User:ChloeXX/Essay2

How real is the reality

Introduction:

[Steve: OK> I am happy that you addressed the idea to look at how reality is constructed, social and multiple. I think on Wednesday we should discuss the distinction between 'reality' and 'the real'. I think you are still processing the implications that discourse conditions reality. Ideology, knowledge &c is produced by the most powerful/dominant discourse. I think you could make your question clearer.]

The definition of reality is about the situation or object which exist, but there are also some myths of how do people perceive the existence. Reality exists with the corporation of vision, auditory, taste, smell and tactile sensation, although all of them are a sense of feeling. Those feelings combined human’s recognition and knowledge makes the reality real, which also can be seen as a common sense. But how reliable it is?
In Michel Foucault’s text, there was no differentiation between knowledge and mystification----just power and discourse. If so, then how do people perceive their reality? How do discourse influence people to build up their ideology? If reality is multiple, then how can knowledge deal with those different realities?

[ I would't get caught up about philosophical definitions of real and reality, I would advise you go straight into Foucault's understanding of discourse and begin with:]. "In Michel Foucault’s text, there was no differentiation between knowledge and mystification----just power and discourse. If so, then how do people perceive their reality? How do discourse influence people to build up their ideology? If reality is multiple, then how can knowledge deal with those different realites?".

{<<Here you are crowding a number of questions together- we can unpack these and make a clearer question that addresses your interest directly= subculture]

The construction of Reality:

• Reality is constructive

On 1828 teenage boy Kaspar Hauser first appeared in Nuremberg Germany with a letter from a captain of cavalry regiment, who claims "I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was". According to his memory, he was imprisoned in a small room since he born, someone provides him bread and water. Before he was released, there was a stranger came and took him to Nuremberg, he learned walking on the way and repeated this sentence without knowing the actual meaning.
In a background of someone who was totally isolated from outside world since the beginning of life, in the situation of no language skill, no communication ability, without recognition of world, then what’s his reality? In a normal person’s perspective, Kaspar Hauser could be seen as a mad uneducated boy, however in Kaspar Hauser’s perspective, the pronunciation of language and the meaning of the sentence, as well as the things outside room could be even more unreasonable.
Movie <Room> also gives an assumption of building up a reality. The 5 year old boy were born in a solitude room, all his recognition of reality is from his mother who were raped and imprisoned by her neighbor since she was 17. At the beginning the mother told him things in this room such as wardrobe, toilet and desk are real, the world in television is not real, with the purpose of protecting the child’s mind. In this situation the mom as a powerful discourse inculcated the child a view of reality. If we see this concept as a small vision of discourse metaphor, then in what so-called real world, it is possible that the majority people who hold a common view of reality based on the authority discourse which actually subjective and fragmental.
It is discourse constructs individual’s opinion of reality, which comes from different places and established identities and differences. The production of discourse is at once controlled, selected and redistributed. For a kid, the discourse comes from home, his primary behavior and basic knowledge are the imitation of his custodians. For a student, the discourse comes from the school, with what teachers teach and what were written in the textbook. For a worker, the discourse comes from the factory, with what leaders say, with the conversation between collegues. For a religious group, the discourse comes from the church, the popes’ explanation of the Bible and those high-grade followers. For a housewife, the discourse comes from the tv channel she watched, the website she viewed, and the husband who brought her the news. All these discourses can influence people’s mind, form a variety of filter when they perceive the situation of existence.
Plato’s Allegory of the cave describes a gathering people living in the cave all of their lives, they watch shadows projected on the wall from the passed things, and they give names to these shadows, which they view as reality. Then if the precondition is closed, how can people know that reality is real? Also, people don’t know the things that they don’t know, if there is no compare, they would never know if they were living in a reality or not.
In summary, reality is not the external world outside individual. It is constructed by discourse and perception, embed in one’s mind, which are subjective and unreliable.

• Reality is social

Some people believe that god exist, some people believe that god does not exist, the two types of people can never convince each other if they living in their own world. Belief is based on the facts we know and surrounding people we communicate with.
If an atheist living in a rational society that all people believe modern science and there is no god, then he would hold on a belief that there is no god in reality. However if he suddenly broke in an original tribe in Amazon forest where all of those villagers believe god and ghost exist, after being treated by mysterious ritual and consumed some ayahuasca, how long can he insist his proposition of atheism? If he got a chance to go back to his rational society, he could use a science method to explain the supernatural phenomenon as a sort of superstition which not real, but what if the science method itself is wrong? The science method is about explanation, from hypothesis to experiment and finally get result. If the result support the hypothesis, then the hypothesis is right. But what if the hypothesis is wrong at the beginning? Then what is real can never been proved. In that case, if the guy cannot come back to “rational world”, he could choose to change his view of reality. Human being can be adaptive in certain circumstance and change their mind fast, in order to pursue their security and happiness. Also, it is thoughts decide the truth, those people who believe the existence of ghost all have chance (or already) to meet the ghost.
Geography condition shapes the normality of society, including language, tradition, culture etc. These elements all can be seen as part of reality. But can language really describe things? Who makes traditions tradition and why should people obey it? Are people who don’t know the culture not part of culture?
Language is a tool for thinking and communication, then the boarder of our communication is language, the edge of our knowledge is language. People made language connect to certain things and play language tricks with each other, also distract each other from the absolute reality. When someone tries to describe his reality, what happened around and the description can never be exactly fit, the language system works in an assertive way and creates the opinion for each individual. In other words, reality is only opinions.
At the very beginning when a child got to know this world, he will ask questions like: What’s this? Then the respond might be “it’s an apple.” All of the objects or concept were given a name, and the definition of each name recombine and became the language system, then eventually build up a society with this language system. Different language has different expression and produce different thoughts, language influence people’s ideology. People who share a common society are supposed to see a relatively similar reality, because they are using same language and were educated by a similar way.

• Reality is multiple

In mass media, people have a common sense of what authority should be look like. Wearing suits, decent look and good hygiene usually are seen as trustworthy. However the fundamental part of human brain and physical body is same----we are all being defined as human being. The surface people present is what they want to show off, which could be changed by putting on different hashtags. In politics election game, when the politicians talk about their devotions on their country, the most important step is to convince people to believe that they have ambition and ability, the presentation requires exquisite acting skill and sophisticated look, dress code with expensive suits and leather shoes, matched tie, short hair, plain face, no tattoo. The tricky part of multiple reality is, we know the most celebrities by mass media, although behind the game of presentation, they also need to look at mirror to check who they actually are, struggle for each decision, be a father, have a mistress, face their mid-age crisis like everyone else. Presentation or private life, which one is more real?
Reality is not only multiple on one person, it is also multiple in everyone’s perception. For example, there is a same carambola exists on the desk, but people standing on different angles, someone would see the shape is ellipse, someone would see it as a pentagram. Those are all realities and can’t be justified as right or wrong.
People create their reality by paying attention to different things subconsciously. Also those attention and thoughts makes future become reality. The thoughts help people to make decisions, and the future comes as the result of those decisions. In this context, reality is self-created.

Conclusion

People perceive their reality by feeling and illusion, with the filter of their mind. And the mind is formed by conscious combined knowledge and the past experience. The powerful discourse shapes the common accepted ideology and become the primary recognition of individual’s reality. Knowledge itself is the extraction of experience and those facts from reality, however due to the attribute of multiple realities, it cannot be applied on everything, it only excavates personal reality structures.

References

Oxford English Dictionary
Introducing Foucault by Chris Horrocks and Zoran Jevtic
Power/Knowledge by Michel Foucault