A Bird’s Eye View

Much has been written about learning to challenge unconsciously accepted interpretations. And rightfully so. Perhaps unconsciously accepted interpretations make up the lion’s share of our cognitive energy, which is ironic because they exist is to save such energy. But they are so numerous, they inform every moment of our experience.

In psychology, these mental shortcuts are called heuristics, and they’re very valuable. Instead of having to render an interpretation from each individual component of a situation, the mind can draw interpretations from a small amount of present data, relying on previous experience to fill in the gaps. This saves energy, but it also blinds us from virgin encounters.

Yet, all it takes is a simple challenge to shatter illusion of objective perception. Once, a crow (quite accidentally, I would imagine) challenged a heuristic of mine, and the experience was not unpleasant.

That day, the packed asphalt and unbroken trajectory of uniform material told me that I was walking along a street. The raised edges, devoid of vegetation told me that I walked on top of a sidewalk. These same geographical characteristics, however, had no such effect on the crow though. When I first looked at him, I believed that he was crossing the street.

Previously, I had observed the area’s squirrels cross that same street. They interacted with such a particular arrangement of pavement as I did. They saw the street. I know this because they crossed the street perpendicularly, taking the shortest possible path. Such an understanding was necessary to their survival. They understood the concept of a road, and so this concept affected their behavior. Their heuristic regarding this strange scratch upon the terrain was similar to mine.

The crow had no such understanding. He moved over the asphalt terrain in a slanted, untethered trajectory. He didn’t see the road. He had no concept of road. Why should he? His was the domain of the air. And so, the physical elements which affected both me and the squirrels didn’t affect his behavior.

I had been mistaken. He wasn’t crossing a road. Roads weren’t real to him, and he couldn’t cross what didn’t exist.

I tried to put my consciousness into that little feathered body and imagined what it might be like to exist as he. I was found myself upon a barren plain, a black desert with stark boundaries veering off to meet the horizon at an odd angle. The ground was very smooth here, and the sun met the flat black beneath my feet completely uninhibited. I wandered around this strange area for a length, simply experiencing the qualities of this patch of earth as they were.

 For an instant too brief to measure, the concept which bound the squirrel and the man faded away, and I was able to see the landscape unobscured.