Our past experiences are supposed to shape how we approach the world and how we see things, but what happens when those past experiences lead us into forming opinions and holding perspectives that are wrong but have been shaped by the experiences we’ve had?
James Ogunjimi
If you’ve heard the word ‘incognito’ before, you know it has to do with concealing your true identity. If you use Google Chrome, you’d know too that incognito is where you go when you want to safely browse a page or search something without leaving a trace.
Beyond that though, incognito represents a place where your past searches, views and opinions don’t come into play and don’t factor into the present. They don’t influence what you see and do in the present.
That’s the incognito I want to focus on briefly today.
Why are we talking about this?
In today’s world, there are loads of topics and opinions competing for our attention, and most times, our approach to those opinions is to allow personal bias and past history to influence what our take on it is.
For instance, 2+2 is supposed to be 4. But sometimes, based on our previous experiences, we may argue that 2+2 is 3.
Our past experiences are supposed to shape how we approach the world and how we see things, but what happens when those past experiences lead us into forming opinions and holding perspectives that are wrong but have been shaped by the experiences we’ve had?
That’s when you need something I call the incognito test.
What's this incognito test?
The incognito test is a test that strips down the opinions we are tilting towards and sieves out the part influenced by personal bias from the true one and allows you to see something for what it is, and not what your past positive or negative experiences have told you it should be.
In Nigeria for instance, a huge part of the leadership issues the country has is tied to the civil war. Grandparents and parents that witnessed the barefaced wickedness and hate-fuelled atrocities that happened during that period passed down the gory details, the hate and anger to the generations after them who then ran with it.
It’s why in today’s Nigeria, elections are not really about who can do the job best, it’s about who’s from where and who shouldn’t be allowed to get to a post of leadership.
That’s the kind of thing that an incognito test can fix. While the last example probably requires a move towards national reconciliation to fix the issues, on an individual level, the incognito test can help individuals sieve out the negative past experiences they’ve either experienced or had passed down to them to be able to choose competence over ethnicity-driven decisions.
There are loads of other issues in today’s world from gender issues to relationships, politics, technology, finance, security, and co. They all require you to take a stance and while we won’t all have the same view on it, it is important that whatever view it is, is an accurate reflection of what we think, and not what our negative experiences have programmed us to think.
Taking the test...
Here’s how you can conduct the incognito test on opinions you hold and views you share:
First, have an opinion. That should be a great starting point. What do you think about governance? How about privacy issues? Relationships? Just have an opinion first, doesn’t matter yet if they’re right or wrong.
Next would be to ask yourself questions like:
1. If XYZ wasn’t my friend, would I still feel the same way about this issue? On social media for instance, there is the tendency to subconsciously support something if your friend does it or believes it.
They don’t need to reach out to say “support me”, but you do it all the same. Say your friend is choosing to stay in an abusive marriage, you may find yourself making a case for why someone would want to remain in an abusive marriage even though in reality, you believe in “leave to live”.
Even if you’re not going to brashly go online and shit on people who choose to remain in abusive marriages, the incognito test helps you clarify your thoughts so you know where you truly stand.
2. Have I had an incident in the past that could make me biased on this issue? Is trauma deciding my perspectives in life? A few years ago, I was trying to do some freelancing on a platform called freelancer,com and after writing for a Bangladesh dude for over 2 weeks, it turned out that he was a scam and I’d burned money to fuel my generator and all for nothing.
For the next 1-2 years, I’d frown every time I came across a name that looks like it was from Bangladesh, maybe even India. That one person’s actions led me to color an entire country, maybe even 2 countries badly. Until I passed my views through the incognito test.
See, if trauma that you experienced in the past colors your views in life, you’re going to remain in a dark place, unable to have truly independent and accurate perspectives on life, but rather you’d have colored, inaccurate ones bred from a place of anger, distrust and constant negativity.
The Incognito Test does not just allow us to view life without lenses that have been tampered with, it removes lenses completely and allows us to see life unhindered and to have opinions that are truly ours, and not a creation of our trauma, a solidarity stand with our friends and loved ones, or a subconscious consent to prevaling opinions crafted to egg us into making decisions or taking stances that don’t reflect who we are or what we believe.
The Incognito Test gives us our lives back and restores our ability to see life and living for what it truly is, whether it’s good or bad.
This week, reexamine the opinions you hold and the perspectives you’ve shared, strip them bare, pass them through the Incognito Test, and let me know what you find.
I have to go now, but I wish you an amazing week, and I hope you have a splendid June.
