How To Add Filters In Shotcut

20080813-filters

Whammo! You didn't see that coming, did you?

Why is it that, despite all our planning, we sometimes get defenseless by surprise, totally unprepared, with our pants down as it were? I mean, nosotros're smart folks, right? How come sometimes we just don't encounter stuff coming?

The respond is, much of the time, that nosotros don't encounter everything clearly because we don't run into a lot of things at all. We process the raw stuff of experience through a variety of filters – and we human activity on the "processed" information, non the world as it is.

Those filters are engrained in u.s., often from nascency, and most of the time they help us to effectively part in our social and physical environments. For example, one very elementary filter we have is how to isolate something interesting or of import from a chaotic background – think finding your keys among the mess at the bottom of your pocketbook. Or identifying something good to consume – a ripe fruit, perhaps – amongst the unripe fruits, leaves, and branches of a tree.

That'southward a pretty basic filtering ability (though the physiological mechanisms involved are quite complex) that humans everywhere rely on every 24-hour interval to survive, so it'southward a good thing. Simply there are many much more than complex filters that we pick upwardly as part of our thinking repertoire, and as helpful as they might sometimes be, they can too get usa into a lot of problem.

Here are some examples:

Linguistic communication

Language is a powerful force in shaping our beliefs. Just enquire a sanitation engineer! Employers have long recognized the fashion that job titles can affect employee performance – which is why there are so few clerks and so many assembly at your local retail mega-outlet.

But linguistic communication can lead us off-target, every bit well. Consider this example drawn from the annals of linguistics: a tanning manufacturing plant discharges wastes, mostly animal thing, into a pond. The decomposing waste matter creates flammable gasses. A "pond", though, is not flammable, right? I mean, right?! A man is working nearly the pond. Non taking any special precautions – why would you, next to a "pond"? – he ignites a blow-torch. A canvass of flame engulfs the swimming and spreads to the nearby manufactory, destroying it.

The linguistic communication nosotros utilise to depict people can strongly influence our beliefs towards them. Feminists recognized this when they started insisting on terms like "police officer" rather than "policeman". Or consider this: numerous studies have shown that people with "ethnic-sounding" names are less likely to get job interviews as similarly-qualified people with "white-sounding" names.

Gender

Gender is a powerful filter in every civilisation – although the behaviors it shapes tin can be very different from culture to culture. What is considered men's work in one gild – carrying heavy loads of bricks, for example – might be considered women'southward piece of work in another.

Gender leads us astray when it leads us to expect at a person'due south gender as an index of their abilities. For instance, in the US, it is mutual to hear people say things like "men are stronger than women". This is not true. Some men are stronger than nigh women, a handful of men are stronger than all women, and nigh men are stronger than some women. But knowing someone's gender does not tell you anything almost how strong they are!

Assumptions near gender extend far across physical attributes. With few exceptions, women still are non promoted to top-level corporate positions, despite the number of qualified women in the business world. Men are assumed to have "leadership qualities" that women lack – and women'due south leadership qualities tend to be dismissed as signs of "manliness" or "bitchiness".

Race and Ethnicity

What is true of gender is also true of race and ethnicity. Knowing someone's race or ethnicity tells us little about that particular person – yet we human action every bit if it told us a lot. Here's an instance: a blackness student of mine was accused of plagiarism in another class when she handed in an excellent essay. This is a student that added immensely to every classroom discussion she took function in, and who wrote insightfully in every assignment she gave me (including "personal reflection" papers that cannot be plagiarized). The other professor did not have whatever examples of work that the student had allegedly copied from; it was only "too skillful". Race may not have been the only factor, only it was clearly a cistron; I've never had a white student of similar quality face a similar accusation.

Here's another instance: Black and other minority athletes, performers, even military leaders and politicians are often described every bit "articulate", an adjective rarely applied to their white counterparts. People do non expect clear speech from non-white persons, and are surprised when they hear intelligent dialogue from black speakers.

Personal Feel

An old joke claims, "All Indians walk single file. At least, the one I saw did."

Personal feel is a powerful learning tool, simply it can lead us astray when we make fake assumptions based on generalizations from limited experience. Childhood experience can make for peculiarly powerful filters, as they tend to be imbued with stiff emotional resonance, but whatever feel tin can pb united states of america to wrong conclusions.

Examining Your Filters

What is insidious nearly all of these factors is that almost of the fourth dimension they office without usa even noticing them. We don't promote Chad over Wilma because Chad'due south a man, but considering he seems more "leaderly", because he has that "certain something". And peradventure he does – or maybe our invisible assumptions about gender brand weak signs of "sure somethingness" seem potent, while Wilma's powerful "certain somethingness" is filtered out.

Information technology'southward unlikely that you lot will grab your filters at work in your day-to-day life, but yous can reflect on the way you have interacted with other people and how you've handled various situations (perhaps in a weekly review?). You lot may well be surprised to observe that, in many cases, you can't seem to put your finger on exactly why you lot acted the mode you did – a certain sign of a filter at work. Paying attending to those moments will bring you a long mode towards replacing the stock of feel and received wisdom with filters that allow y'all to more accurately and effectively act.

I've listed only a scattering of obvious filters hither. What are your filters? How could you deal with them?