The Nature of Perception and Identity Politics

We are all products of our own comprehension. Cognition, after all, is affected by the unique set of circumstances that align to makeup an individual’s background, heightening one’s perception of certain challenges and issues. Then, the talents one possesses lead towards particular types of intelligence, impacting the way each mind synthesizes the information presented to it.

One cannot step outside the lens of one’s personal experience, even when relating to others. As Adam Smith, that savant of the Scottish Enlightenment, noted in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, “As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.”

All sentiment is ultimately selfish. The sympathies one extends towards others say more about the cast of one’s own character than they do about the situation of another. They are illustrative of a person’s conception of virtue and vice.

Individual life is relative, particularly when considered in the context of another. But that does not negate objective reality. It merely alters the ways in which particular truths make themselves manifest.

Aristotle’s virtue ethics are particularly relevant here, as his philosophy nuances the absolute…