Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Theorizing something abstract. I don't expect to be understood.
The world is only what it is, because of how each of us sees it. Through our individual perspectives. So already, reality is innately different for every single one of us and then varied even more as we infuse upbringing, experiences and culture. This thought sprung up on me as I read midway through this afternoon's accounting theory class before my presentation. Don't ask me how the idea popped up, it just did.
Since we cannot be at all places all the time, thus often, other than the limited first-hand experiences of daily life, we have to rely much on news reports from external sources such as the papers, tv, radio and the internet. In short, what we construe as reality (the world we live in) is in fact a combination of our mental consumption of other people's opinions, as how journalists see it. Their perception their opinions grow on us and become our own eventually. Say, if I flip the papers for two days and twice what catches my attention are reports on hostage deaths in Iraq and terrorist bombings in Tel aviv, I may conclude inevitably then, that situations in the middle east are unstable.
This is in addition to our subconscious-bias in the selection of particular subjects - as we sieve through data, we are more likely to select those that interest us more and pinpoint similarities among articles than objectively let random articles 'catch our eye'. Thus, as much as we insist our instincts/decisions are guided by facts, this is never the case because of certain inherent features that make us us. As a result, while we may all live in the same world, the world we each live in has, well, never been the same one.
The world is only what it is, because of how each of us sees it. Through our individual perspectives. So already, reality is innately different for every single one of us and then varied even more as we infuse upbringing, experiences and culture. This thought sprung up on me as I read midway through this afternoon's accounting theory class before my presentation. Don't ask me how the idea popped up, it just did.
Since we cannot be at all places all the time, thus often, other than the limited first-hand experiences of daily life, we have to rely much on news reports from external sources such as the papers, tv, radio and the internet. In short, what we construe as reality (the world we live in) is in fact a combination of our mental consumption of other people's opinions, as how journalists see it. Their perception their opinions grow on us and become our own eventually. Say, if I flip the papers for two days and twice what catches my attention are reports on hostage deaths in Iraq and terrorist bombings in Tel aviv, I may conclude inevitably then, that situations in the middle east are unstable.
This is in addition to our subconscious-bias in the selection of particular subjects - as we sieve through data, we are more likely to select those that interest us more and pinpoint similarities among articles than objectively let random articles 'catch our eye'. Thus, as much as we insist our instincts/decisions are guided by facts, this is never the case because of certain inherent features that make us us. As a result, while we may all live in the same world, the world we each live in has, well, never been the same one.
