The Importance of the First Assumption
Paul Watzlawick became famous for his work on communication, misunderstanding, and the realities people create through language. Less well known is how much of his intellectual toolkit came from Gregory Bateson, the anthropologist and systems thinker whose influence runs quietly beneath much of modern psychology.
Bateson spent much of his life asking a deceptively simple question:
How do human beings come to believe what they believe?
Most people assume the process is straightforward.
We observe reality.
We think about it.
We reach conclusions.
Bateson suspected the process was stranger than that.
Recently, I watched a small version of it unfold in real time.
My daughter came home upset.
Several girls from her friend group had gone to the swimming pool.
At first, this was merely a fact.
The girls had gone swimming.
She had not.
Nothing more.
Then came the first assumption.
"They didn't invite me."
What happened next was fascinating.
"They didn't invite me."
Became:
"They probably didn't want me there."
Which became:
"Maybe they don't like me anymore."
Which became:
"Maybe they're excluding me."
Within minutes an entire social reality had appeared.
What is remarkable is that every step was logical.
The reasoning itself was not broken.
If they didn't invite me, perhaps they didn't want me there.
If they didn't want me there, perhaps they don't like me.
If they don't like me, perhaps they are excluding me.
The logic was perfectly sound.
The problem was that nobody had checked the first assumption.
So I suggested something simple.
Call one of the girls.
The answer came almost immediately.
"But we did tell her."
And suddenly the entire structure collapsed.
Not because the feelings were fake.
The disappointment was real.
The hurt was real.
But the reality built around those feelings turned out to be mistaken.
The swimming pool had been mentioned.
Plans had been discussed.
My daughter had simply missed the signal.
Nobody was excluding anyone.
A story had grown from a misunderstanding.
At this point many people draw the wrong lesson.
They conclude that assumptions are usually wrong.
That is not the lesson.
The lesson is that assumptions should be verified.
Those are very different things.
Imagine the phone call had gone differently.
Imagine the answer had been:
"Well, honestly, some of the girls didn't want her to come."
In that case the first assumption would have survived contact with reality.
The story would have changed completely.
The exclusion would have been real.
The hurt would have been justified.
The lesson would remain exactly the same.
Check the assumption.
The goal is not to prove yourself wrong.
The goal is not to prove yourself right.
The goal is to discover what is actually there.
That is a much harder discipline than it sounds.
Because human beings do not merely create explanations.
We become attached to them.
The moment an assumption enters our minds, something curious happens.
It gradually becomes invisible.
At first it appears as a possibility.
Then it becomes a belief.
Soon afterward it starts feeling like reality itself.
Once that happens, the mind gets to work.
Interpretation after interpretation.
Story after story.
Meaning after meaning.
The original assumption disappears beneath the structure built upon it.
Most people no longer notice it.
They only see the building.
This leads to one of Bateson's deepest insights.
Human beings do not respond directly to reality.
They respond to their maps of reality.
And then something even stranger occurs.
The map becomes emotionally real.
Notice something important about my daughter.
The phone call corrected the story.
It did not instantly remove the feeling.
She still felt disappointed.
She still felt left out.
The emotion survived.
Only its meaning changed.
The story moved from:
"They rejected me."
To:
"I missed something."
One reality creates resentment.
The other creates learning.
That distinction matters.
Because facts do not create emotions directly.
Interpretations create emotions.
Then emotions often survive long after the interpretation changes.
The older I get, the more I notice this everywhere.
A colleague gives brief feedback.
A partner does not respond.
A friend seems distant.
A neighbour looks unfriendly.
A political group remains silent.
The observation arrives first.
The assumption arrives second.
Then the assumption quietly disguises itself as reality.
What follows is often intelligent.
Sometimes brilliantly intelligent.
This is another irony Bateson would have appreciated.
Intelligence does not necessarily protect us from bad assumptions.
Sometimes it amplifies them.
A clever person can construct a magnificent castle on top of a false foundation.
The reasoning becomes sophisticated.
The conclusions become persuasive.
The original premise remains unexamined.
A brilliant argument built on a false assumption is still a path away from the truth.
And there is one final twist.
Sometimes people do not verify the assumption because they are afraid it might be wrong.
But sometimes they avoid verification because they are afraid it might be right.
The phone call might reveal exclusion.
The conversation might reveal betrayal.
The question might confirm the suspicion.
Reality can hurt.
Yet reality remains easier to navigate than fiction.
A painful truth is usually less dangerous than an imaginary one.
The older I get, the less interested I become in people's conclusions.
What interests me are the assumptions underneath them.
Most debates focus on conclusions.
Most conflicts focus on conclusions.
Most people defend conclusions.
But the decisive question often lies much earlier.
What was the first assumption?
Was it checked?
Or did an entire reality grow from something that merely felt true?
Perhaps the most useful question in communication, relationships, politics, and life is therefore not:
"What conclusion should I draw?"
But:
"What is my first assumption?"
And have I actually verified it?
Because that is where most realities begin.
And where wisdom begins as well.