Motivation, Belief, Perception, and Forgiveness
Work in progress pictured above: “Sunrise on Pegan Hill”
Introduction
An artist’s primary instrument is perception. Before their brushes, paint, and canvas, before their craft of arranging color and form to express an idea, a feeling, or a vision, is their capacity to perceive things as they are with clarity and sensitivity.
In this way perception itself is a profound dimension of fascination and exploration for me. This applies equally to how I see and experience the world around me as well the world within me. Because I am the primary instrument of my work, the more I am able to refine and deepen my perception, of light, of nature, and of myself, the higher service I am capable of offering the world, and the more beauty I am capable of representing.
This is why I spend a great deal of time seeking to understand and see myself clearly. Much like when I see a beautiful scene in nature and feel the desire to represent and share it, I had a similar ‘inner experience’ recently that I would like to share, and the written word is the most appropriate form.
The following is a meditation on how motivation, beliefs, and our personal ideals influence our perceptions. I hope that similar to my paintings of nature, these words convey a sense of clarity, balance, and peace.
Motivation, Belief, Perception, and Forgiveness
We all want the same thing. Every decision we make, opinion we have, and action we take is governed by one primary motivational mechanism. Every single person on this earth is striving to maximize pleasure (or pleasantness, positive emotion, fulfillment etc.) and reduce pain to an absolute minimum, or as close to zero as possible. This is true internally, and externally. This rule applies to our inner world of thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations as well as our external circumstances.
This is not an option. It is built into us. The neurochemistry of dopamine influences our every action. Dopamine is the molecule of motivation. When the dopamine system of mice is inhibited, they lay down and do nothing. They do not even eat. We are wired in the same way.
Certainly, we all define pleasure and pain differently. We are all unique individuals. What gives one person pleasure may cause a different person to feel pain and vice versa. We may even act in noble ways, or charitable ways, or unselfish ways. But if we examine our choices carefully and honestly we will see that we cannot act in purely unselfish ways. We make the choices we make because of how the result will make us feel, or what we believe about how those choices will affect us in the future. Nothing is outside of our desire to move toward pleasure and away from pain.
We dream about the life scenarios and prized possessions we want. We imagine having the perfect relationship, or desired changes in our current relationships. We think of how our body could feel given the right healing protocol, exercise routine, or medical operation. We idolize certain people above others and imagine who we want to become. We may even strive spiritually, or morally, or creatively. We imagine what we want to be doing and experiencing in the future. All of this, for greater perceived pleasure, and the reduction or elimination of pain. Everyone does this. It is inherent in our relationship to the future: a landscape of potential pleasure and potential pain.
Likewise, we all have beliefs. It is not possible to not believe anything to be true. We are all investing our belief into something all the time. We have very strong, seemingly impenetrable beliefs: the sun will rise tomorrow, gravity will always work with every step I take, I must eat if I want to continue living. We have ‘softer’ beliefs regarding ourselves and what is representative of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. We have beliefs about cause and effect: what actions will produce what results. Most of our beliefs are based on experience, but some are based on intuition: what we think and feel to be true and correct. Beliefs express themselves in thoughts, emotions, and ultimately choices and actions.
Finally, we all have ideals. We can’t help it, we are all guilty of some degree of idolatry. Who do you think is a great person? Who do you look to as a teacher and a guide? Who do you think is ‘above’ you, further along than you, in a better place than you etc.? This idolatry extends not only to people but also to concepts and ideas. What do you think is absolutely ‘right’, what do you think is absolutely ‘wrong’, both mechanically and morally? What do you personally strive for and try to avoid? What do you personally uphold as the ‘right’ way to think about a given situation?
Based on our beliefs, and our life experience we all formulate a set of personal ideals, we invest our belief in them, and these ideals are arranged as a hierarchy within us. With some ideas and ideals being more true, accurate, or important than others. This is how we make decisions and how we choose to act. Some things are more important than others, some things are better than others, some people are better than others, and we perceive ourselves as being better or worse as an individual depending on which choice we make in a given situation. The world is a landscape of possible futures and the ideals we uphold in our mind determine how we choose to act.
What is your personal hierarchy of ideals? What ideas are sacred to you? What living people or historical figures represent, to you, how you should act and what you should strive for? How do you measure up to those ideals? What do you believe to be true? About yourself, and about the world?
Each of the principles I have so far presented are plainly obvious if we examine ourselves: We all have a common primary motivational mechanism, we all have beliefs, and we all have a personal hierarchy of ideals. What is not commonly discussed is the relationship between them and their impact on perception.
We do not see the world. Primarily, from the standpoint of choices and action, what we see is a landscape of tools and obstacles. We see what will support us in achieving our goal at the time, and what stands in our way. This is discussed lucidly and profoundly by Jordan Peterson in his book and lecture series: Maps of Meaning.
We are movement and goal oriented creatures. How we perceive the world is always initially based on our objective at the time. It’s not that we can’t see things as they are. It’s simply that most of the time our biological imperative for survival blinds us. It skews our perceptions to see a landscape of utility before we see a landscape of objects, people, and spaces, of light, texture, and beauty.
This is why it takes a great deal of training for an artist to learn to paint something realistically. To paint realistically you have to be able to see realistically. It takes practice and effort to transcend your limited internal ‘version’ of the world based on survival and utility, to see things as they are.
What we don’t often realize is that this internal skewing of perception, based on utility, action, and goal fulfillment is influenced by our beliefs. And on a very fundamental level, our beliefs are always in relationship to our primary motivational mechanism: maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
Simply stated: we do not perceive the world. We do not even perceive other people. What we see is our potential future pleasure, and our potential future pain.
This may seem deeply reductionistic. It may seem like a very course, even harsh assessment of human beings. But the point I am trying to make is not that we are simply animals, or that we cannot transcend the limiting filters of our perception. What I am illustrating is an evolutionary habit. One that commonly divides us and causes friction in our relationship with others. We argue over who and what is right or wrong, good or bad, and our opinions are typically very strong and emotionally charged. But when we examine ourselves carefully it is possible to see ourselves, and therefore to see others, more clearly.
Although our beliefs and ideals are different, our goals are one and the same. All of us, each and every one of us, is simply trying to move toward pleasure and away from pain. And because our beliefs, ideals, and therefore intended goals modify our perceptions, no two of us are actually perceiving the world in the same way.
You may think that Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is evil, or that one of them is a hero and clearly the best option for president. But when someone disagrees with you, or has vehemently differing opinions and feelings, it’s because each of us is not even perceiving the same person.
We are constantly and continually mapping what we believe will result in personal pleasure and personal pain onto the world. In this way, each of us, with our personal belief system and our personal hierarchy of ideals (and our beliefs about those ideals) is perceiving a different world from our fellow humans. And yet, everything we believe, uphold as an ideal, every thought we have, choice we make, and action we take are all one and the same, we all want the same thing and are trying to achieve it in our personal life: move toward pleasure, and away from pain.
For me, this is the essence of forgiveness. It is the essence of forgiveness of self, and forgiveness of others. I cannot fault others for having different opinions and making different choices because they aren’t even seeing the same world as I am. Likewise, I cannot fault others for the decisions that they make because their motivation is identical to mine. Even the construction of our beliefs and our ideals, and therefore our perceptions are based on our individual, and very personal, life experiences.
When I realized this for myself it created an enormous sense of relief. As a relatively private person, it used to cause me anxiety to be seen by others. I think intuitively I have always felt that when others see me, they are continuously updating their labels about me, and perceiving me through the filter of their own immediate or future experience of pleasure or pain. This is quite harsh, but it is what most people are doing, most of the time. We are constantly running our pleasure / pain evaluation system.
What has helped me greatly is to realize that their personal assessment of me, has nothing to do with me. They are not even seeing me. They are seeing their own version of me that relates directly and almost exclusively to what they want, and what they don’t want. And that’s okay. That is how we are all built. It doesn’t mean that we can’t transcend those filters of perception. But what we cannot transcend is our decision to always move toward pleasure and away from pain. It’s not possible, and it’s not necessary.
What we can do however, is look deeply into our own mind, reflect on our choices, on cause and effect in our life, and examine our beliefs and our ideals. In this way, we can constantly strive to update our beliefs, update our ideals, and therefore update our perceptions. If we choose to, and are willing to be flexible enough mentally, and brave enough emotionally, we can strive to see things as they are. We can be willing to be wrong, and see things in a new way. We can make it a personal ideal to seek truth, even when the updates are uncomfortable. And most of all, we can forgive ourselves for not always getting it right, and forgive others for consciously or unconsciously doing the same thing we are: constantly and invariable trying to maximize pleasure, and reduce pain to zero.
In this way, we are all the same. We are all using our personal experience as a guide. We are learning what works for us and what doesn’t, what produces pleasure, and what produces pain, what supports the creation of the world we want, and what hinders our progress toward it. We are all striving to align our beliefs, our ideals, our perceptions and our actions with ultimate reality: with the proper aims (ideals) and the causes that are actually in alignment with the results we want. And you can be sure, we’re all going to make mistakes along the way. And that’s okay. We are human and life is our teacher.