Fall came yesterday to my corner of the U.S. subtropics – and surely enough that a news story about a mid-day football game could refer to the “crisp Saturday afternoon.”
The reference initially struck me as odd. Local newscasters had advised fans the night before to tote sweaters to the game. But at the late-morning kickoff, outside temps hovered in the high 60s. They’d risen to the mid-70s by game’s end.
Crisp?
I was wrong. Weather conditions appear absolute when charted for history, but our perceptions are conditioned by experience. I reacted yesterday with the certainty rooted in dozens of northern autumns. My experience didn’t fit the place.
We humans do that, don’t we? Conditioned by our experiences among people like us, we expect others to think like us. To act as we would. And to believe with us.
And so we draw circles around “our” people. We’re masters of this trick of the mind – across multiple dimensions: politics, religion, race, sexuality, vaccination status. Bigotry begins here.
In contrast, weather snobbery is benign. The trick of the mind is not.
