Our Own Personal Jade

A while back I wrote about the impossible scenario of unbiased feelings towards another individual. It was called Rhetorical Romance. I still 100% agree with this idea. But why I applied it solely to the matters of the heart, there is where I have lost myself and underestimated this thought strand. Is it possible to be unbiased about anything? Is it possible to have absolutely no outside factors influence your thoughts or opinions on a subject?

I mean, let's think about this logically before we think about it theoretically or philosophically or any other way you can think about something. The majority of us are raised by our parents. Before we even have thoughts, our parents are influencing our behavior, likes and dislikes, postures, reactions, and any other relatively instinctual response we can have at a young age (I have no scientific proof of this, mind you). So going into the world, growing up, you are looking through the lens of your parents. This cannot be argued.

But Chris, what if you completely reject your parents thoughts and beliefs and create your own structure of ideas. Well, kindly interested person, how did this person think to reject everything their parents instilled in them? Hmmm? Something from the 'outside world' taught them and conditioned them to break away from the confines of the house they were raised in.

This simple thought is the idea behind this whole rambling. In order to free your thoughts from someone or something else's viewpoint, there has to be another force that is pulling you. These days, I can look at something that doesn't make sense and reject it. I can look at, say, someone driving 50 mph in the left lane during light traffic and say NO!, I don't care if that is 'more safe,' it doesn't make sense. You would think, because I'm a logic-based thinker, that I am making a decision based on nothing but my thoughts and beliefs. But really, I've conditioned myself over my lifetime, I've allowed myself to be persuaded by logic, and I've opened my thought structure to those ideas much more than things like 'safety.'

So I am biased before I even approach the scenario. Maybe because of how I was raised. Or maybe because of what I learned in school. Or maybe some deuchebag in high school used to wear Nikes, so I look down on others that do the same. There could be a 10 year disconnect between my initial encounter with the jading medium, but it's still there. And as much as you change and adapt, all you're doing is replacing old skewers with new ones that will grow to reinforce something else. It's a constantly evolving sphere of influences that consciously or subconsciously impacts everything you are exposed to.

I guess my point is, you can never, ever look at something new and think about it abstractly, without any previous influence having an effect. It is impossible. What does this mean? Well it means the same thing as comparing what we see against what color blind people see. The world appears different to each person. We are all instinctively individual. We all have been layered with lenses and filters and screens that dictate how we receive the world. And this, more than personality, more than physical appearance, more than money or class or education, but this is what will always distinguish us from one another. Our own personal jade.