The Nature of the Observer

What makes one observer a penetrating judge of people’s character when the assessment of the same person by another observer renders a characterization that completely misses the mark? Why is one investor instantly leery of the sales pitch of a con man while another investor is quite impressed by his sales pitch?

The answers to both questions lay in the nature of the observers. The first observer is an individualist: he knows himself well: he sees himself pretty much as he is, so he has nothing to prove, run from or deny in seeing others as they are.

The second, gullible observer is a joiner, only superficially in touch with his inner self. Because he knows himself not, his perceptual fog and self-deceptive, perceptual preconceiving carries over in how he misconceives people that he encounters.

In the group setting, the second, gullible observer will be far quicker to sense the mood, the mores, the clothes worn by, the fashions advertised and watchwords passed among the insiders. The first, isolated, outsider/beholder will miss most of these communicative flags, thus highlighting his apartness and tone deafness to social subtleties. In the world of illusions held and shared, there are subtle signals sent to tell the attentive, responding, second observer when to twist and turn, like two hundred starlings flying as one black cloud, without error or misstep.