Reality concepts and frameworks

Sociology - Reality

THE SUBJECTIVE NATURE of REALITY

Human beings are the product of their experiences. While this is equally true of all biological organisms, the fundamental difference between the human mind and other higher forms of biological life is that humans are unique in their capacity to think about their lives (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005). Only human beings have the ability to think about their place in their families, their society, and especially, about their eventual demise.

Whereas animals live in the present exclusively and react by sheer instinct, human beings often devote substantial effort to understanding others and to the reason that things are what they are. Only humans think about the reality of their lives, but even the direction of that effort is largely dependent on the sum total of all the external influences on their lives.

Language:

From the moment we are born, we absorb data from the external world. Our parents and family are the primary determinants of our developing reality. Initially, our neural architecture is extremely flexible and we absorb whatever linguistic cues we receive from our parents and have the ability to learn any language with perfect pronunciation (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

The process is so automatic that children in bilingual homes often learn two languages simultaneously, long before they have any understanding about what language is or that they speak two instead of just one. By the time they become aware that they speak two languages bilingualism is already a fundamental component of their personal reality. Within the first few years of life, our language skills become more limited and learning new languages becomes more of an effort. Whereas in infancy we are capable of repeating every possible sound used in human language, by the time we are three or four years old we lose the ability to make any sounds that are not part of whatever language we learn from our parents.

Social Constructs and Reality:

The notion of social construct refers to the purely arbitrary nature of certain elements of human reality (Macionis 2002). Language is a good example, because all languages consist of meaningless sounds and combinations of sounds that have absolutely no meaning in and of themselves until someone decides to attach a particular significance to specific sounds. Listening to a foreign language with which one has no familiarity, it is often difficult to imagine that the strange sounds correspond to individual words that have any meaning at all.

Another typical example of social constructs that we may take for granted are the rules of the road: in one society drivers sit on the left side of vehicles and drive on the right; in others they sit on the right and drive on the left. Neither system is preferable for any reason and for that matter, neither is the designation of the color green for "go" and red for "stop." Nevertheless, the consequences of violating those social constructs can be deadly, regardless of the fact that either system works equally well.

The crucial issue that makes driving on the left the norm of expected conduct in one society but a dangerous criminal stunt in another society is simply that the members of the two respective societies have all agreed on the symbolic meaning of what was originally a completely arbitrary choice (Henslin 2002).

Reality and Cultural Subjectivity:

One of the most interesting aspects of human cognitive reality is that it is so subjective. Social mores and practices that are perfectly natural and benign in one society are perceived as horrific and inconceivable in other societies, for not other reason than the particular prior experiences of the individual within society (Macionis 2002). Individuals who never come into contact with other societies may live their entire lives without the slightest idea that other societies exist, much less that other social norms and practices besides the ones to which they are accustomed as their reality are possible.

This element of human reality is also responsible for some of the worst recorded human behavior. On one hand, certain parts of human moral thinking is inherent as a natural part of us (Kluger 2007). On the other hand, so much of human morality is determined by subjective social constructs, that practically anything is acceptable to us, even to those of us who are inherently inclined to be good people.

History has shown many times that if the social construct within a given society presents cannibalism, or slavery, or the sacrifice of virgins to volcanoes, or even the systematic mechanized mass-murder of millions as acceptable, few individuals will have the capacity to consider those norms objectively, or from outside of the social constructs of their society. In that regard, the eminent 20th century scientist and Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein made the following eloquent observation in a 1946 essay about American Slavery and the 20th century racial prejudices and inequality of black Americans:

large part of our attitude toward things is conditioned by opinions and emotions which we unconsciously absorb as children from our environment. In other words, it is tradition - besides inherited aptitudes and qualities - which makes us what we are. We but rarely reflect how relatively small as compared with the powerful influence of tradition is the influence of our conscious thought upon our conduct and convictions." (Einstein 1946)

It is precisely that phenomenon that explains how the learned men who drafted the United States Constitution could have included a specific provision detailing the rights of slave owners to reclaim their "property" in the event their slaves escaped to free states until the "Fugitive Slave Clause" was repealed by the Thirteenth Amendment.

Prior to 1865, even the brilliant legal minds of Supreme Court justices entertained highly technical legal arguments, all the while seemingly ignorant of the fundamental immorality and injustice of one man owning others by virtue of their different skin color.