The Proficiologist

Out of Context, Out of Reach

In a con­fus­ing world where no move makes sense,
We must look deeper into the fog and see the con­text behind each event as it unfolds.

Without tele­pathic abil­i­ties, we could never know for sure how other peo­ple think or why they choose to behave in cer­tain ways. This def­i­nitely hasn’t stopped us from try­ing though – our minds tire­lessly pro­duce, refine and share orga­nized beliefs (or schemata) about how oth­ers act based on our past expe­ri­ences. These beliefs are some­times based on time-tested the­o­ries in psy­chol­ogy, but more often than not they’re just basic intu­itions a per­son has about his friends or ene­mies. Whether we choose to laugh away a person’s quirky behav­ior, briefly scowl at an act of impo­lite­ness, or openly attack a group of indi­vid­u­als after one of its mem­bers did some­thing slightly unpleas­ant, we mostly rely on schemata to inter­pret and even­tu­ally judge each other’s actions.

Our hard-earned beliefs don’t gen­er­al­ize to the unpre­dictable thoughts and deci­sions of the generic sen­tient beings though. In the absence of other infor­ma­tion, a generic’s actions essen­tially have no inher­ent meaning.