we feel disappointed, defenseless, as well as overwhelmed by having to compete with everyone else. Why do I have to participate in this stupid sack race, instead of just enjoying the birthday cake? Why should I keep kicking the piñata, since Carl is stronger and will smash it in a single hit, making my efforts look ridiculous? Why did I have to come to this party at all?! I’ll definitely skip the next one!

The drop of self-confidence, of course, can happen at any stage of our lives, due to any series of unfortunate events. The result is losing (or not being able to build at all) what Anton Chekhov calls “the general idea”. We stop trusting our judgment, which makes us pliant to random outer influences. We start floating around like a boat without sails. Chekhov’s description concludes the grim scenario: “When a man has not in him what is loftier and mightier than all external impressions, a bad cold is really enough to upset his equilibrium and make him begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog howling in every sound.”

If not cured on time, the fear of “a bad cold” triggers our self-preservation drive, and we develop a defensive moral position devoted entirely to justify our isolation. This means, of course, front-loading our perception of the environment with non-existent negative (malicious) circumstances (chapter III.4.). We fear and hate the others, and our self-projection gets entangled in planning irrelevant and ungrounded actions against them.

Shortly after returning from boot camp Andrew goes back to continue his military training. In six months he is sent overseas. He gets a discharge two years later when his daughter is almost three. He finally marries his girlfriend, and the young family moves to the big city where Andrew finds a job as a salesperson. They live together for less than half a year. Both of them have changed, and no one is able to restore the harmony between them, let alone revive the passion, which brought them together in their teens. Taking the child with her, Andrew’s wife returns to her mother. Andrew is left alone. He knows that his military service has changed him. Yet he feels that he has become more responsible, more organized and more reliable than the boy he was just a couple of years ago. That’s why he doesn’t have any explanation on this sudden turn of events, except that the world has turned against him, after all the sacrifices he has made for the people he loved.

After getting into several fights with his customers Andrew gets fired. In another couple of months even his former fellow-soldiers can’t recognize him. His occasional drinking and smoking weed turns into a regular habit, and he cuts off almost all of his ties with his past. His new contacts are the occasional encounters with some other lost souls in the near-by bar.

Certainly, this is just the initial swing of the pendulum. Unless clinically unsocial, a human needs the company of other humans. We are herd animals, and actually to remain in a position of isolation is not the choice which most of us would make. Sooner or later we get involved in a certain community, and before we know it we appropriate its collective view on life, and its morality (Harry’s story). The general motive here is to restore the balance (equilibrium) between our self-perception and our perception of the environment. This is a very common process, and it goes through the following stages:
1. The community that accepts us becomes a leading circumstance of our perception of the environment.
2. The positive nature of this circumstance (again, chapter III.4.) induces a change in our self-perception. Since we strive to deserve the right to be part of a community, which we view as a remedy to our low self-esteem, we attempt to prove our merits. Our self-projecting drive is revived, and a positive circumstance takes the lead in our self-perception hierarchy.
3. We restore our self-confidence, which bonds us even more to our new group. Our new morality has little to do with what we believed in before.

The great Heinrich Heine has the perfect description of this kind of union:
Seldom did we know each other,
Seldom were you understood;
But our souls soon came together
When we met in filth and mud.
In other words, our morality crawls out of the self-preservation lair and climbs back onto the self-projection ladder, working on strengthening the bond with the new community.

It is uncertain if Andrew will find a social circle relevant to his potential. If he remains bitter to the world, the more plausible scenario is that he will start fiercely reversing his life, consciously going against the principles that have guided him before. People, who have fallen in the trap of self-pity and its twin sister -hatred to the world, are the ones who form, among others, religious sects. Sects are typical examples of communities, which help their members by just claiming spiritual superiority over the rest of humanity. It is not on accident that we often use the word “sect” when describing a group of people united in a non-productive way. What the founders of these groups rely on is that the self-projection of people who are hurt or rejected by life is very pliable, able to be harnessed in antagonistic and hostile ventures.

The most graphic examples of choosing a community out of desperation or spiritual impasse are related – as one can imagine – to the most vulnerable members of humanity – children. The very first example that comes to mind at the beginning of the 21-st century is the child soldiers in Liberia, Sudan and Congo. In the least dramatic scenario these kids have grown up feeling desperate and without the most basic means for survival. They must have felt lucky to be saved from starvation, but what has turned them into the most loyal (and cruel) soldiers is the restoration of their dignity by entrusting them with a mission. With self-projection on the rise due to a clear new direction, their self-perception becomes inextricably bound up with their new community. Without any other outer influence the terribly twisted equilibrium between their self-perception and perception of the environment gets stronger and stronger, turning them into some of the most tragic symbols of our modern world.

On a larger scale, the sad effects of this kind of human integration are to be viewed everywhere. All philosophical theories, ideologies, doctrines, policies or behavioral patterns that in some way or another divide humanity are the results of the efforts of people or groups who feel threatened by others. It is amazing how many justifications mankind has come up with to excuse these divisions! Yet all of them can be traced to self-preservation. The power of the mob is founded on the force of terribly insecure people, whose moral development has stopped at a certain premature stage. On every stop there are others who share the same insufficiency. It’s just a matter of time and place for them to meet each other, and before long, the group is formed. Now they can go back to where the thundering train of humanity passes and scream out their right to exist. Not that anybody threatens them – but still… there might be owls disguised among those birds!

© 2010 Peter Budevski

We all cultivate the ability to distinguish “right” from “wrong”. It develops along with our growing up. As we get older, our interaction with the environment becomes more and more complex, enriching our knowledge about both the outer world and ourselves. The first accession of this knowledge is our self-awareness. At a certain early stage of our lives we discover that we are just an entity among many others, and that the world exists independently of us. Together with viewing ourselves as subjects of influence over the environment (our primary self-perception), we sensibly start perceiving ourselves also as objects of its power. Our sense of exclusiveness crashes, which jump-starts the process of identifying ourselves with the others. The circle closes, stirring in us the crucial notion of social interdependence and reciprocity. We grasp that our best behavioral choice is to do to others what we want them to do to us, and to not do to others what we don’t want done to us. This notion becomes a very important circumstance in our self-perception. It gives us the key to living in harmony with the environment. Gradually it evolves beyond our own interest, and becomes a lens through which we clearly see the true shape of any human act. This is when we can claim to have developed a sense of morality bordering on terms like responsibility, fairness, justice, and integrity, thus gaining our position of trustworthiness in the eyes of others.

Unfortunately, this whole development doesn’t reach its completion with every human being. Our maturing is often accompanied by factors detrimental to the formation of a personal morality, which can be proudly exposed to the world.

Generally, the “stumbling” occurs as we retain the sense of our entitlement to more rights over the environment than anyone else. This sediment dilutes our judgment on any moral issue since we give ourselves an unfair advantage over the rest of our community. The conflict here emerges from the need to put the common interest above our own – a requirement which we view as an encroachment on our individuality. Why should I care about waiting for the others to sit around the table, since I’m so hungry? Why do I have to hold hands with the rest of the family in a prayer before the meal, since my soup is getting cold? And why must I hold the spoon this way, and not that way, since that way is a lot more convenient? (Certainly, these examples regard more specific aspects of individual obligations to the community like behaving oneself, sharing spiritual rituals and demonstrating good manners, but at the end all of these boil down to the fundamental category of morality.)

If not cleared on time, the path to an objective, community-oriented morality gets completely clogged, and our development is redirected towards the creation of a self-serving morality, which will be harmful to us in the long run. When our self-projecting drive includes circumstances that neglect the interest of others, our self-projection is in constant danger of being opposed and stopped.

19-year old Andrew has been a prize student and graduates high school with a gold medal. He is also a great pitcher, and helped make his baseball team a regional champion. On top of that Andrew is handsome and enjoys the attention of every girl in town. He excels his friends in almost everything, which gives him a well-founded sense of superiority. He enjoys life, and feeling mature for his age, wants to grab more from it without delay.

Three months after his graduation he moves out with his girlfriend, despite the fact that she is still in high school, not to mention the fierce opposition from his parents and her divorced mother. After another couple of months just as their summer savings and credit cards get drained, she becomes pregnant. Andrew is too proud to ask for any help from his parents, but since he is still in no position to take care of two more people, he accepts the fact that his girlfriend must move back with her mom.

He continues to avoid any talk of marriage and keeps praying for two things: his parents to unblock his college fund, and a quick win at the fantasy baseball he plays online. Things get pretty rough when his father visits him and makes it clear that his support will take place after Andrew takes responsibility for the girl and his future child. Pressed by the circumstances Andrew makes the decision to enlist in the army. He does this more to hurt his mother and to play the victim than to achieve a stable, long-term solution for himself and the people dependent on him. Yet nobody stops him, and so Andrew has to pack his bags and jump into the unknown.

His final day in town he spends at his girlfriend’s home. It is all kisses, tears and assurances of eternal love. The next morning a tense, and a little over self-confident Andrew enters the boot camp. But the last thing the drill instructors want to see in any new recruit is excessive self-confidence. The jokes which Andrew cracks to the others during the introductory briefing don’t help either. For the next nine weeks Andrew is subjected to all the outrages known from the folklore of basic army training. For instance, he must check on the condition of his chemical gear by putting it on a little too often and running a mile or so in rugged terrain, and after that leave it behind while in the gas chamber, where he has to test his resistance to the tear gas by singing the Star Spangled Banner in a loud voice.

Having demonstrated his sense of superiority, or independence, from the very beginning, he receives little support from the others. This whole attitude stuns Andrew who so far has received only admiration or, in the worst case, friendly envy. One word in particular sticks into his head: “arrogant”, repeatedly screamed at him by one of his sergeants.

Probably it is too early for Andrew to reassess what drives him into this kind of situations. After all, the boot camp lasts for just a little over two months. He has his hometown, his friends, and the prospect of a two-year active duty contract, which would secure his future. Yet, having had those unexpected and – to a certain extent – painful encounters, he returns to his town with a calmer, if not wiser outlook on himself and the people around him. He calls his parents and sets up a meeting with them, for the first time without accusing them of anything, or expecting any offers for financial support. He still has his life in his hands.
 
The problem with having a self-serving morality is that it often leads us to decisions, which we have to pay for long after we have abandoned it. Failed trust can’t be easily reversed. Isolation imposed by others is not removed without proof that reform has taken place. Even if we demonstrate skills or knowledge of extreme value to the community, we still face the risk of being rejected. Common principles are more important than the potential benefit from one’s contribution to the cause. The exceptions only confirm the rule. Like the one made by the citizens of Venice who entrusted the defense of their city to a moor, despite his perjurious conquest of its most beautiful and virtuous daughter – Desdemona.

© 2009 Peter Budevski

In order to truly start belonging to a community it is not enough to adjust our actions to its morality. If we don’t go beyond this stage, we will be justifiably considered conformists – not fought off, but not respected either. Since morality determines the very identity of any social group, community always makes sure to “implant” its morality not only into our perception of the environment, but into our self-perception as well, and from a very early age at that. This means that if we intend to be embraced by our fellow community members we have to embrace their morality first, turning it into our own.One of the most important conclusions humans have come up with along their path to forming alliances is that by letting community morality become a fixture of our self-perception, we stop viewing it as an outer circumstance which we always have to take into consideration; we acknowledge it as an inseparable part of our own nature and view its affirmation as another way of self-enhancement. We turn into our community’s deeply convinced defenders, thus reinforcing its power. This is the way every community, big or small, works. It accepts in the fold only those who have turned its morality into an important inner circumstance of their own.

The most visible proof are the oaths which we are supposed to take when it comes to being accepted into certain communities – a new homeland, a new religion, a new fraternity, brotherhood, or, for that matter, when we get married or assume elected office. Even though they are nothing more than overt declarations of personal subjection to the morality of the group we are joining, events like these make the most solemn moments in the life of the group. They underline the fact that individuals willingly embrace the community’s moral principles, thus celebrating its significance and influence.

But the real oath is our changed or improved behavior, which reveals a way of thinking relevant to the moral codes of the group we have striven to conjoin. The group is always hungry for proof, and through our actions we continuously feed that need. For most of us there isn’t a single reward bigger than acceptance. Eager for more of it, we spend virtually our whole lives trying to determine the right moral vibe of our surroundings and turn it into our own. Sometimes we spend years in planning to join a certain community. Sometimes we suddenly find one or feel the urge to join another. Sometimes we become threatened by expulsion from our own community, which reinforces our self-improvement efforts. All in all, our underlying effort is to make the community believe that we are – or will be – its best moral ensigns.

Harry wants to become a painter. Succumbing to the pressure from the rest of the family, his father invites a friend of his, a professor in architecture at the local university, who goes carefully through Harry’s sketchbook. After encouraging the teenager, the professor is invited to the back yard where he and Harry’s father start chatting about the good old times. Ten minutes later, attracted by the lowered voices, Harry overhears the professor’s real opinion about his talent – “Joe, I’m really sorry to say that, but your son won’t become a great painter…” This turns Harry’s world upside down. Drawing has been his dream since he was seven, and now his life seems totally empty and meaningless. For the next month he experiences the worst crisis of his young life. He shuts himself up, almost stops eating and spends the days staring at the reflection of his pale face in his room’s window.

Then he meets his neighbor, who he has a crush on. The only thing that used to scare him about her and prevented him from inviting her to the movies was that she was a Goth. Harry didn’t get those guys, and felt uneasy in their presence.  But now… now it’s different. “Wow, look at you”, exclaims the girl, “You totally look like one of us!” Harry laughs the remark off, but then starts asking her about her friends. In a couple of weeks Harry already has his black clothes, his black and white makeup, his chains and metal accessories; he starts following his neighbor like a puppy, learning about Goth and experiencing the double joy of being close to her and getting accepted by a group of people who don’t give a damn about his talent, or the lack of one. But not only this has made his new community attractive. He likes the Goth concept of the depressed artist, misunderstood by the world and withdrawn into himself. This stereotype is very close to him right now. He can’t care less about their tattoos, graveyards, their music or self-cutting. But he learns how to go through all these things, because that’s what the group is about, and he dreads the possibility of not being admitted into it. Within less than a month Harry starts a collection of Type O Negative, secretly throws away his jeans and most of his t-shirts, and even makes two cuts on his underarm, which he carefully covers when being around his parents. He also avoids sunlight and doesn’t smile.

Harry accepts the philosophy of the community he wants to belong to, and turns this philosophy into his own. Even though the overall logic behind Goth is not even a little bit close to what he really likes or enjoys, he embraces the culture with his whole being; he knows that otherwise he will be expelled and this time the humiliation won’t occur in the solitary darkness of the hall leading to the back yard.

The treasured reward of acceptance is so powerful that it can work on our nature like a biscuit on a dog: when promised, it might make us do (and believe in) anything without even questioning. History provides us with numerous examples of this pattern. The civilized world was shocked by the horrible criminal enterprises of the Nazis and astounded by the fact that so many Germans were capable of taking part in them. This phenomenon was least related to some national peculiarity. For many fear wasn’t a factor either. It was the individual self-perception disciplined to embrace as its own the general moral outline of the time – that of the revival of the great German nation. From that point everything that followed was a consequence of this decision. On a macro-level Nazism and communism might have been the global geo-political monsters of the last century, but they haven’t fallen from the sky; their occurrence was due to the eagerness of many, many poor and uneducated people to be accepted into a strong, victorious community, no matter to what degree they had to sacrifice their personal morality.

© 2009 Peter Budevski

As we start consciously comprehending our surroundings they respond by imposing a demand on how we should perceive them. This demand focuses on a certain circumstance with which we are supposed to crown our perception of the environment. Like a powerful yet cunning horde our surroundings use a whole variety of fighting strategies – from straightforward attacks to deceitful tricks – to push this circumstance closer to the top position of our outer hierarchy. As if the very existence of our community depends on this particular circumstance – this is how actively the world tries to “sell” this circumstance to us… The world is right. The circumstance is called morality.

Several years ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine who used to be an eco-activist. She told me the unholy story about a poor neighborhood where some members of a local gang snared unattended pets, severely torturing and killing them at the end. They were doing all this for fun. My friend, like any normal person, was appalled over the whole story, as well as by the apparent indifference of the police. But she was especially furious that this horror had been taking place for months without anyone from the community stepping up and doing something about it. “Well, there probably weren’t enough people,” I said, referring to the fact that this part of the city was inhabited by older folks… As if they were supposed to put up a battle with the gangsters. Her answer went beyond commenting on my sheepishness: “There are always enough people!” It was a little late for me to back up, but that no longer mattered. I was struck by the unexpected yet undeniable wisdom of her last sentence. What she said was that the strength of any community was to be counted not by the number of its bayonets, but by the moral imperatives which drive the people belonging to it. Later in the day, alone, I kept going back to what my friend had said. Why was I so impressed with that short sentence? It almost sounded like a movie quote. Suddenly it dawned on me: what she gave was a definition of success, on a collective as well as on a personal level. The history of mankind has never been a mathematical aggregation of factors; nor have been human survival or development. There have existed species stronger and physically fitter than us. But humanity gave birth and growth to something unique: morality.

Morality has served as every person’s pass into his or her community. It became the obligatory vaccination at the entrance, keeping the human community immune to contamination from any of its members, and thus guaranteeing its progress. There are many important personal qualities which influence how a community will treat you; but the possession of only one of them can turn you into a leader, and the lack of only one of them can lead you to punishment. In both cases this quality is morality. That is why no matter how this strange unwritten system of behavioral codes has changed through the ages, no matter how extremely diverse it is nowadays, morality is, and will always be, a significant, crucial circumstance in everyone’s perception of the environment.

We know quite well that every action we perform is being judged by the community. In order to get a judgment that works to our advantage we work very hard on improving our perception of the community’s moral standing. Through contact with others, through stories witnessed, heard or read, and through various cultural encounters we assess the overall moral medium in which we live. We apply this knowledge to our decision making process, turning it into a very important “adviser” on the pros and cons of our future actions. Our experience grows to teach us that morality is the law everybody abides by, the gate everyone has to go through, the social contract which makes all people predictable in both their actions and reactions. That is why, once we grasp how much we need our community, we willingly sign this contract, and carefully monitor our own behavior in accordance to it.

Pretty Sheila is having problems with the owner of the cafe she works in. It’s Friday afternoon, and her friend has just called her with the news of a really important audition starting in an hour or so. It’s a killer role, and Sheila feels that the part can be hers. But she is stuck behind the counter, with no one to cover for the rest of her shift. She calls the other two guys working there to come to her rescue, but after having done this several times over the last weeks both of them say they are busy. The owner flatly refuses to let her leave early. She knows that it’ll be slow and the old fool (who will stick around anyway) can make the few lattes for the stray late afternoon lay-abouts. But for him things don’t look the same: she has to stay no matter what compelling reasons she might have for leaving. After arriving late for a dozen shifts and not showing up for two more, she has to decide if she wants the job at all…

Things had been quite different for pretty Sheila before she moved out of her hometown three months ago. Ever since she discovered at the age of eight her vocation to be an actress she has been enjoying the status of a starlet. Her friends envied her talent silently and obeyed her whims heartily; her teachers made exception after exception about her absences from school so that she could keep taking part in the local monthly TV show; and her father simply melted when she sang for the family guests at the home parties. Nobody was surprised when after high school her parents supported her move to the big city where she continued to pursue her acting dream. She just had to earn her pocket money… This makes her think twice before abandoning herself to the impulse of throwing her apron in the owner’s face and quitting. Now she tries to calmly gauge the pros and cons of her situation, taking into additional consideration the easy work, and, well, all the useful connections she makes in the café… Finally she decides to forget about the audition, put that magnificent smile on her face and work on mending fences with the old idiot.

What Sheila is doing is not only accepting the rules of her new workplace. She is embracing the communal morality stretching far beyond the crew of the café and its owner. Having stepped into a completely unknown social circle she reveals that every new conquest has a new toll that goes with it. From now on pretty Sheila can also call herself smart for having referred to the notion of morality in her perception of the environment and allowing it to influence her behavior. Her cell phone is already ringing with the news of another great audition, this time scheduled for her day off.

The morality of any society on any level grows with the experience generations gain and pass to the next. It is an asset of mankind shaped and developed by the majority of people having lived on the face of the Earth. Every social contributor has paid their share in the formation of the morality of their time. This is why the community is so demanding of its new members, who are charged with keeping alive the flame kindled by their predecessors.

© 2009 Peter Budevski

Facts originating from the environment swarm on us every single moment of our lives. Wherever we go, whatever we do, objective reality challenges us with its countless, ever changing characteristics. Many of them (like air temperature or gravity) we have to conform with due to our nature; with others (like the social rules imposed on us) we deal because of our dependence on the community.

However, most of the facts that constitute our surroundings are not forced on us in any way, thus forming a huge pool of potential circumstances we can choose from in building our perception of the environment. How do we do that? What determines the choice of outer circumstances we decide to act upon, as well as their arrangement in terms of importance? And in what way do these circumstances influence our self-perception?

Let’s say that I’m entering a guest room in my friend’s country house where I’m about to spend the next few days. I have never been in this room before. Once I open the door I hear the sounds of a piano wafting through the open window. At the same time I see a beautiful painting hanging on the wall. I also feel the heavy golden door handle which I’m still holding. These are three random facts that may or may not get my full attention. If I’m a music buff I would definitely stop and listen to the music, maybe even try to guess its composer. If I love fine arts I might be more interested in the painting, walking around it to find the best point of view and avoid the reflection of the lamp. But if I am a handyman of some kind I would hardly listen to the music or look at the piece; my attention would be absorbed by the original door handle that I haven’t seen anywhere else before. These three versions of my behavior form three different perceptions of the environment at this very moment, because of the different circumstances my actions would be influenced by. Further on, each of these three choices determining my behavior would be a product of a different self-perception: that of a music fan, a fine arts admirer, or a handyman.

Things might become a little more complicated if I enter the room with the burden of some already existing (preliminary) outer circumstance: since my train has arrived late my friend’s whole family is already waiting for me around the dinner table, which requires that I just throw my luggage in the wardrobe and run back downstairs to join them. Whether I would do that, or spend some time in awe in front of the masterpiece I have been dreaming of for several years now, depends on my self-perception as before, but this time it has to redefine itself first; it has to go through the struggle for predominance between the two currently leading inner circumstances: the necessity to be respectful (to the kindness of the family), and the urge to satisfy my artistic curiosity (for the painting). It is the outcome of this inner fight which would allow my self-perception to sustain its role as the ultimate decision-maker on which fact of the environment to grant more importance to. In other words, as I’m being presented with two equally important facts by the environment, I can act only after I have an idea of their arrangement as circumstances in my perception of the environment; in order to achieve that I first have to refer to my self-perception to come up with a clear arrangement of its circumstances. (On its end, my self-perception would evolve based on the outcome of my actions: the feedback of the results of my behavior would either rebut or reaffirm my inner hierarchy – chapter II.2.)

Throughout our lives our self-perception is not always presented with such simple cases. Environment often serves us with overwhelmingly contradictory facts that have the potential, if not to paralyze our activity, at least to make our behavior inefficient and inadequate for quite a long time.

Keith is about to finish successfully his first year as a student in agricultural engineering. He has put a lot of effort into his studies not only because he likes the college and his major; he knows how proud that would make his father. Working in a farm his whole life the old man has saved enough money to send his son to one of the best schools in this part of the country. But what makes Keith especially grateful is that his dad didn’t retire even when they found out about his heart condition. The doctors recommended a long rest, but the hard working farmer never changed his routine. All he wanted was to see Keith become an educated person, and this kept him up and running until the boy (and his bank account) was ready for college.

It is in the big city where the ingenuous Keith meets the girl of his dreams. She used to study in the same college as him but her love for music has put her education on hold. Now she is the solo singer in an all male band. Keith has never had a serious girlfriend before. Bearing his small-town inner insecurities, he still cannot fully grasp why she likes him in the first place. She is talented, smart and beautiful, and he, well-built as he is, is too far from leveling up with her in any way. Yet they have been together for seven months already, and she is nice to him most of the time. As an artistic person, she still has her emotional downturns, but within several hours and after a few plates thrown at the wall the harmony between them is always restored. Secretly Keith can’t wait to bring her home and proudly introduce her to his parents. In order to get closer to her he even takes a low-paying job in the bar where her band performs every other night. He is responsible for setting up the sound equipment and fixing the lights for the show. This puts a little more pressure on his studies, especially since the end of the semester is already around the corner, but, hey, he is young and strong, and the nights are long enough for his tests’ preparation.

Today’s news is that his girlfriend’s band has been hired for a two month tour around the state, which everybody considers a great opportunity for their artistic careers. Intoxicated with happiness the whole group bursts into Keith’s dorm room asking him to come with them to serve as the priceless tech hand he has been so far. Initially joining them in their excitement Keith suddenly realizes that the venture coincides in time with his annual examinations. Having in mind his plans for the future, as well as his father’s contribution to it, Keith’s response is that his involvement in the tour is, unfortunately, totally out of the question. Only after witnessing his girlfriend’s reaction does he fathom what he has just said. In a desperate attempt to prevent their obviously impending break-up he runs after her down the street and harnesses his whole eloquence to explain the real meaning of his words. Within three minutes he swears to help her and her friends, whatever that might cost him.

What Keith is experiencing is the “older-than-life” dilemma between two major inner circumstances: love and family. A self-perception problem of this scale cannot be solved overnight. In the face of what he has to sacrifice: the love of his life or the love (and maybe the life) of his father, he is stalled beyond his ability to find a compromise. In any case, whatever outer circumstance he chooses to go along with – the tour or his exams, it will have a ravaging impact on his life. Inevitably, the scars of his choice will stay with him for a long, long time…

If we transfer this phenomenon to the realm of art, one might say that it is our inability to set up our inner priorities in the wake of a complicated outer situation that constitutes drama as a performing arts genre. It’s not accidental that the cast of a play for the last two thousand years has been called “dramatis personae”. People come to the theatre or the movies not for the who-did-what story; what attracts them and makes their experience really unforgettable is the inner movement of the characters, their choices within a devastatingly complicated world. Why otherwise would “Hamlet” still be considered the play of the plays more than four centuries after its creation? Almost until the very end of the plot the main character does little to change the world around him. Yet his name is a byword for inner activity, whose scale comes the closest in literature to explaining the epic, even tragic conflict that can occur in our self-perception due to the overwhelming outer circumstances. It’s a shame that its solution goes often beyond our powers.

© 2009 Peter Budevski

Since we know and feel every day how heavily our survival depends on the environment, we try to turn it into a friendly place. Establishing harmony with the environment is the life goal of every one of us; it is our super-objective. Yet our constant efforts to improve it are not the result of a rational, purely utilitarian mindset. The need to influence the environment is embedded deeply in our nature, and finds its strength from the instinct for self-projection.

That is why we create an idea for an environment which will require and welcome our development. Justified or not, this is the biggest and most powerful stimulus which drives us in our conquest. No matter what the sulkiest croaker says about himself, hope is the feeling everyone wakes up in the morning with, even if it is founded in some distant, obscure, or even non-existent reality. We always try our best to relate the reality of our dreams to the current world. We look for outer circumstances which are in harmony with ourselves, and arrange them carefully at the top of the hierarchy of circumstances, which constitute our perception of the surroundings we live in.

On the other hand the environment often serves us with impediments. From a very early age we have the notion that no matter how strongly we wish our environment to be perfect, we must constantly stay aware of the circumstances standing in our way. Inevitably, these circumstances also become part of our perception of the environment, put there by our self-preservation drive. They constantly compete with the favorable circumstances around us, and their place in our outer hierarchy depends on how surmountable we measure them.

This makes our perception of the environment a repetition of our self-perception, which is constituted by circumstances of both self-projection and self-preservation nature (chapter II.2.). Our perception of the environment is similarly built by two dynamically interacting strings of circumstances, which we view as respectively auspicious and malicious.

Usually it is in our power to choose which one of these two hierarchies to “feed” with additional outer facts. In other words, since everything around us is relative, it is mostly up to us to decide whether the glass is half full or half empty. However, if too many facts coming from the outer world are negative, they can create a significant imbalance in our perception of the environment. In this case their effect upon us is multiplied in a mathematical progression, i.e. they influence us more strongly than their simple summing up suggests. This phenomenon could be called the swarming effect. A swarm is always stronger than the mathematical total of the power of each of its members. In some other cases it takes just one powerful negative fact to achieve similar damage on us. Its destructive efficiency is concealed in the effect of contamination: the strongly malevolent circumstance charges other outer facts with extraordinary negativity, multiplying its devastating impact on our inner stability.

The swarming effect, as well as the effect of contamination are also valid in case of accretion of positive outer circumstances. Often several auspicious occurrences in a row, or an oversized positive experience can overpower the troubling facts surrounding us, and weaken their ability to become influential circumstances.

Five years into her life as a divorcee Cindy is feeling worse than ever. Long gone is the relief of getting rid of her abusive husband, as well as the excitement of starting her life anew. At forty-seven her chances of being discovered by the man of her dreams – whoever that might be – seem more distant than ever. Her daughter’s presence in her life, which she has always considered a blessing, doesn’t help. The kid is already a teenager, with a schedule becoming more and more active with every coming month, which further deprives her mom of the little privacy and free time she has had since the divorce.

But does Cindy need any free time at all? Except for two old girlfriends she doesn’t have anyone in particular to share her time with. Her online dating strains hardly lead to anything, and the all-men’s parties at her house accumulate a bunch of regulars who are either married or aren’t worthy of her female attention. The tension from her private life starts flowing into her job relationships. For the last two months three customers of the travel agency where she works have complained about her attitude. Recently she also catches herself commenting disapprovingly on her daughter’s first boyfriend whom she initially claimed to like; this stirs a logical tension into the mother-daughter relationship.

These days Cindy feels like she is living in a world full of hostility. She is already afraid to make any effort outside of her limited daily routine knowing it could easily lead to a new failure – big or small.

Unfortunately she is right. Her established pattern of interpreting the surrounding facts makes her interaction with them sore and inefficient. Cindy’s case is a typical example of how a certain powerful fact which one perceives as negative – the absence of a partner – can contaminate with negativity other unrelated facts and throw the person in the whirlpool of low self-esteem and desperation. At this point of her life only a powerful new fact from the environment can prevent Cindy from continuing her spiral down towards more and more unhappy encounters. It could be the sudden appearance of her prince – whoever that might be – on one of her boring all-men’s soirées, or a big win at the lottery, or a spiritual experience on her long trip organized by her travel agency to promote a new destination. Whatever that fact is, if it is strong enough it will cause the same contamination effect that brought her here in the first place. The only difference is, it will take the reverse direction. This could turn things around to such an extent that Cindy might suddenly become charming again, kind and caring for her customers, loving the time spent with her old girlfriends and even liking the boy her daughter is in love with.

Our inner balance depends on the proportion of auspicious and malicious outer circumstances, which has a direct impact on our self-perception. On its turn our self-perception chooses among the outer facts the ones on which to load positive or negative meaning, and turn into auspicious or respectively malicious circumstances. Our inner stability resembles the atom, whose energy “independence” occurs when the number of positively charged particles, the protons (the benevolent outer circumstances) matches exactly the number of the negatively charged ones, the electrons (the malevolent outer circumstances). If one of these two groups dominates, we become ions – electrically charged atoms; like them we start being selective in our bonding, losing the freedom to move and stay independent of our moods or biases.

© 2009 Peter Budevski

A circumstance in itself is a fact, which exerts a certain influence on our action. Any fact, constituting any reality (present, past or imaginary) can become a circumstance to our current action, i.e. a part of our perception of the environment.

Facts which have remained in our memory can be extremely powerful circumstances. How does this work? Our memory stores certain facts for us because at the time of their occurrence they related in one way or another to our self-perception. A certain situation (combination of circumstances) coming from the outside can trigger our sense memory or create associations which might cause the reemergence of the fact from our past and transform it into a circumstance, influencing our action. This fact might have never disappeared as a circumstance from our perception of the environment; yet its place in the overall hierarchy has been dependent on the importance of the “competing” circumstances, and might change with time.

A couple of months after the unfortunate event in his girlfriend’s apartment (chapter III.2.) Mike and his buddies Ken and Fred are sipping their cocktails on the second floor of the town bar. Suddenly, after a heated debate downstairs, a fight erupts. Upstairs, a frightened silence falls over the tables. Everybody looks tensely at each other, not knowing what to do. For each of the three young friends the situation is slightly different though. Ken doesn’t seem to even notice what’s going on. He’s having a good time, and there’s absolutely no reason for him to stop what he’s doing. Being six and a half feet tall and over 270 pounds, he doesn’t have to worry – he can handle any gadfly who dares to bother his party. Obviously, for Ken the fight is just a fact, which doesn’t relate to any of the circumstances of his self-perception, hence it doesn’t become an outer circumstance. Fred, who is also a well-built guy, doesn’t look so calm. Being a jiu-jitsu fighter, he shouldn’t have a reason to feel threatened either, yet the noises from downstairs seemingly distract him. He fidgets in his chair, his hands nervously tapping the table. Fred’s perception of the environment has turned the fact of the fight into a circumstance. His self-perception includes the understanding that it is his human duty to intervene and pacify every violent situation he becomes a witness to. In fact, this inner circumstance is part of his code of honor… But it is not him who suddenly jumps from his seat and rushes downstairs. That’s actually Mike, who, short and slim as he is, should be the last of the three to itch for a beating. As we already know, he is not a fighter, and the only sport he has ever been involved in was… well, chess. Why would someone like him risk his good health to intervene in a fight for no apparent reason? What is the inner circumstance that has outweighed the estimation of his insufficient physical strength (the natural and most relevant circumstance to top his self-perception at this moment)?

Maybe we should look for another outer circumstance (the trigger) – the one that not only shoots the fight to a top position in Mike’s perception of the environment, but even turns it into an event, so that he interrupts his chat and runs to the fight scene. What if among the scared and stunned visitors on the second floor, at a table in the corner there sits his former girlfriend with another guy? Since the breakup she has barely talked to him, and at first he suffered miserably. Later he let himself getting engulfed in his half-term session, and after that intentionally started to take more extracurricular assignments than required. All this, together with the prolonged hours at the gym exhausted him enough so that he had almost no time and energy to think and whine about the love he lost. Life was starting getting back on track. But today her showing up in the bar with a male companion withal plays a bad joke on Mike. The whole excruciating pain from before overtakes him again, this time even more severe and unrelenting. In a flash he grasps how much she means to him, and how pathetic his attempts to get over the love of his life have been. The two outer circumstances – her presence in the bar and the exploding fight – mix up in Mike’s head in an almost fatal combination, which changes significantly his self-perception. His self-protection is completely outrun by his long procrastinated self-projection – to an extent close to hysteria. Why otherwise would the reasonable awareness of his physical insufficiency be substituted in his inner hierarchy by the burning necessity to jump in the middle of a fighting scene where he can be very seriously injured?

Mike sees the scuffle not as a danger, but as an opportunity to show the courage he lacked before so that he can redeem himself, and hopefully get his girlfriend back. The determinant cause for this extreme behavior is, of course, his girlfriend’s absence from his life. It has been losing strength for quite a while, giving way to other circumstances in Mike’s perception of the environment and gradually turning into a mere fact from his past. It takes only the accidental encounter in the bar to completely change everything, to wind this circumstance back in its priority position and throw Mike into a totally alien and reckless behavior.

Facts that are non-existent in reality could work in a similar way. The most obvious examples are the ones we create due to ill understanding of our environment. A whole range of reasons could drive us to the wrong conclusions about it, from simple misunderstandings to prejudices to unsolved inner conflicts and complexes (chapter II.5.). Imaginary facts of this kind become circumstances in our perception of the environment more often than it seems at first glance. They could also be more harmful than an innocent daydream that makes us feel better, or the amusement park rides whose fake worlds charge us with real emotions. From the husband falsely convinced of his wife’s affair to the racists and xenophobes who see other humans as bearers of negative and dangerous qualities, mankind has greatly suffered from its imagination. On the other hand, of course, there is art and especially religion which have fed humanity with imaginary facts for ages. Throughout history for many, many people, these facts have become important, sometimes even crucial circumstances.

© 2009 Peter Budevski

Our perception of the environment is strongly individual due to our individual self-perception. The subjective arrangement of the circumstances in it is a result of our inborn inclinations, qualities and preferences, on one hand, and our experience, on the other.

Many of the differences among us in terms of the way we digest the environment derive directly from our genes. We like things that are often disliked by others because our natural tastes, unlike theirs, make these things attractive to us, and vice versa. But we also adore or fear other things because our memory has stored the information of how sweet and attractive, or respectively how unpleasant and dangerous to us personally such things can be; we plunge into or avoid different ventures to a different extent than others, because our conscious assessment of our own strengths or weaknesses is different than theirs. This is how our self-knowledge, which combines our innate tastes and our experience, determines the degree of significance we grant to the various circumstances of the outer world. Therefore, from the hierarchy of these circumstances, which is visible through our behavior, one can judge our self-perception.

Mike and his girlfriend are studying for a college test in her apartment. It is late in the afternoon when they hear the slam of the front door. A couple of seconds later the teenage brother of Mike’s girlfriend appears in the living room. He is crying and rambling something that no one can understand. After a while it becomes clear that three older boys have just apprehended him in front of the building, slapped him several times across the face and taken away the twenty bucks he had in his pocket. Obviously now the boy isn’t as much scared as he is humiliated. His adolescent pride and dignity has just been unscrupulously violated, and his sister starts worrying that this threatens to turn his whole fragile world upside down. That’s why her whole attention turns to Mike, as the Man in the situation. But his reaction is nothing like what she expects. After a few more questions and a long silence, instead of jumping from his seat and darting outside to deal with the gangsters, he goes back to his notebook. His girlfriend is angry and disappointed. After taking care of her brother she barely says a word until Mike leaves. Less than a week later she breaks up with him.

Of course, she knows that Mike isn’t a bodybuilder. She knows that especially when she is present Mike feels uncomfortable around strong muscular guys, and she guesses that he is pretty sensitive about his short stature. But she also believed that he loved her, and has naturally admitted looking after her to be one of his top priorities. Now she understands how wrong she has been. As it turns out Mike’s self-perception has the circumstance “I’m unable to fight and I dread fighting” on a higher position than “I love her and I would do anything for her”. Probably these two inner circumstances have never had to compete with each other before, so the result must be a total surprise not only to Mike’s girlfriend, but also to Mike himself. The interesting part is that Mike’s girlfriend is able to grasp the real Mike (or his true self-perception) by revealing his perception of the environment in a critical moment: since he obviously chooses the circumstance of the upcoming college test over the circumstance of the incident, the latter is obviously not so important, which obviously means that everything related to her, as dramatic as it may be, is not so important, hence she herself is not so important to Mike! Which girl would stay in a relationship after having made these conclusions?

Our self-perception is visible through every single choice we make from among the circumstances of the environment. Even within the smallest, most insignificant situation one can distinguish a part of our inner essence. The genius of Konstantin Stanislavski discovered this interrelation more than a century ago. His famous Method of physical actions is based on this notion. It affirms that the inner life of the character with its most subtle nuances can be experienced by the actor and revealed to the audience by building up a precise score of his/her physical behavior. Why? Our physicality is a demonstration of the individual preferences we have towards the circumstances that constitute the environment. By observing our physical life one can gain a clear impression of our preferences – the hierarchy in which we arrange the outer circumstances. Since our perception of the environment (or hierarchy of outer circumstances) is interlocked with our self-perception (chapter I.1.), the physical actions we perform reveal our inner life in all its complexity.

Let’s take a look at the simplest physical action from our everyday life: our gait. The way we walk is not just a display of our physicality; it is molded by our psychology as well. The proof can often be found in the weird way we keep balance, or the pattern of “decorating” our walk with all kinds of unnecessary movements that go beyond what Mother Nature requires from us. These “additions” are a direct result of the way we perceive the environment, and speak volumes about our self-perception.

The first and most obvious sign of our inner life comes from our body posture: it indicates, even to an unprejudiced eye, whether our self-perception is topped by a self-projection or a self-preservation circumstance. People who are driven by the urge to project themselves are not shy of revealing how their body functions; they openly enjoy their physicality. The impression some of them give is as if they walk on air. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who hate or fear their surrounding world. They often have their shoulders slumped forward, or their chest is sunken, or the palms of their hands are turned backwards. Their whole posture indicates discomfort; their body looks like being pulled systematically down towards the ground.

Once we set off the careful observer would reveal even more about us: from the indications of which segments of the environment we perceive as important he could successfully guess on the specific circumstances that crown our self-perception. The young girl who passes the crowded open space restaurant with an alluring swagger obviously considers the world a place filled with men appreciative of female beauty; hence one of the important circumstances of her self-perception is her seductive appeal. The lawyer who thrusts himself forward even while shopping with his wife obviously views humanity as members of a stupid jury who need intrusion into their physical space in order to return to their senses; his self-perception is dominated by the circumstance of his persuasion weakness. The stumbling doorman at night who raises the blood pressure of every late arrival to the building by walking slowly to unlock the front door obviously wants to underline his importance and reinforce his authority in a world that passes him by with indifference; his self-perception is being consistently eroded by the inner circumstance of his own insignificance.

A famous instance on the role of the external traits as a bridge to the inner essence of a character is Stanislavski’s description of his work on the part of Dr. Stockman from Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People”:
“On their own accord my second and third fingers used to stretch forward for more persuasiveness – as if to implant into the interlocutor’s very soul my emotions, words and thoughts. All these needs and habits appeared instinctively, unconsciously. Where did they come from? Later on I accidentally revealed their origin: several years after Stockman’s creation, at a meeting in Berlin, in a scientist I had known from before I recognized my fingers from Stockman.” (“My Life in Art”)

© 2009 Peter Budevski

Perception of the environment is the way we view and understand our surroundings. It is the other half (next to self-perception) of our general view on reality. In its essence it reflects the importance that we grant to the various parts of the world we live in. Streaming through the attitudes in our behavior, it is an extremely powerful indicator of our individuality.

Our perception of the environment is visible through every single act we perform. Take a look at a house built by its owner. From its appearance you can tell a lot about how he perceives the area he lives in, i.e. his immediate physical environment. First there is the local weather. What does he like or dislike about it? Does the house have a roof, or it is crowned with a flat terrace; are its windows small, with wooden shutters, or they are wide and tall; is the front door big and heavy, or there’s just a light glass framework in front of you? All of these architectural elements are designed, apart from the style, to interact with the facts of the environment to the best interest of the inhabitants.  Because of this interaction those facts turn into circumstances. The steep roof would prevent the snow from settling on top of the house (circumstance #1); the shuttered windows could be a protection from the strong wind (circumstance #2); the dark paint on the outside probably serves to keep the scarce warmth coming from the sun inside during the winter (circumstance #3)…

But the weather is just a separate feature of the environment. The house has plenty of adjustments that speak even more about the individual’s perception of his surroundings. The many locks on the thick door are an obvious safeguard from thieves (circumstance #4); the tall wall fencing the garden prevents the invasion of wild animals (circumstance #5); and the amulet above the gate chases away the evil spirits (circumstance #6)…

Through further observation you can come up with dozens of other outer facts the person in charge has decided to deal with. Some of them he has tried to avoid, others, to strengthen, so that he can get the best out of the environment. In both cases the facts turn into circumstances, because they have influenced, in this particular case, the design of the house, or, in other words, the direction of the owner’s action of building a home. This is exactly how our perception of the environment operates. We constantly evaluate the facts surrounding us, and work on overcoming or using them, thus transforming them into circumstances. These circumstances join a hierarchy of other ones and arrange themselves in correspondence to their importance. The more important the circumstance, the better its chance of receiving more of our attention and to influence our actions.

Even though some circumstances could be equally essential to many people (all houses in the area have sheer roofs), the judgment of a circumstance in terms of its significance is strictly subjective. If our homeowner was obsessed with earthquakes more than the weight of the snow on his roof, he would have planned and budgeted the additional supporting pillars first, and only after that, if there were some money left, would he consider the steep roof. Also, it doesn’t matter if the fact one deals with is commonly acknowledged or not; evil spirits might have a more significant presence in somebody’s hierarchy than, say, robbers.

Like our self-perception, the perception of the environment is constructed by circumstances, arranged in a certain subjective hierarchy of significance. This gradation doesn’t include the facts from our surroundings that don’t concern us; it doesn’t include the facts that we instinctively connect with either. It regards only the circumstances with which we consciously communicate, or in other words, about which we make conscious choices. Air, for instance, is one of the most important facts of the outer world; but since we breathe by instinct, in an everyday situation it definitely doesn’t have anything to do with our perception of the environment.

Interestingly enough, this is exactly how we can trace the origin of the infix “life situation”. Since “situation” is a conglomerate of circumstances, expressions like “I have to improve my life situation” target some of the circumstances in one’s perception of the environment. In this particular occasion the exclamation, translated into scientific language would sound like: “I’m unhappy with my current priorities; I have to stop relying on circumstances which put me down, and elevate the status of some previously neglected ones, which I have to either confront or give my support to.” Unfortunately, we don’t give the scientific approach too many chances…

Let’s play a little longer with the-house-of-our-dreams example. If we embrace the notion that one’s perception of the environment is visible through his premises, a logical question arises: why are there so many identical houses in almost every town? The reasons might be strong circumstances coming from the location of the area (geography), the necessity of aesthetic harmonization of the different parts of the whole (style), or the townspeople’s inner need to go with the flow (fashion). The last possibility is, of course, the least desirable, because individuality is being replaced by some abstract aesthetic authority. It is still permissible if the result is tolerable; yet fashion always invades and obscures the territory of the individual perception of the environment, preventing the person from freely expressing his/her unique personality.

While developing his thesis about creative individuality Michael Chekhov gives an example about several artists who supposedly have to paint one and the same landscape. He introduces the suggestion that the finished paintings will be quite different from each other since each of them will reflect the creative individuality of its author. “Their pictures will tell us,” continues Chekhov, “that one of them was more charmed by the atmosphere of the landscape, another by the beauty of the form and line, the third by the language of contrasts, and so on.” The atmosphere, the form and line, the language of the contrasts, etc. are respectively the most important facts in the individual vision of the artists, i.e. in their perception of the environment. They see and paint everything in front of them faithfully, but their creative individuality emphasizes the elements they are mostly impressed with. The creation of these “entirely different pictures” means that the photographic facts of the objective reality have not only been graded, but also turned into circumstances by the authors’ interpretation.

In our trials to grasp the world around us we can be such artists as well… As long as we don’t go with the flow.

© 2009 Peter Budevski