Map And Territory
We Confuse The Map With The Territory
When map and terrain differ, follow the terrain
Map And Territory - Overview
We confuse map and territory.
There are two types of map:
- External maps - which may be digital or physical hard copy, and these are representations of the landscape they describe which may be topographical or situational.
- Internal maps - that you create that form your concepts of reality, your inner sense of time, place and situation, and of self-image.
In both cases these maps are abstractions of reality and they can include descriptions, theories, and models.
All maps are imperfect:
- They are reductions of what they represent.
- A map is a snapshot of a landscape [either topographical or situational] at a point in time.
- A map represents something that no longer exists.
This is important to keep in mind as you think through problems and make decisions.
The problems arise when you confuse map and territory.
In other words, your perception of the world could be different from the real world.
While it might sound too obvious, a surprisingly large number of people tend to confuse their beliefs with reality.
The map and territory concept was developed by noted mathematician Alfred Korzybski to explain the fact that belief is different from reality, and he coined the popular phrase: "The map is not the territory."
When Korzybski talks [in the quote in the graphic at the top of this article] about a "semantic disturbance" being set up, what he is talking about is the limitations of language.
These limitations cause the loss of meaning to become exacerbated as the words we use to describe something are always heard or read within a language, a context and a framing.
Getting Stuck With The Map and Territory
We create abstractions, concepts, beliefs and maps to try to make sense of the complex world we live in.
In Conscious Thinking we noted that:
"Human intelligence has a serious limitation. It is a scanning system of conscious attention, and that scanning system is linear—it examines the world in lines, as you would pass a flashlight beam across a darkened room, focusing on one thing at a time, sequentially.
But the real world doesn’t happen one thing at a time, one thing after another. The real world is multidimensional, with a lot happening all at once, and it comes at us so fast and all at once in such a way that we could never scan it in the narrow focused linear way humans typically think"
What you may not so aware of is how your unconscious internal filtering mechanism shapes and creates your internal representations of the landscapes we experience and observe.
All of this can cause you to get stuck in your beliefs and perceptions of the world and blind you to seeing the world for what it is.
Two or more people can observe the same event and offer very different versions of the same event.
So it is important to understand that your abstractions and perceptions are at the very best a hazy approximation of the real world.
If you believe 100% in your own version of the event and convince yourself that it is what happened, you could be entirely wrong.
In conclusion:
- The map does not change the territory at any time.
- Just because you
erase a portion of a territory on a map, it does not disappear in the
real world.
- When your beliefs and perceptions about the world change, the world does not change, it is what it is, even though your understanding of it has changed.
- A map - or a model - can only be helpful if you understand its limitations.
Resources:
Excellent and comprehensive article from Shane Parrish of Farnam St: The Map Is Not The Territory
Return from "Map and Territory" to: Mental Models
- What if everything we think…
LATEST ARTICLES
Everything Is Connected And Why You Don't Feel It
...And Why It Matters
As human beings we are skating on very thin ice with our sense of self and certainty about "how things are" and what we like to think of as reality:
Who Is In Charge Of Your Brain?
How Not To Be Stupid. Who is in charge of your brain? This is not a silly questions. It matters because the outcomes that you experience in your life are determined by how you respond to the events th…How To Be A Winner On A Very Large Scale
The Incredible Benefits Of Selective Attention. This is not a typical article about how to be a winner. We are not going to talk about goal setting, the importance of habits, the power of focus and al…The Metagame Approach To Life
How To Achieve Your Biggest Objectives.
The metagame approach to life is all about winning and achieving your biggest objectives by:
- Understanding the bigger picture
- Being better by doing things d…Shantideva - The Way Of The Bodhisattva
Walking The Path Of Compassion. Shantideva the 8th century Indian Buddhist sage is famous for his treatise "The Way of the Bodhisattva" delivered as an extended teaching to the monks of Nalanda monast…Reframing History - Deconstruction And Discussion Not Destruction
History is always about context, not imposing our own moral values on the past. For those of us fortunate enough to live within western democracies, we are living in an age where a vociferous and into…Tao Te Ching - Connecting To Your True Source Of Power.
How To Be Lived By The Tao. The Tao Te Ching is one of those books that many people read, few understand, and even fewer put into practice. The only way to know the Tao is to experience it, and it is…How Things Really Are - The Inbuilt Design Flaws
Chaos, Disorder And Decay Is The Natural Order Of Things. Nobody has the perfect life. We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health…Intuition Or Anxiety - Are There Angels Or Devils Crawling Here?
How To Tell The Difference Between Intuition and Anxiety. How do you know whether the voice of your intuition is real or just the product of your inner anxiety? Several months ago I was having a drink…What Is Truth - How To Tell A Partial Truth From The Whole Truth?
How the truth and nothing but the truth is often not the whole truth. My great aunty Flo broke her arm and died. It is true that she broke her arm in 1923. It is also true that she died in 1949. But t…Duality And Life Beyond Your Thinking Mind
Duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuses on the limitations of time, foreground and background, duality and "stuckness". The first aspect of duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuse…The Conscious Mind Is Limited - Be Aware And Be Prepared
Being aware is the first stage of being prepared. The conscious mind is limited in so many ways. There are some who would argue that there is no such thing as conscious thought and that it is represen…Your Inner Map Of Reality - Here's Why You Think The Way You Do
The big picture of how your inner map of reality creates your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. Your inner map of reality is based on the filters of your own ethnic, national, social, family and rel…The Failure Of Cancel Culture - Suppression Not Engagement
Why we need to wear our beliefs lightly and develop negative capability. Throughout history people have campaigned to fight beliefs, ideologies, and injustices that they perceived to be oppressive, di…4 Big Reasons Why We Get Stuck In Our Attempts At Personal Change
Most People Spend Their Entire Life Imprisoned Within The Confines Of Their Own Thoughts. This first of the 4 big reasons why we get stuck is, in my view, the most important. The "self-help industry…How Do I Change And Why Is It So Hard?
We Would Rather Die Than Change, And We Usually Do In my experience, the vast majority of people who say they want to change don’t change. Most people reading this won’t change because they don’t real…The Illusion Of A Separate Self - Windows 11 With Self Awareness!
Beyond the content of your mind you are so much more than you think you are. When we talk of "myself" this is the conventional way of referring to our self image which is in fact the ego's constructio…Finite And Infinite Games - Dazed, Confused & Ultimately Transcendent
This is not an instruction manual, it is a wake up call!
Over this past week I have read Professor James Carse's highly regarded "Finite And Infinite Games - A Vision Of Life As Play And Possibility"…The Gap And The Gain - How Your Brain Sabotages Your Happiness
How Your Lizard Brain Sabotages Your Happiness We are hardwired to measure our progress in any and all areas of life where we have goals and aspirations. We can't not do it. But what we measure and ho…How To Wake Up - 4 Simple Practices To Help You Wake Up Now
So What Exactly Does It Mean to Wake Up - What Is "Enlightenment"? There is nothing magical, mystical or mysterious about waking up we’re actually having glimpses of enlightenment all the time. Enligh…Situational Communication - Different Strokes For Different Folks
Situational communication is about taking account of 3 often ignored factors about the other person. You are a situational communicator when you recognise that effective communication is not an event…How To Influence Without Authority - 6 Key Tips
The secret to how to influence without authority is that you get what you really want by giving other people what they really want. We live in an interconnected world and knowing how to influence with…Change Questions To Change Your Outcomes
Asking The Right Questions Is Critical For A Successful Change. Every time we initiate a significant change - whether in our personal life or in an organisation - we will most likely over-estimate our…Group Culture - The Invisible Software That Rules Your Life
Group culture is: "How we do things round here". We like to see ourselves as free agents making our own choices and living authentically but the reality is that The Matrix has many layers and we are u…Why Getting From A to B Is Not Aways A Straight Line
In circumstances of significant change, the progress from A to B will not be in a straight line. We run our lives largely on auto-pilot. In most circumstances your experience of getting from A to B is…The Art Of Persuasion Planning For Success - Here's How To Do It!
To be successful in the art of persuasion you must ensure that certain things happen. To be successful in the art of persuasion you must establish a framework of what has to happen to get you to that…The Art Of Persuasion Advanced Communication Skills - Gaining Buyin
Create The Environment Where They Want To Buyin to Your Proposal In order to build the win-win you have to uncover what it is that the other person really wants or needs, and to do that you have to as…The Art Of Persuasion The One Fundamental Principle - Create A Win-Win
The art of persuasion is based on the simple idea that you get what you want by enabling the other party to get what they want. Being a nice friendly person with good inter-personal skills may be a go…Communication Persuasion And Change - Key Skills To Survive & Succeed
It's not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those who are most responsive to change, the most persuasive, and the best communicators. We are living in an age of unprecedented ch…The Eisenhower Box - What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent
What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent And What Is Urgent Is Seldom Important. The Eisenhower Box is a time management and decision-making model devised by President Dwight Eisenhower to help him prioriti…