What is it we Perceive?

As some of you might have guessed, I waste a lot of time mindlessly watching the "idiot box." And it's true that much of what I watch is simply mindless entertainment. I also watch a lot of science programs and other things which, one might presume, are not. Let me tell you that much of even that is trash even though I do occasionally learn something. Being a World War II buff, I tend to watch a lot of the Military and Military History Channels.

But mostly what passes for drama on the major networks is trash. Except for a few. So I watch the "lesser" networks; A&E, FX, and TNT. One of these shows of interest is called "Perception." If you do not watch this show, you are missing out on a jewel.  It is entertaining and educational. It is also just about the only show on TV that does not treat the viewer as a 12-year-old.

Last night's episode revolved around something they called "cognitive blindness" (a made-up name for a real phenomenon). What they described, and what the show revolved around, was the sometime inability of the mind to perceive something that happens right in front of the person. In the beginning of the episode, a judge is murdered in his chambers. You do not see this happen, just the aftermath. His clerk claims the judge was alive when he left his chambers to go to the courtroom to hear a verdict, a federal prosecutor swears he saw the judge at his bench when the verdict was read. But the judge was actually murdered before the verdict was in. Soon after, a referee at a high school basketball game is murdered (stabbed in the back by the team mascot) during the game but it is not noticed by the fans until after the referee falls.

I am not going to reveal anything more about the episode, it is unimportant. But the show centers on how we perceive the world around us and how we are often fooled in those perceptions and that, to me, is very interesting.

You see, I cannot remember a time where I was not interested in that. There is a poem by Edgar Allen Poe called "A Dream Within a Dream" that ends with this refrain:

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

I did not learn of it until I was perhaps in my 20's but I immediately identified with it. I have often toyed with the idea that the universe does not really exist, that we have dreamed it up. That it is an hallucination so all encompassing and complex that we are lost in it.

Perhaps that's silly. But perhaps not.