We don't know what is going on inside other people

This really boils down to the fact that we do not have access to anything other than our interpretations of the sense-data that we take in. The fact that we cannot say anything for sure about anything except our own direct experience. I think that if one understands what this means, it should come as quite a shock, because it sort of changes everything when it comes to how one by necessity must view the world and other people.

I think that this is a fact that more people should reflect upon for several reasons. The most obvious one is compassion. Just like with human history, personal history only offers onlookers glimpses. We know that, for example, a major event has taken place. We might also know some details. But we are oblivious to the absolute majority of the details. And we know even less about the person’s inner state when the event took place. What was his/her relation to the relevant factors of the event? His/her degree of maturity or awareness when the event took place? How has he/she processed it since?

I think all of what I’ve said so far is pretty self-evident. And yet, how often do we think this way when we interact with others? Wouldn’t we treat others with more compassion if we did? I know I would. But instead, I often fall into the habitual thinking that I already know what a person’s behavior means. What that behavior tells me about that person. 

While I often tend to judge a person by their words and actions, I also tend to be naive in other situations. Namely that I often unconsciously assume that people are more or less who they say that they are and that their intentions are what they claim that they are.

The thing is that once a person realizes clearly that they have a persona, a social self, and an inner self, they will have a conscious choice of what to display outwardly and what to keep inside. About how large the discrepancy between the inner and outer self is going to be. This is something we do naturally without thinking of it of course.

As with the fact that we cannot know someone’s emotional life just from what we know about them or from observing them, this is also self-evident. But do we really think of what this means? All of our choices have consequences for our characters. What happens, for example, with a person that decides consciously to put up an act to gain advantages over others? 

This, I think, is most important when it comes to public figures. Not just because many of them most definitely must have made this decision. But also because, even if we know this, we often unconsciously respond to what they are saying as if it comes from a place of sincerity.