212 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
experiences of balls crashing into volleyball nets or in other ways going the
wrong direction, Perceiver thought will conclude that me and „athlete‟ are
not connected.
The result is self-image. Notice the difference between me and „self-
image‟: Me is a set of experiences located within the Mercy internal world,
whereas self-image is the set of beliefs within the internal Perceiver world
which Perceiver strategy forms about the Mercy experiences of me.
Me involves Mercy thought and Mercy memories.
Mercy mode continues to concentrate on these experiences.
Self-image involves Perceiver thought and Perceiver memories.
Perceiver mode watches me and builds a set of facts about me.The contrast between me and „self-image‟ can be seen in the behavior
of Mercy and Perceiver persons. The Mercy person identifies with his
experiences. He is me. He always addresses himself to the person, and not
just to some abstract situation or problem. The Perceiver person, on the
other hand, feels that me is next door. He does not identify with his facts.
Rather, when he looks at the issues, he generally avoids personal attack,
and tries to stick with the principles that define his person and the person
of others, unlike the Mercy individual who naturally empathizes with the
feelings of the other.
I have suggested that the Perceiver person feels that me is next door,
but next door to what? Next door to me? Does the Perceiver person have
two me‟s, one here and one next door? In a sense, yes. First, there is the
me in the Mercy internal world which is programmed by the presence of
his physical body. This type of me is possessed by every human with a
body. Then there is the me of conscious thought, which for the Perceiver
person is the me of living within the room of Perceiver strategy. Put these
two me‟s together and you see why the Perceiver person feels that me is an
observer looking through a window into the room which contains me. If
this does not make sense, ask a Perceiver person to explain it to you.A To
avoid confusion, whenever we use the word me, we will continue to refer,
as we have thus far, to the network of personal experiences within Mercy
strategy.
Let us go further. I have stated that self-image is the set of Perceiver
facts about the Mercy experiences which are me. However, we know that
me and emotions are strongly related, and that Perceiver strategy has
difficulty holding on to facts whenever feelings arrive on the scene.
Therefore, we should find that people have major problems trying to
A We will see later that this feeling of being the observer watching oneself
go through life is especially strong with the Facilitator person because he
„lives‟ in the mental room which is the observer for the entire mind.