Which is more important: intention or perception?

Question

Which should you listen to more?

example: We in America believe ourselves to be moral, charitable, god fearing people who have opted to spread our way of life around the world.

The world sees us a tyrannical gluttons with no morals who just want to exploit the weak to become richer.

Which point of view is reality? Which is more important?

NOTE: this is not a hate America statement, it is simply the easiest example I can think of.

Answer 1

that is an AMAZING question.
well i think reality's point of view is both intention and perception, depending on the person. more important, to me would be intention.


i totally agree with the example you gave by the way. may your powerful mind keep thinking!

Answer 2

Intention is nice but virtually meaningless.

Reality proceeds Perception. Perception is just our guess at reality.

Is Perception Reality? Oh Hell No!

Now perception matters, because it tells you how people are going to react.
You cannot be an effective politician without understand the importance of spin.
But if a politician thinks appearing to accomplish something is more important than actually accomplishing it, they are serving themselves, not the public.
And JTFR 'intending' to accomplish something in meaningless.

America's world wide perception problems are very much like the sexual harassment issue here at home. Nobody is laying down an objective standard. Perception is considered reality, so anyone who 'feels' harassed is. It becomes difficult to separate genuine cases of harassment from oversensitivity or neurotic behavior. Now, imagine some militant feminist has convinced most your female employees that men are 24/7 harassers. This is Americas situation.

See, when America is portrayed as a villain, sometimes we actually have corporate interests running rough shod over native populations. Most the time though we are just buying goods and services at an agreed upon price, from a bunch of oversensitive, neurotic yahoos.

The big villain here is Karl Marx, though sometimes it's just human nature.

When we look at a man whos gotten wealthy, we think either 'That's a clever fellow.' or 'That's a thief.' (Sometimes we think both.) Now to admit someone's clever is usually to admit that we are not, so human nature inclines us toward the 'thief' theory. In the long run though, wealth cannot created by a society of thieves, it comes from the continuous process of having and rewarding good ideas.

America has been profoundly fortunate to have just that. A free market economy (aka Capitalism) in which it's people are free to try new ideas, and a Judeo-Christian ethic in which business success is rewarded rather that suppressed or stolen(well, most of the time anyway) . Marx though, managed to convince himself and billions of others that the American engine of wealth, i.e. Capitalism and Religion, was the SOURCE of all social evils.

Marx has told the rest of the world that we are thieves, and human nature being what it is, they are inclined to believe him.

The 'Perception is Reality' boneheads rush in, and instead of pushing the Capitalism & Christianity paradigm into the impoverished third world, they go on an endless quest to find out what America is doing wrong.

Got it?
America = Wealth, Africa = Poverty. And their question is: "What is America doing wrong?"

Yep, gonna take a long time to figure that one out.
And that's the reality.
~

Answer 3

Perception is reality.

Intent is not the same as impact.

I used to be an HR Director and I had to counsel people on this all of the time, as in, "What you intended didn't cause the problems with the other person, it was how they took it (the impact)". This always came up in sexual harassment cases.

A person (or country) that can see beyond their intentions and understand possible impact (perception) is wise indeed.

Answer 4

my first gut response was intention, but then i realized that they were equally valuable and entirely dependent on one another.

the highest intention combined with the highest perception being ideal. it goes downhill from there.

i feel this can apply to both church and state; anything for that matter.

now you've given me an idea for a question.

Answer 5

You have to consider both, and establish a balance.

I am American. However, I know that I and we are both who we intend to be and who we are perceived to be. We do not live in an island. We must be part of a global community.