"Simple perception then is a fallacy. Besides the conscious prejudices that we are aware of imposing on the world, there are a thousand subconscious prejudices that we assume to be actuality"
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“Simple perception” is the cozy myth that the world arrives in our minds unfiltered, as if consciousness were a clean window instead of a messy room. Colin Wilson’s move here is to puncture that comfort with a two-tiered charge: yes, we knowingly project our opinions onto reality, but the bigger scandal is how much of our certainty is smuggled in under the radar. The phrasing does the work. “Fallacy” isn’t a gentle nudge toward humility; it’s an accusation that ordinary seeing is logically broken. Then he multiplies the problem: not just a handful of biases, but “a thousand,” a deliberately hyperbolic number that feels psychologically true even if it can’t be audited.
The subtext is almost existentialist: what we call “the world” is partly a construction, and the self doing the constructing is less sovereign than it imagines. Wilson doesn’t flatter the rational, self-aware modern reader who thinks admitting “I’m biased” solves anything. He aims lower, at the automatic reflexes - class assumptions, inherited moral scripts, fear responses, cultural default settings - that masquerade as plain fact. “Assume to be actuality” is the dagger: the mind isn’t merely influenced; it confuses its influences for reality itself.
Context matters. Wilson emerged as a postwar British writer preoccupied with consciousness, alienation, and the limits of everyday awareness. Read against mid-century faith in objectivity (in science, journalism, even liberal common sense), this line plays like a dissenting memo: your instruments include your own mind, and your mind is compromised.
The subtext is almost existentialist: what we call “the world” is partly a construction, and the self doing the constructing is less sovereign than it imagines. Wilson doesn’t flatter the rational, self-aware modern reader who thinks admitting “I’m biased” solves anything. He aims lower, at the automatic reflexes - class assumptions, inherited moral scripts, fear responses, cultural default settings - that masquerade as plain fact. “Assume to be actuality” is the dagger: the mind isn’t merely influenced; it confuses its influences for reality itself.
Context matters. Wilson emerged as a postwar British writer preoccupied with consciousness, alienation, and the limits of everyday awareness. Read against mid-century faith in objectivity (in science, journalism, even liberal common sense), this line plays like a dissenting memo: your instruments include your own mind, and your mind is compromised.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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