How To Store Berkey Filters

20080813-filters

Whammo! You didn't come across that coming, did you?

Why is it that, despite all our planning, we sometimes become defenseless past surprise, totally unprepared, with our pants downwardly as information technology were? I mean, we're smart folks, right? How come up sometimes we just don't see stuff coming?

The answer is, much of the time, that nosotros don't see everything clearly because nosotros don't meet a lot of things at all. We process the raw stuff of experience through a variety of filters – and we act on the "processed" data, not the earth every bit it is.

Those filters are engrained in usa, often from birth, and most of the time they assistance us to finer role in our social and physical environments. For example, one very uncomplicated filter nosotros have is how to isolate something interesting or of import from a cluttered groundwork – call up finding your keys amidst the mess at the bottom of your purse. Or identifying something good to eat – a ripe fruit, maybe – among the unripe fruits, leaves, and branches of a tree.

That's a pretty bones filtering ability (though the physiological mechanisms involved are quite circuitous) that humans everywhere rely on every twenty-four hour period to survive, so information technology's a good thing. But there are many much more circuitous filters that nosotros pick upward as role of our thinking repertoire, and as helpful equally they might sometimes be, they can also get us into a lot of trouble.

Here are some examples:

Language

Language is a powerful strength in shaping our behavior. Just ask a sanitation engineer! Employers accept long recognized the way that chore titles can affect employee functioning – which is why at that place are so few clerks and so many assembly at your local retail mega-outlet.

But language can lead u.s. off-target, every bit well. Consider this example fatigued from the annals of linguistics: a tanning factory discharges wastes, mostly animal matter, into a pond. The decomposing waste creates flammable gasses. A "pond", though, is not flammable, right? I hateful, right?! A man is working about the pond. Not taking whatsoever special precautions – why would you, side by side to a "pond"? – he ignites a accident-torch. A sheet of flame engulfs the pond and spreads to the nearby factory, destroying information technology.

The language nosotros employ to depict people tin strongly influence our behavior towards them. Feminists recognized this when they started insisting on terms like "police officer" rather than "policeman". Or consider this: numerous studies have shown that people with "indigenous-sounding" names are less likely to get job interviews as similarly-qualified people with "white-sounding" names.

Gender

Gender is a powerful filter in every culture – although the behaviors it shapes can exist very unlike from civilization to culture. What is considered men's work in i society – conveying heavy loads of bricks, for example – might be considered women's piece of work in another.

Gender leads united states astray when information technology leads us to look at a person'south gender as an index of their abilities. For instance, in the US, it is common to hear people say things like "men are stronger than women". This is not true. Some men are stronger than nearly women, a handful of men are stronger than all women, and well-nigh men are stronger than some women. But knowing someone's gender does not tell you anything nearly how potent they are!

Assumptions about gender extend far across physical attributes. With few exceptions, women still are not promoted to superlative-level corporate positions, despite the number of qualified women in the business earth. Men are causeless to accept "leadership qualities" that women lack – and women's leadership qualities tend to be dismissed every bit signs of "manliness" or "bitchiness".

Race and Ethnicity

What is truthful of gender is also truthful of race and ethnicity. Knowing someone's race or ethnicity tells us picayune about that particular person – all the same nosotros act as if it told us a lot. Here'south an case: a black student of mine was accused of plagiarism in another form when she handed in an excellent essay. This is a pupil that added immensely to every classroom word she took part in, and who wrote insightfully in every assignment she gave me (including "personal reflection" papers that cannot be plagiarized). The other professor did not have any examples of work that the student had allegedly copied from; it was simply "too good". Race may non accept been the only factor, just it was clearly a factor; I've never had a white student of similar quality confront a similar accusation.

Here's some other example: Black and other minority athletes, performers, even war machine leaders and politicians are often described as "clear", an adjective rarely applied to their white counterparts. People do non expect articulate speech communication from non-white persons, and are surprised when they hear intelligent dialogue from blackness speakers.

Personal Experience

An quondam joke claims, "All Indians walk single file. At to the lowest degree, the one I saw did."

Personal feel is a powerful learning tool, merely it can lead us astray when we make false assumptions based on generalizations from limited experience. Childhood experience can brand for especially powerful filters, every bit they tend to be imbued with strong emotional resonance, merely any experience can lead us to wrong conclusions.

Examining Your Filters

What is insidious about all of these factors is that most of the time they role without us even noticing them. Nosotros don't promote Chad over Wilma because Republic of chad's a man, but because he seems more than "leaderly", considering he has that "certain something". And maybe he does – or perchance our invisible assumptions about gender brand weak signs of "certain somethingness" seem strong, while Wilma's powerful "certain somethingness" is filtered out.

Information technology'southward unlikely that you will catch your filters at work in your day-to-twenty-four hours life, but you can reflect on the way you have interacted with other people and how you've handled various situations (peradventure in a weekly review?). You may well exist surprised to discover that, in many cases, yous can't seem to put your finger on exactly why yous acted the way you did – a certain sign of a filter at work. Paying attending to those moments volition bring you a long way towards replacing the stock of experience and received wisdom with filters that allow you to more accurately and effectively deed.

I've listed only a handful of obvious filters here. What are your filters? How could you deal with them?