Privacy And Isolation From Other Minds

The disconnection between human minds is something that every being like myself experiences whether or not they truly focus on it or understand it.  No matter how strongly it might seem otherwise to someone in the grip of assumptions, there is no way to just tell from facial expressions, outward behaviors, or words what someone really believes or is thinking or intending.  A double-edged sword, this part of human existence can have its desirable and burdensome aspects.  It is the sole reason why people can seemingly protect their thoughts from others (I say seemingly because one cannot tell from outward appearances if other people share the inability to gaze into other minds), though it also keeps us forever separated in one sense.

This first of these two ramifications can bring relief.  If every other person has this same limitation, then they cannot see into one's mind to identify the thoughts one would prefer to keep hidden from them.  Unless others only appear to be incapable of peering into one's actual mind--not facial expressions or implied or verbalized intentions or beliefs, but into one's consciousness itself--then there all of one's thoughts are ultimately private and no one else, save for God and any other telepathic beings, could truly know them.  There is an extreme degree of privacy in this that many people appear to take for granted or not fully comprehend.  At the same time, the very same metaphysical distinctiveness and epistemological barriers that prevent others from seeing into one's mind prevent one and others from the most absolute form of connection.

If you cannot see into the thoughts of others and they cannot see into yours, then there is a kind of isolation present no matter how strongly non-rationalists might feel or believe that they really can totally connect with others with no potential for illusions, misperceptions, or assumptions.  They are not only cut off from having someone else intrude on their thoughts by seeing them without permission (or seeming to not be able to do this, since a person can only know that they cannot look into other minds and cannot know if other minds can see into theirs), but they are also cut off from the potential psychological refuge of knowing that others see them exactly as they are.  For some, recognizing the latter fact makes life incredibly lonely at times.

It is at this time that it needs to be remembered that it is still possible for two beings with this massive limitation of being unable to see each other's minds, thoughts, and feelings to love and genuinely connect with each other.  It is a connection that is devoid of absolute certainty as to whether there even is another mind one has bonded with, and there is always the potential one is being misled even if all evidence points to the contrary, but the gulf between minds does mean that life-giving friendships or marriages cannot be savored all the same.  That true psychological privacy is by necessity accompanied by a grand kind of isolation from whatever other minds might exist does not logically require that people cannot come to deeply connect with each other as far as their limited perceptions allow.