Letter 8: Perception - The Adaptive Filter That Became a Prison

“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
— Anaïs Nin

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Dear Future Human,

How clearly do you perceive reality?

It rarely occurs to us to question our perceptions. We assume that what we see, hear, and experience is an accurate reflection of the world. We move through life believing that our senses are picking up reliable information.

They don’t.

We can see the consequences of this gap between perception and reality all around us. Our exploitation of the natural world in the service of comfort and convenience has brought us to a perilous predicament—one that threatens our very survival.

And yet, we are not mobilizing the way a species facing extinction must if we are to prevent calamity.

Why is that?

E.O. Wilson said it best: “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”

In my last letter, “We Are Nature,” I wrote that we are still wired to react to threats our ancestors faced tens of thousands of years ago, designed to respond to immediate, visible dangers. Our institutions were built for much simpler and smaller communities, not a connected world. We have built technologies that allow us to instantly communicate with anyone, anywhere, we can edit genes, create artificial intelligence, and destroy entire cities in minutes. Our tools have evolved much faster than our emotional maturity and our collective wisdom.¹

If we were able to truly grasp the dangers we are facing, our survival instinct would kick in, and we would mobilize all our resources—intellectual, physical, and creative—to protect ourselves. The fact that we are not, should alert us that we are not perceiving reality clearly enough to act.

As we stand right now, we do not appreciate or grasp the complexity of the forces that shape our perceptions, feelings, beliefs, abilities, and behaviors. Instead, we reach conclusions about everyday life experiences with extraordinary simplicity. The reality is, our perceptions and behaviors are all intertwined with our emotions, memories, cultural/societal norms and neural wiring. Over time, these become embedded within our neural circuitry, influencing how we see ourselves, each other, and the world.

If we had applied the same level of scientific rigor to the study of human perception and behavior that we apply to the study of nature, we would already know this. Most of our beliefs and behaviors are shaped by our biology and the environment into which we were born, not personal failings. Becoming aware of this would shift our perception and change the trajectory of our future. We could become more compassionate, trusting and understanding of ourselves and each other. We can unlock new levels of creativity and intelligence and solve the global challenges with the same resourcefulness we use to protect endangered species or revitalize the reefs in the oceans.

As we let go of old judgments and assumptions, we start to notice how our reactions were shaped by past experience. We become less caught in automatic patterns and more able to meet ourselves—and others—with understanding. We become less driven by old interpretations and automatic reactions, and more able to respond to life with emotional depth, clarity, creativity, and a sense of purpose.

Research now confirms that through awareness, sustained practice, and focused intention, the brain can be rewired.²

The findings I have compiled can begin to help you understand the evolutionary nature of perception—how our minds adapt to survive within the specific environments we were born into. However, this same adaptability is also responsible for distorting our perception of reality in adulthood.

1. Each of us carries an invisible frame of reference—a filter through which we perceive reality.

Each of us sees the world through a unique perceptual filter—shaped by our experiences, emotions, and cultural backgrounds.³

Imagine you’re walking down the street and you see a dog. First, you’ll pick up information through your senses—your eyes detect the shape, color, size and movement while your ears may hear the barking sounds. But these sensory inputs are meaningless until your brain processes them. It compares these sensory inputs with stored memories of similar animals (like other dogs you’ve seen before) and categorizes the animal as a “dog.” Your brain then quickly assesses the level of danger by noting if the dog is wagging its tail or appearing threatening. Finally, it determines how you should react based on your past experiences with dogs, whether you were bitten in the past or you have a dog at home. Same dog, different realities, different reactions.

Your brain doesn’t show you the world as it is; it shows you a prediction from what it knows from your past experiences. Neuroscientist Anil Seth calls this “controlled hallucination”—the brain is constantly generating its best guess about reality based on prior experience, then checking if it matches the sensory data coming in. We don’t passively perceive the world; we actively predict it.⁴ And this is our challenge, most of the information shaping your perception was learned in childhood, when you struggled to survive in your particular family, your particular environment.

Your four-year-old survival strategies are still running your life.

2. Memory Shapes Perception

Our brains evolved to conserve energy by quickly detecting patterns and making predictions.⁵ While this helps us navigate the world efficiently, it can also prevent us from experiencing the present moment as it truly is. Children are born hyper-sensitive, capable of detecting even the subtlest facial expression and shifts in emotional tone around them. They quickly learn what’s safe and what’s dangerous, what behaviors bring love and which risk rejection.⁶

For example, a child who receives smiles and warmth when they are quiet, and follows the rules, but feels disconnection and tension when they express anger or need, quickly learns what keeps them safe. The brain organizes our world around these kinds of repeated experiences. Gradually, these patterns become internal frames of reference that settle into us as schemas of felt beliefs about safety, belonging, and connection. These schemas continue to inform how we relate, interpret, and respond throughout our adult life.⁷ We’ll explore this more deeply in future letters.

3. To make matters even more challenging, our brain doesn’t only filter reality through past experiences, it actively selects information from our environment based on what it already believes. This is called confirmation bias, and it is extremely difficult for us to see or override it. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in his Nobel Prize-winning work, showed that this isn’t a character flaw—it’s how our fast, automatic thinking operates. We construct stories from available information and defend those stories against contradictory evidence.⁸

If we believe the world is dangerous, we will more likely notice threats and overlook signs of safety. If we believe we are unlovable, we will unconsciously pick up critical and negative statements while minimizing acts of kindness.

Like many of our early adaptive behaviors, confirmation bias allowed early humans to make quick decisions without needing to re-evaluate every situation from scratch. But in our modern, complex world, this once-useful shortcut often blinds us. It reinforces old emotional wounds, perpetuates divisive thinking, and can keep us locked inside outdated perceptions that no longer fit our present reality. We see this clearly today in both conventional and social media, where people accept information that aligns with their views, while fiercely rejecting anything that comes from opposing channels. We can see this pattern also in our personal lives. In my time, things have gotten so extreme that people and institutions can’t even listen to different views without feeling threatened, “canceling” anyone who disagrees with them.⁹

And it’s not just how you perceive information; it’s where you put your attention. To survive and adapt to our environments and not get overwhelmed by all the sensory information coming at us, our brain evolved a survival-based filter: we focus on the most critical information that helps us regulate our bodies and quickly adjust our behavior to ensure our physical safety.¹⁰ But there is another layer to this selective perception. As social beings, our well-being is also deeply intertwined with our relationships, our status in a group, and our sense of belonging. In fact, our brain often processes social threats—disapproval, rejection or exclusion—as if they were physical threats. Brain imaging research by neuroscientists like Naomi Eisenberger has shown this is literally true: social rejection activates the same neural pain circuits as physical injury.¹¹ For our ancestors, social exclusion meant death, so your brain treats a critical tone or disapproving look as a genuine threat to survival. That’s why we pay close attention to a tone of voice, a subtle movement in a facial expression or body language.

While this kept our ancestors alive in the past, it is making us blind in the present.

4. Finally, beneath it all is our deep fear of uncertainty. Even the suggestion that you might not be responding to reality can feel threatening. It challenges our sense of control, safety and predictability. We need to “be in the know.” From an evolutionary perspective, uncertainty was dangerous, it left us vulnerable to predators and the other threats of the natural world. That instinct is still with us, even though the dangers have changed.¹²

From a psychological perspective, being “in the know” now offers a different kind of protection. It gives us credibility, shields us from judgment, and helps guard against the risk of social rejection or attack. To be seen as informed is to feel safe. To avoid feeling the psychic fear or social vulnerability of “not knowing,” we have evolved elaborate psychological defenses. We would rather be wrong and feel certain than be right and feel uncertain.¹³

I hope I have given you a glimpse of how the very evolutionary adaptations that once ensured our survival now paradoxically place us at great risk. What once served to protect and keep us alive is now keeping us trapped in distortions—contributing to the precarious predicament we find ourselves in.

My proposal for the Conscious Evolution of the Human Mind grew from this difficult realization.

I began this letter with a question: How clearly do you perceive reality?

If you are anything like the people of my time, the honest answer is—not very clearly.

I invite you to hold a more vital question in your mind: Where do you go from here?

The answer won’t come quickly or easily. To find it, all of these letters must be read as threads of a larger tapestry. Taken in isolation, each offers only fragments. At best, they reveal partial truths; at worst, they risk reinforcing old stories and assumptions shaped by our past.

That is why I ask you to take your time with these words. Read with care and attentiveness. There is much here to absorb and connect, and its deepest meaning will only emerge through reflection, through experience, and through experiencing life itself.

In the end, real understanding won’t arrive just by reading. It will have to be grokked — lived, felt, and integrated over time.

I see you, I feel you,

Ronit

1. Tristan Harris and Daniel Schmachtenberger, The Social Dilemma’s Tristan Harris on Technology Moving Faster Than Regulation, PowerfulJRE, December 2021.

2. Andrew Huberman, What is Neuroplasticity?, The Science and Cocktails Foundation, April 2023.

3. David Eagleman, Your Brain is Biased by Default: Here is How to Reset It, Big Think, September 2024.

4. Anil Seth, Why We All Experience the World Differently, BBC Ideas, July 2022.

5. Anil Ananthaswamy, Your Brain is an Energy Efficient ‘Prediction Machine’, WIRED, November 2021.

6. P. Soto-Icaza, F. Aboitiz, and P. Billeke, Development of Social Skills in Children: Neural and Behavioral Evidence for the Elaboration of Cognitive Models, Frontiers in Neuroscience, September 2015.

7. Beau Lotto, Why Past Experience is Dangerous, Beau Lotto – D’Amelio Network, December 2020.

8. Joshua Loo, “System 1 and System 2 Thinking,” The Decision Lab, January 2026.

9. Emily Ekins, Poll: 62% of Americans Say They Have Political Views They’re Afraid to Share, CATO Institute, July 2020.

10. J. Morriss, A. Christakou, and C.M. Van Reekum, Nothing is Safe: Intolerance of Uncertainty is Associated with Compromised Fear Extinction Learning, Biological Psychology, December 2016.

11. Naomi I. Eisenberger, The Neural Bases of Social Pain: Evidence for Shared Representations with Physical Pain, Psychosomatic Medicine, February 2012.

12. Kimberly Holland, Amygdala Hijack: When Emotion Takes Over, Healthline, April 2025.

13. EBSCO Research Starters, Self-affirmation Theory, EBSCO, 2021.

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