An umwelt (plural: umwelten) is a given creature’s world. The creature creates their own umwelt as they learn about the outside world through their perception. The outside world is, for its part, called the umgebung.

A creature cannot learn about the umgebung without its senses. We have no other way to gain knowledge. This forces us to consider the strengths of and weaknesses of our ability to perceive. Everything we consider true about the world is dependent on the accuracy of our observations. Look around you. Your mental concept of walls and floors is probably smooth, by convenience. But walls usually aren’t that smooth at all, even though they’re more or less flat. Your umwelt does not contain the texture of the floor until you specifically observe it and incorporate it into your worldview. When you walk past a brick building, is every single brick part of your umwelt? No, you have not observed the bricks individually, but only as a whole.

These examples are usually inconsequential, but contemplate how varied human perception is. Every person represents a unique idea, an emotional framework built on experiences filtered through perception. Physical disabilities all immediately impact umwelten, but so does a kind upbringing or a cruel mentorship. Mental illness, physical illness, trauma, kindness, changes in how big or small the world seems, pure knowledge: they all can and will change a person’s umwelt forever.

You have your own umwelt. For myself, I believe most, maybe all, people should be treated with kindness and that kindness exists on some level in all people, if they should choose to access it. I want to believe that one can generally trust another. What would it take for a child soldier to believe the same things? If they had seen their kind (or cruel) parents killed, if they had been tortured until they became willing to kill, and the very act of survival turned them into the things they hated most? When that same child miraculously survives and grows up, only to become a war criminal because they could not escape that lifestyle or adapted to it too successfully? Or a young person from a rural family, promised work in a safer, more stable place, who arrive in a strange land only to be kidnapped by those who were supposed to be their provider? When they are drugged, never hearing any speech in a language they understand, beaten and abused as chattel? If we do not contemplate the natural beliefs of people in such dire circumstances, we cannot hope to understand our fellow people.

In corollary, there are also the umwelten of people like Nadia Murad, humans rights activists who are themselves victims, or Maria Gaetana Agnesi, a Catholic polymath raised in an unusually liberal climate who ignored her appointment by the Pope as the second female university professor ever to teach children and take care of the sick.

Moving past the individual, umwelten also form across species. Jakob von Uexküll, the creator of the umwelt concept, was fascinated with the umwelten of creatures like ticks and jellyfish, both of which are blind. Consider how the world you believe in would be different, had you been 1. born blind, 2. became blind after learning to see, and 3. the whole human race was blind and had never learned of such a thing as seeing. Variances in the individual umwelten are only further complicated because these variances are determined within the boundaries determined by the circumstances of our birth: species, upbringing, civilization, culture, nationality, technology, race, gender. Our experiences infuse meaning into our world that we will never be able to communicate to someone without the same experiences.

Before we even arrive at questions of language, word choice, and empathy, perfect communication is already impossible, because we cannot perceive the experiences that give meaning to words. Even when we are coparticipants or observers of a relevant experience, we have not perceived the experience as the umwelt creator did. We cannot know what they focus on, what memories they use to infuse meaning into their current experience. This means that concepts like consent and agreement, so essential for our coexistence, are only ever partial. Why do lawyers draft hundred-page contracts? Because the contracting parties have no way of knowing how much their umwelten have in common. They only have belief: beliefs about the deal they believe they are making and beliefs about what the deal they think the other party thinks they are making. When two umwelten interact, we have a semiosphere, whether we are contracting, reading this essay, or trying to be understand someone else.

Many social problems begin with the problems of forming a good semiosphere. These problems, however, are all external. A similar, but possibly greater problem, is that of the innenwelt. The innenwelt is the you that you create within your umwelt. You cannot learn anything about yourself, save what you perceive. However, there is no bound on the number of filters between the you who puts information out and the you who perceives that information. When you contemplate your own mind, you create separate selves to act and perceive. You do not perceive yourself as part of the umgebung, as you may a brick or insect. You only perceive what you yourself present. When you present information to another, if you try to learn about yourself through that information, you must wait until it passes through the other person’s umwelt and then comes back however they present it. Many of the difficulties of life amount to difficulties in forming an innenwelt. Endless stories have been written for characters who fail to form their innenwelt. Are Borges’ stories anything but his characters’ innenwelten falling apart or manifesting, in turn representing Borges’ pursuit of his own innenwelt? Even the sciences, contemplation of the umgebung, stem from the pursuit of the innenwelt: creating the self by recreating the universe (of which the self is part) within the mind.

Takeaway

Lest this be mistaken for idle philosophy, I would like to say a few things. As you become more aware of your own umwelt and the umwelten of all other life, you necessarily learn things that should change who you are. You must be conscious of your own fragility, as a weak body of flesh vulnerable to all manner of disease and injury, but also as a mind. It is a fact that a sizable percentage of what you believe is false. However, you will never know how much is false or in which way you’re wrong. You cannot know, in truth and in spirit, whether your errors are fundamental or nuanced. You do not know whether another person knows a thing, you may only believe. No matter how objectively wrong someone may be within the umgebung, they may be speak pure truth within their umwelt.

First, be understanding. It doesn’t matter if it’s a disagreement, a misunderstanding, an argument, or whatever. You do not know the condition of another’s umwelt and innenwelt (or even, really, the condition of your own). What they believe may not be True, but it is true enough for them, as they currently are.

Second, be gentle. That truth, no matter how robust or weak, is the sum of a life of learning through pain and hope, curiosity, success and disappointment. Do not force another person’s umwelt to become yours. Let them form it themselves, while providing compelling evidence that they are loved.

Third, be kind. The more I contemplate the umwelten, the more I am terrified. People hurt a lot under all circumstances. Do not add to their suffering. It may be incredibly difficult for you to beautify or love your own umwelt, but you can make things better through goodness to others.

In particular, encourage the kind, the gentle, the pure, the childlike, whose umwelten are precious and beautiful above all others. Such are often discouraged as naive, immature, or idealistic. The answer is to help them to become harmless as doves, cunning as serpents, not to turn their kindness against them. Contemplating the umwelten of such people is a pure blessing, So, I repeat what I said and end: encourage the kind, the gentle, the pure, the childlike, whose umwelten are precious and beautiful above all others.

See also

Wikipedia

Flip Flappers, reading about this anime introduced me to the umwelt concept.

Sonder, an exercise or experience in which you contemplate the umwelten of those around you. Bringing people into your umwelt as individuals, instead of as components of a collective image.

Neuroscience Readies for a Showdown Over Consciousness Ideas, an article by Quanta Magazine featuring Integrated Information Theory, a related theory of conscious I find very exciting.

The Guilty, a film that implements this concept well without invoking it. An excellent example of sympathetic storytelling.