Epistemology 139appear solid, but if stress is applied, then it immediately begins to crumble.
This is because there are no strong Perceiver connections between the
various elements—no glue of belief to hold the bits together. In addition,
the sea of raw Mercy experience is always nearby, ready to inundate any
sand castle under the relentless waves of whipped-up emotion.
Culture
Culture, as we all know, is the bacteria which lives in yogurt. Yogurt is
a type of fermented milk—milk being what we drink as children. Yogurt
also comes from the Middle East, an area of the world known for its
fanatical cultures and incessant wars. Therefore, we conclude that if we
want to bring peace to the Middle East, we should all stop children from
eating yogurt.
Make sense? I didn‟t think so. However, the type of so-called thinking
which I have just illustrated does pop up when working with emotional
'facts.' And culture, childhood and emotional 'facts' definitely are related.
In our discussion of Mercy strategy, we saw that Mercy thought in the
young child is very vulnerable. Because the „mental house‟ of the baby
starts out with „rooms‟ which are essentially empty, any emotional
experience can make its way unimpeded into the inner sanctum of the
Mercy internal world. Since our physical bodies add pain and pleasure to
our encounters with experiences, the Mercy internal world of the child fills
quickly with likes, dislikes, loves and hates.
When we examined Perceiver mode, which also begins life as an empty
room with bare walls, we noticed that there was no similar mechanism for
stuffing the Perceiver room of the child with information. Rather, the big
question for Perceiver thought involved working out what label of
confidence to attach to each fact, and deciding upon what should be
believed.
I suggest that we have now discovered the method by which the
internal world of Perceiver strategy is initially programmed in a child. In
the same way that Mercy strategy begins by identifying with every
emotional experience which comes along, so Perceiver thought starts out
by being completely mesmerized by Mercy emotion. The result is that
Perceiver strategy in the child becomes filled with emotional 'facts.'
Because these 'facts' are accepted by the Perceiver internal world as
'beliefs,' they provide the initial set of Perceiver absolutes by which all
other Perceiver information is evaluated.A
A Perceiver belief can also develop as a result of Perceiver reasonableness.
We will look at this option when examining „common sense.‟ However, I
suggest that common sense takes time to develop, whereas emotional 'truth'
is by definition acquired instantly. Therefore, emotional 'facts' always
provide the initial set of Perceiver absolutes.