Ego as Thermometer

Here's another old post from 2007 which happens to be relevant to the season we're in.

"It is sooooo HOT in here!" "It is FREEZING in here!"

Whenever I hear people say things like this, I want to ask: What do you mean by "it"?

When a person says, "It's hot" or "It's cold," what the person really means is "I am hot" or "I am cold." Such a person is really making a statement about the temperature relative to himself or herself, but couching that statement in objective terms. What is actually a subjective feeling is being spoken about as though it were an objective quality of the room, in the same way one might say, "This room is dark" or "This room is empty." In truth, it is more precise to say, "I feel hot" or "I feel cold." 

"So what?" you might ask, "People speak imprecisely all of the time. Everyone knows what they really mean."

Be that as it may, I have seen many people get into arguments over the temperature in a room. One guy will complain, "It's freezing in here, let's turn on the heat!" and the other guy will respond, "What do you mean? It's stuffy in here! You're crazy!" Each one of these individuals is making the same error: treating a personal feeling as an objective reality.

As long as each disputant treats his position as an objective statement, there is no room for resolution. If I say, "The earth is flat" and you say "The earth is round," only one of us can be correct. We can examine the properties of the common object of discussion and come to an agreement. But when one person say, "It's cold" and the other person says, "It's warm," they won't get anywhere because they are talking about different "it"s. If both of them would recognize that they are really just making statements about themselves, they would go about settling their quarrel differently. 

I react similarly when I hear students say, "That teacher is boring!" What the student really means is, "I am bored by that teacher" or even "Many students are bored by that teacher." "Boring" is not an objective quality. It is a statement about one's subjective experience. To treat "boring" as an inherent property of something or someone is to make oneself the measure of all things.

In a nutshell, the mistake being made in both of these cases is confusing matters of taste with matters of truth. The sharp division between these two realms should be recognized, always. The more one indulges in this bad habit of mind - even in trivial matters - the more one runs the risk of making this type of error where it counts.

The root of the aforementioned mistake is our egocentricity. So just remember: next time you comment on the temperature, don't use your ego thermometer.