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What you see is not always what you get!
Rubin’s Vase is well known in psychology. It is the two-dimensional picture in which one can see a vase in the middle of the image and nothing else. Or, one can see two opposing faces, and no vase in the middle. It is not too difficult to see both the vase image and the two faces.
There are moving black and white images as well, such as the Spinning Dancer, and some folks cannot see the dancer spin in opposite direction. The direction of the dancer focuses us and it takes trickery to make the opposite direction happen. It can be hard for the brain to see both possible spins.
Why do we have such a problem with this phenomenon? Because we use many two-dimensional realities in our daily lives and we gladly accept that just one version is correct. It is so much easier for us that way.
Take money, for instance, we value this value so much that many of us get out of our warm beds in the morning just to get some of it. But if someone walked over with Mickey Mouse money to pay us for something, we’d quickly see what our money truly is: a piece of paper with printed matter on it — a fake we nevertheless hold dear with all we’ve got. As long as others hold on to the fake with the same endearment, we’re fine of course. Get out of bed!
