User:Chloexx/Essay2
How real is the reality
1.Introduction
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. In Michel Foucoult’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?
2. The construction of Reality
- 2.1.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, 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. 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.
Discourse constructs individual’s opinion towards reality, it 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, the reality is not the external world outside individual. It is constructed by discourse and perception, which are subjective and unreliable.
- 2.2 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, 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 is 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, in order to pursue their security and happiness.
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 a certain thing and play language tricks with each other, also distract each other from real reality. What happened and what a person tell others can never been exactly fit. Different language express different perspective of reality, so do the related culture.
- 2.3 Reality is multiple
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 is quite similar, there is no way of fair justification by normality. The surface we present is what we want to show off, which could be changed by putting on different hashtags. People create their reality by paying attention to certain things subconsciously.
In mass media,
- 2.4 The justification of Reality
According to the normal justification, is it possible to build up a perfect person?