Editing Reality tunnel (section)

==Similar ideas==

In line with [[Immanuel Kant|Kantian]] thought,<ref>Matthew Alper, ''The "God" Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God''. Sourcebooks, Inc., 2008, p.50f.<br/>
"The human mind, Kant contended, must be born, not as a clean slate, but with built-in 'modes of perception' that work to organize the multitude of information our sense organs are constantly imparting to us. Without such built-in processing mechanisms, we would experience reality as an unintelligible jumble of [[empirical evidence|sense experience]]s."
</ref> as well as the work of [[Norwood Russell Hanson]], studies have indeed shown<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20090501144635/http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/how_do_brains_filter_data Seed, ''How do brains filter data?'']</ref><ref name= "nspc">[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14096-party-chat-brain-filter-discovered.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news7_head_dn14096 New Scientist: ''{{'}}Party chat' brain filter discovered'']
</ref><ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7132829.stm BBC, ''Brain 'irrelevance filter' found''], 10 Dec 2007. Retrieved 10-11-09.</ref>{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} that our brains "filter" the data coming from our senses. This "filtering" is largely unconscious and may be influenced—more-or-less in many ways, in societies and in individuals—by biology,<ref>Example, [[autism]]. Autistics are unable "to understand the social communication of neurotypicals", and "Three- to five-year-old autistic children are less likely to exhibit social understanding, approach others spontaneously, imitate and respond to emotions...."</ref><ref>[http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1792 Bryn Mawr: Serendip, ''Through Different Eyes: How People with Autism Experience the World'']
</ref><ref>See [[Synesthesia]], [[Apophenia]]</ref> cultural constructs<ref name="thart">[http://www.thomhartmann.com/2007/11/05/healing-add-excerpt/ Thom Hartmann, ''How We Experience The World Differently'']</ref> including education and language<ref>See [[Representational systems (NLP)]], [[Linguistic relativity]]</ref> (such as memes), life experiences,<ref>See [[Constructivism (learning theory)]]</ref> preferences<ref>See [[Solipsism]]</ref> and mental state,<ref>[http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/28/9072 ''Enhanced Visual Motion Perception in Major Depressive Disorder'', The Journal of Neuroscience, July 15, 2009, 29(28):9072-9077];  {{doi|10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1003-09.2009}}</ref><ref>See [[Qualia]]</ref> belief systems (e.g. [[world view]], the [[stock market]]), momentary needs, pathology, etc.

An everyday example of such filtering is our ability to follow a conversation, or read, without being distracted by surrounding conversations, once called the [[cocktail party effect]].<ref name= "nspc"/><ref>Cherry, E. C. (1953) Some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and with two ears. Journal of Acoustical Society of America 25(5), 975–979.</ref>

In his 1986 book ''Waking Up'',<ref>Charles Tart, ''Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential''. iUniverse, Inc., 2001, 344pp. {{ISBN|0-595-19664-0}}</ref><ref>[http://www.rheingold.com/texts/reviews/waking.html] Review by [[Howard Rheingold]]</ref> [[Charles Tart]]—an [[United States|American]] [[psychologist]] and [[parapsychologist]] known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness—introduced the phrase "consensus trance" to the lexicon. Tart likened normal waking consciousness to hypnotic trance. He discussed how each of us is from birth inducted to the trance of the society around us.<ref>J. Jeffrey Means, Mary Ann Nelson, ''Trauma & evil: healing the wounded soul''. Fortress Press, 2000, pp. 30–32. {{ISBN|0-8006-3270-2}}.<br/>
"Awakening from the consensus trances in which we are stuck as a result of living in a violent society is rare."</ref> Tart noted both similarities and differences between hypnotic trance induction and consensus trance induction. (See [[G. I. Gurdjieff]]).

Some disciplines—[[Zen]] for example, and monastic schools such as [[Sufism]]—seek to overcome such conditioned realities by returning to less thoughtful and channeled states of mind. Similarly, the [[philosophy of life]] [[Pyrrhonism]] seeks to overcome these conditioned realities by inducing [[epoche]] ([[suspension of judgment]]) through [[skepticism|skeptical]] arguments.

[[Constructivism (psychological school)|Constructivism]] is a modern psychological response to reality-tunneling.<ref>Karen Eriksen, Garrett McAuliffe, ''Teaching counselors and therapists: constructivist and developmental course design''. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. p. 366. {{ISBN|0-89789-795-1}}</ref>
<blockquote>For Wilson, a fully functioning human ought to be aware of their reality tunnel, and be able to keep it flexible enough to accommodate, and to some degree empathize with, different reality tunnels, different "game rules", different cultures&nbsp;... Constructivist thinking is the exercise of metacognition to become aware of our reality tunnels or labyrinths and the elements that "program" them. Constructivist thinking should, ideally, decrease the chance that we will confuse our map of the world with the actual world&nbsp;... [This philosophy] is currently expressed in many Eastern consciousness-exploration techniques.<ref>R. Elliott Ingersoll and Cecile Brennan, in Eriksen, McAuliffe 2001, p. 336.</ref></blockquote>