Judging Character, in a nutshell

OK, we all know that common human behaviour is to discount experimental data over a set belief – that is, given a piece of data that would tend to destabilize a belief structure, the data is eschewed in favor of the structure.

I describe this as “when reality objects to my model, I’ll reject reality rather than rethink my model.”

Where the rubber hits the road (as an example; not the point of this post:)
Person 1: “Marijuana Users are lazy lay-abouts who contribute nothing to society.”
Person 2: “Here is a list of great contributors to society who, as it turns out, were Marijuana Users. Also, you admire me. I smoke Marijuana.”
Person 1: “I am shocked, I’ve lost respect for you: You’ve become someone I don’t like, etc”
Alternate Person 1: “Well, obviously those cases are special; It doesn’t change anything.”

replace MJ with (Atheist, Mormon, Scientologist, Democrat, Republican, Black, White, straight, gay, etc.)

———

So where is this going?

We must make conclusions about data we receive to be able to ‘understand’ the data – as mammals, we find patterns and try to reason/understand them, yes? Yes.
How do you judge a person’s character? Where to you start? What tools did you learn to use to judge character? Who are amongst the first “stranger” characters you meet in your life (before you socialize outside)?

The answer to my begging question is that the first ideas about ‘others’ and the learning of other people happens first in stories. We start our kids out with simple stories and simple characters or Archetypes really.

We create characters in our minds; We think we ‘know’ them, or at least ‘understand’ them and who they are (and how they play in the story). We feel ‘betrayed’ when characters are shown to have hidden designs that we find distasteful (and are good plot devices for mystery authors).

So how does this apply? We meet people and we know them, we create them in our minds as characters in our own story: we look for villains and heroes. The creations of people in our mind don’t exist: They are our fantasies. You don’t love your partner, rather you love who you believe your partner to be in your head (unless you are like myself or David I suppose who think about crazy things like reality, perception, etc.).

Only few people know the full me that I choose to expose; others see specific pieces in me: my work self, my friend self, etc. These people make decisions and judgments on me based on these limited exposures. It *is* who I am to them.

If someone who you’ve written up in your head acts against what you believe (for yourself as well as who you thought they were) — they “change” they have a break; they disappoint (or perhaps pleasantly surprise) you: The reality? You made a bad decision based on incomplete evidence.

This came in stark focus concerning TV series, especially LOST: Characters act “out of character.” The immediate thought? The writers are bad/in trouble. They can’t write a “believable character.” Arguments I’ve heard from friend and foe alike concerning characters that show new facets of personality. This isn’t to say writers have changed characters merely to suit a plot line and that these things can’t happen due to lazy or bad writing (I’m looking at you, X files).
(As an aside, LOST goes further by purposely showing you brief glimpses to encourage you to make snap incorrect judgments, which I enjoy).

But the human behaviour to take incomplete data and have firm judgment in the face of an increased data set that would upend said judgment causes great trauma to relationships, happiness (I believe happiness comes from successful prediction of future), and countries (I’m looking at you, neo-cons).

I’m going to stop there because I could go on and on and off the track into other platitudes and trite sayings – there’s some meat here to chew on – I don’t really know if there is a point (rather I suppose a pattern? Ah, The tautological joy of it all).