(Originally posted in 2016, but this post received major updates in 2026.)
Have you ever seen one of those old maps that depict the world in a skewed or funny way?
I’m talking about maps like these:
It’s mind-boggling to think that back in the day, people had such inaccurate maps—yet were still able to navigate the world.
(Sure, some Europeans thought the Americas were India. But who doesn’t make mistakes from time to time?)
All Maps Distort
Did you know that present-day maps of the world still visually distort the true sizes and proportions?
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/KUF_Ckv8HbE
To be fair, the reason the world on one of the modern maps doesn’t look like the world we live in isn’t that modern map-makers still suck at making them.
The distortions are simply downstream of trying to translate a 3-dimensional reality to a 2-dimensional medium.
That’s a worthwhile thing to remember, as we continue exploring this topic:
That even the best maps don’t show you the planet as it actually is.
And because of that there are be less “accurate” maps that depict some specific details more accurately than the map you’re looking at.
When you think about it, it’s funny how little time we spend actively using our map of the world for anything.
It’s like the purpose of this map was not to use it, but to memorize it, so you never have to wonder.
Indeed, the map of the world isn’t a map you use to navigate at all (you just rarely find yourself in Pakistan looking for directions to Bujumbura), it’s a map you use to hold in mind as implicit context.
Your Maps of Reality
Most of the time, you’re not navigating life on a level of traveling from region A to region B, but on the level of your direct reality:
“How will I achieve this goal? Why is that person acting that way? How do I discuss this important personal issue without hurting anyone?”
And to navigate yourself in that direct reality, you use maps of reality.
Some of those maps are similar to the maps you use to go from street A to street B (“I’m in this situation, what did I learn about this?”), but most of them are more like the world maps:
Implicit context that you don’t think about, but still navigate reality by.
Who makes these maps?
Your map of reality is crafted by you, as you move through life and relate to it.
Which means there are no standardized maps. We each get some things right and some things wrong on our map, but we can only see what’s on ours, not what’s on the others.
In the past, when we wandered through a new land, we stored every important piece of information we could find: Which berries are bad for us, where the best water source was and which mushrooms are fun, etc.
This way, we slowly made a map of reality.
We still do this, especially when it comes to our social landscape. Our mind stores things like which types of people to trust, which jokes are(n’t) funny and how to make sure you’re flirting, not harrassing.
There’s one problem though: How do you make a map of which things cause you to die, without first having to die to figure it out?
Or what about second-order, third-order, twenty-fifth order consequences?
What if your map says “heroine good, always give good feeling”, and by the time you figure out the downside, it’s too late?
Culture is a technology that solves this problem to a degree. Any culture we are born into, or choose to subscribe to, allows us to download maps that have been refined by many people through the years.
The downside is we also inherit their biases. The upside is, we don’t have to figure it all out by ourselves.
This capacity to create predictable(-ish) patterns / associations (e.g. “smoke means fire”) and subsequently create a map of reality we can instinctively use to navigate it—and even pass on to each other—is one of our species’ biggest survival assets.
But this is crucial to remember:
Just as with the world, we navigate reality using a map as context, which doesn’t look the same as the territory it represents.
The map is a distorted and compressed image made based on a mixture of guesses and detected patterns. Some are yours, some were passed on by others to help, some where deliberate misrepresentations because changing your map could make you serve someone’s agenda.
And as with the world, even the best map can not shows you things as they are.
If it included everything, it would be identical to reality itself.
But reality itself is so complex that most situations would be impossible to make sense of.
Imagine trying to navigate to a friend’s house while you see all the atoms around and inside you dancing in microscopic detail. It doesn’t really work. Trust me, some of us have been there.
So there’s utility in temporarily holding a limited perspective—even if that makes it inaccurate—because it reduces the amount of data we need to take into account when making decisions.
This means our decisions have slightly more chance to be “wrong”, but they take way less effort to make—and a decision you can make is better than one you postpone just because you’re too busy tripping over fractals or something.
How Your Map Makes You Hallucinate
Our map of reality being wrong or inaccurate is not really an issue.
When in doubt, we can always consult with reality itself by meeting it directly.
The problem is that most of the time, nearly all of us, believe that our map is reality.
So much that we even forget we have a map.
So much that we experience reality through our map, not even realizing we’re looking at a hallucination.
And this is a feature, not a bug.
We need to believe that our map is reality, because we depend on our map for our survival (remember? you have to know which things can unalive you!)—and most of our map is based on second-hand information.
If we’re constantly aware that most of our map is just filled with stuff we aren’t really sure about, we would stop using it—and that would be worse for us.
So here’s what our brain does when we interact with the world:
- Senses receive input (not “perceive”)
- Sensory signals are sent to the brain
- Brain interprets and matches the signals to context, associations, past experiences, expectations, etc. (our “map”)
- Brain determines what the signals mean
- We relate to that meaning
- We interpret all of this together
- We perceive the interpretation as reality
Yes, that means on any given day, it’s possible—even likely—that you are witnessing things which aren’t actually happening (e.g., that fight on the street may be something else entirely, and your neighbor may not be flirting with you).
Perceptual distortions are extremely common.
Even during step 1 in this process, you are already limited by the things your senses can perceive. So if all your senses are in perfect condition this will still be a perspective limited by the capacities of the human body.
(Check out this short comic about the mantis shrimp and you’ll know exactly what I mean. )
Any part of reality that your senses don’t pick up on will not be on your map.
Even though it’s real, and it is definitely there, it will seem to to you like it’s not.
Step 3 is an other place of common distortions. Because your brain will usually pattern match based on abstract concepts it has stored (e.g. “this thing is a chair”) instead of seeing the thing.
(Here’s a video demonstrating that.)
This is not a “start-to-finish-process” either, it’s a feedback loop that never stops. You see what you see, then you create an interpretation of it based on your map and how you relate to it. …which in turn influences the next thing you feel/see/hear and leaves out any information that doesn’t fit into the map you’ve made so far.
Your map of reality isn’t static. It receives constant updates.
But rest assured that the parts you drew first are most prone to confirmation bias.
And since we’ve all had different experiences early in life, the parts we’re most certain of can be wildly different (and wildly wrong, because we were a bunch of toddlers trying to make maps).
This means that when we are in a room together, experientially, we are all in different rooms, believing everyone else is in the same one as us.
Isn’t that a wild thought?
Additionally, anything our mind cannot conceive of will will also be excluded from your map (it will be awareness-gated).
And of course, all of the above also applies to any cultural waters you’re swimming in.
How Useful Is Your Map?
We already discussed why it’s useful to have a map, even when you know it is inaccurate.
It’s also important to question how useful is your specific map, to you specifically.
How is it serving you?
For starters, different maps, since you will confuse them for reality, will create different emotional experiences.
If you have a map of reality that sees a dark, evil world in which everyone struggles, that map will make your reality feel negative.
But this is not the only thing that matters.
If you have a map of reality that sees only rainbows, unicorns and sunshine, your map excludes a lot of how reality really works. It will make you delusional and less able to navigate this world. It can lead to serious harm.
It’s not that the world is a bad place or a good place, it’s that it’s just a very placy place—and your map is what decorates it.
Or more accurately, what filters it, because reality includes everything but your map decides what you experience.
Updating Your Map
If you want to make a new, better map of reality, find the edges.
Remember how old maps used to have these markings on the side that implied “HERE BE DRAGONS”.
Go there.
Allow yourself to fall off the edge of your world.
Go where there be dragons and krakens and find out if they’re real.
Run exploriments with the potential to shatter your worldview.
Practice setting your map aside. Have temporary amnesia and allow reality to present itself brand new.
I’ve found that the more I dare to ignore my map of reality, the more magic happens.
I’ve also found it’s best not to throw away my map. Both as a lifeline and a way to maintain common (understanding) with other people.
The point isn’t to discard your current map. It’s to learn to discern between moments when you’re looking at a map of something/someone/reality as a whole, and when you’re actually seeing them as they are.
These are distinctly different experience, and real seeing starts with building capacity to be in complete unknowing without freaking out.
Using Your Map to Resolve Conflict
When communication seems to break down between you and another person, remember you both have different maps of reality.
It’s quite common to be in agreement, but think you’re at odds, simply because you look at the same situation from a different map.
Get curious about their map. Compare assumptions. Rejoice when you discover discrepancies, because they can allow you to both make better maps.
Or if they’re not feeling cooperative, temporarily navigate reality with them using their map, rather than pointing at your map and insisting they use it.
These are all ways that can help drive conflict towards a resolution.
In a perfect world, if both sides can bring curiosity to each other’s maps, they will both learn something about reality the other misses, which is the spirit of good debate.
But unfortunately, debates often end up being about winning instead.
Why is this? There are many reasons, but here’s one:
A lot of conflicts that seem to be about people are actually about maps.
We argue about who has the right map, we even fight wars about these maps.
It’s easy to see how that plays out in, say religious warfare, or war between capitalist & communist countries. But this also happens in our day-to-day lives.
One person may argue “famous person good” and the other “no, famous person bad”, but what they’re really arguing about is their map. Because that person is both outside their sphere of influence, and outside of their observable reality.
One person may argue “you’re too promiscuous” and the other may argue “you’re too prudish”, but what they’re really arguing about is their maps.
And why we constantly argue about maps is this:
Our map was designed for self-preservation.
We hold on to our maps for dear life, like a holy truth to be defended, because they keep us alive.
To question our map is to realize that we’ve been living in an illusion all this time.
The problem is that there is no map which is 100% right. All maps are illusions, not reality. But the only way we can use them is to have so much faith in them that we see them as undisputable.
Because losing faith in the accuracy of our map is temporarily losing faith in our relationship to reality and therefore, our ability to survive.
This won’t change. But we can teach ourselves to snap out of it. And we can continuously build our capacity.
The greater our capacity for staying in tension, uncertainty and the unknown, the greater our capacity for intimacy with reality—and the more we’ll be able to meet others as they are, because we won’t need the world to conform to our own map of it.
(And as a pleasant side-effect, everything becomes more magical.)
If you want to learn how to separate your map from reality itself, how to build capacity, and how to use all of this to resolve conflict:
This is one of the main things we do in the Connection Dojo.
Just send me an email or DM, and I’ll send you the information (as long as spots are still available).
Much love,
Pep
(Featured image by Ian Panelo)