If a Tree Falls in a Forest
“A tree falling in the forest” is a thought experiment that (almost?) everyone knows, but I had to look up the origins. It was proposed by George Berkeley in 1710, and then repeated in various forms up to an exchange between Einstein and Bohr. The general idea is the same: If you don’t observe something, did it happen? If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? You can arguing multiple sides because it’s impossible to check without observation, which makes it such a juicy idea for the brain to consider.
Maybe that’s why my brain started chewing on it when Carolyn Hax brought it up as part of her answer.
The situation: an adult child doesn’t really want to talk anymore to his/her thoughtless parents. The person asks: “Do I just ghost my own parents? Seems no matter what I do, they’ll think I’m awful and wrong.”
Is that the worst that could happen, though? That parents you think are awful and wrong think you’re awful and wrong? Plus, if you’re not on the phone with them, then it’s an awful-and-wrong falling in a forest. Who’s to say it even happened.
Why care what another person thinks of you if you don’t know what another person thinks of you? You can assume how they feel, but if they’re feeling it over in their house and not interacting with you, does it matter? Is it the proverbial falling tree? Unless you observe their ire by interacting with them, their ire is sort of just their ire; something you can’t prove or disprove if you’re not going to interact with it, and therefore something you can choose to ignore.
It goes for any situation where you’re making assumptions about what the other person is thinking or doing or feeling. They’re all trees in a forest that you’re not observing.
It was incredibly freeing. Not in the sense that you can write off other people’s feelings, but that you can choose to stop assuming them and acting as if you observed them when you haven’t.
What do you think?
6 comments
Whoa, this is sort of blowing my mind. I’ll have to ponder this some more, I waste a LOT of time and energy on assuming what other people are thinking and feeling.
This question kinda goes along with the quotation “What other people think of me is none of my business.”
I am a bit outside the norm (esp. for a woman) in that I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what others think of me. I have a short-ish list of people whose opinions matter to me; if someone isn’t on that list, I don’t care if they love me, hate me or are indifferent to me. (The one exception to this general rule is my professional reputation, which does matter to me.)
One example: I have a stepmother of 25+ years, and she and I have never liked one another. I really don’t care and am totally fine with having as little interaction as possible with her, while she is constantly trying to force us to “be friends” and pretending she loves me when it would be clear to any objective observer that the opposite is true. I have genuinely never lost a wink of sleep over her opinion of me.
I love this!
I think I realized years ago that people’s opinions of others were pretty much visceral reactions/first impressions. It CAN be changed but most people are not open to reconsidering, and I hate wasted effort. So, unless I did something really egregious on first meeting anyone, I can’t be bothered worrying about anyone else’s impression of me, because there was really very little I did to form it (beyond existing in my own personal form) and even less I can do to change it without their help.
Would it be terrible if that were my parents? Yes, but we always got along well. I had no problem with not speaking to one of my sisters for years. She was unreasonable and irrational; and until she changed her ways, she was going to hate me no matter what. So, I wasn’t putting myself out for more mistreatment, until she showed that she realized that she was a large part of the problem. (I take some responsibility – I can say mean things and think people see that I’m joking. So, I don’t really do that with her any more, because I know she won’t appreciate the joke.)
This is a pretty cool spin on this classic thought experiment. I think we care because of how we see ourselves in the world. We want to be thought well of. But there are people who are hell-bent on being unkind or who simply don’t connect with another and no amount of energy or effort will change that.
I’m late to this – was travelling last week, and now I’m trying to catch up on blogs.
I like this … to an extent. Yes, why should I care what people think of me if they’re not interacting with me? It also confirms that when I worry about what people think of me, I’m really putting my own thoughts in their mouths in my imagination, when they might not be thinking bad things at all.
I do think it is important though to try to understand what someone else is thinking or feeling if we have a relationship. But restricting that to their actual reactions and our interactions is much healthier than wondering if the tree fell in the forest.
Real food for thought – thanks, Mel!
I think this is sorta what happens when someone gets off all social media due to repeatedly being trolled. Sounds like a healthy way to disconnect from a toxic person. Let them to their own toxin.