discovering our reality! by allison sharpe
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Allison Sharpe
DISCOVERING OUR REALITY!
I’m going to go over chapter 5. It was an extremely
interesting topic to me. So, here we go! Accompanied by
some thought provoking a pretty funny photos, I will talk about discovering our reality! So first I shall talk about what reality is. In
modern day times, people think of reality as everything that is real, whether it can be seen, touched, or accessed. Ironically enough, reality is
not real. Reality is what each individual THINKS is real;
reality is created in the mind (Marteney and Sterk 70).
CHAPTER 5!
Now, onto the Perception Process. Our own personal
realities are created based upon the process of perception. We
choose and interpret everything from external sources in order to
create our own individual realities. There are the three
steps that make up the perception process:
1) Selecting 2) Sorting
3) Interpreting
(72)
PERCEPTION PROCESS
Selecting is a filtering and awareness process. We use our senses to filter out and become
aware of our external environment (72)
Sorting is the prioritizing process of perception. Each process of
sorting is unique and based upon our experiences (73). For
example, let’s say you’re walking in the mall with a few of your
friends and you see an outfit that is absolutely to-die-for. The shoes, the shorts, the top… Everything. Now you and each of your friends
will have a unique way of organizing each article of clothing
that makes up the outfit, and selecting, in your own mind,
which piece of clothing you like the best.
SELECTING AND SORTING
So let’s move onto step 3. Interpreting. Interpreting can be described as giving meaning to all of the information that we have selected and sorted (73). Let’s go back to that cute outfit that you and your friends saw in the mall. Maybe you LOVED the shirt the mannequin was wearing, but maybe it was
sporting an absolutely disgusting hat. That piece of
information, the hat, may stick out to you the most because it
destroys the whole outfit.
INTERPRETING
Now let’s move onto the filtering processes. Our psychological condition can definitely affect how we look at something (74). For
example, seeing a romantic movie can be looked at completely differently depending on one’s mood. If a person was happy about their love life, seeing that romantic movie would be cute, and you’d feel happy for the movie characters because they would share the
same feeling of love that you do. But If you were to watch that same move when you were depressed about your failure of a love life and saw that cute movie, you may want to throw your popcorn at the screen in angst because you so yearn to have the love that
the actors share on the screen.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION AS A FILTER
Another way of filtering would be our physical condition. Our way of looking at things can definitely be
affected by our age, health, biological cycles, hunger (74)…
Let’s talk about hunger. Imagine you just hit up the Chinese Buffet And absolutely stuffed yourself.
Then, you come home to find that your awesome boyfriend has
made you a fantastic steak dinner. Because you just stuffed yourself silly at that Chinese restaurant, the steak would look awful. You just stuffed yourself silly and you feel as if you never want to LOOK
at food again. However, after a long day of work and coming
home to that, you would be one happy camper and that may just
be the best steak you’ve ever eaten.
PHYSICAL CONDITION AS A FILTER
Let’s move onto language as a filter. The more limited our language, the more limited our reality (74). If you
live in sunny San Diego and are talking to your pen pal who lives in Alaska, you would have less ways to describe each other’s environments. There are limited ways for a person who lives in a snowy environment to describe a sunny environment and
vice versa.
LANGUAGE AS A FILTER
Of course, formal learning is another
factor that shapes our reality. Our education teaches us how to be
good people and teaches us what is socially acceptable (75). Staring and
pointing at that hobo may seem ok when
you’re a little kid, but as an adult? Just rude.
FORMAL LEARNING AS A FILTER
Experiences and expectations are the last two filters that I will be
talking about. Experiences are first hand learning
activities. Expectations are perceptions that are going to agree with based upon
what we already believe the actually event is. Self-
expectations dictate how we act towards other people and ultimately affect our judgment and self-esteem
(75).
EXPERIENCES AND EXPECTATIONS AS FILTERS
Now, I’m going to move onto talking about factors that affect how we interpret information. Closure
is a way for us to make sense out of our environment. It’s basically our mind filling in the blanks on missing data. It allows us to understand what we’re observing (75). So, for example, if you see that cute guy, or girl, and you check them out and they’re just not responding to your obvious
interest, you fill in the blanks for closure. You’re just not their type. Or, they are already taken.
CLOSURE
Now, I’m going to talk about one last thing. Stasis. Simply put, stasis
means “at rest.” And craving beings desire stasis. It is leaving things as they are, their usual state of being. Without modification. Stasis is our
comfort zone (81). Here’s an example of stasis. You fall in love. You’re together with that special someone for a few years. You’re
living together. Every morning the two of you would wake up and eat breakfast in the kitchen together and talk about the day that you ahead of you. That was your
comfort zone, your stasis. Well, when the two of you broke up and
you no longer shared that breakfast together, your stasis was altered.
You left your comfort zone and noticed flaws about your ex that you
never saw before.
STASIS
Well, that’s it for my presentation! I hope it an interesting learning experience (I hope you had a few
laughs, too).
Marteney, Jim, and Jack Sterk. "5; Discovering Our Reality." Communicating Critical Thinking. Agoura
Hills, CA: Leadership Communication, 1990. 70-81. Print.