DISTINCTIONS

A distinction makes something that was previously unnoticed in the background is gaining attention and becoming distinctively new or different. We are seeing something we didn’t see before. This is why we examine our assumptions to decide to what extent they are true and what we can learn from the distinctions we can make.

A living system is seen as separate from its surroundings, by making a distinction between something that IS me and what is NOT me. Such as a body’s ability to identify a foreign virus. fWhat we see, or the way we frame and give meaning to the world when we open our eyes is more to do with our own thoughts than what’s “out there”.

It’s from these observations and the thoughts produced, that we take specific actions to get the results we are after. The more knowledge we have the more distinctions we can make between concepts, ideas, definitions, and labels. As a result, I may “see” things differently from someone else because of the distinctions I can make. A car mechanic has the capacity for different action than a brain surgeon unless they can make the same distinctions. By taking greater care over our language these distinctions can be seen as domains of knowledge that make specific actions possible. Our world is created as we add more distinctions to our vocabulary and understanding.