"We see and understand things not as they are but as we are" IB TOK Essay

Authors Avatar

Word count: 1,600


Our world is unfathomably complex. The segments that each of us is familiar with and has some understanding of, are but the size of the electrons of a single molecule in a great ocean of dilemmas. Every “thing”, that is to say, every entity, idea, or quality perceived, known, or thought to have its own existence, has infinite forces acting upon it and we, the human populace of this world, cannot ever hope to fully comprehend even a single such Kantian “Ding an sich”. Instead we rely upon what, as Socrates would have it, we think we know; the few “facts”, perceptions, opinions and insights that we have acquired through our own sensual experiences and those of others that we may have heard. These are the factors that colour our thoughts and consequent opinions of “things”. They are the factors that build up who we are and it is by them that we assess, interpret and judge the various situations we may find ourselves in.

We encounter, mostly unwittingly, thousands of such confrontations per day, each bringing many potential repercussions to our experience-bank. Yet we are faced here with a problem; though our mental capacities may be great, it is simply not possible to register all the encounters and simultaneously keep track of them. Thereby, what is deemed to be irrelevant is sieved out and only a fragment is left available to us for future interpretation of the workings of the world. Thus we are faced with a new phenomenon; as our various prior experiences (each unique to the person experiencing them) have shaped our mental information sieves, our own final verdicts may differ significantly from those of our peers, whose priorities will most likely have been dissimilar to ours.  Such a situation, as is clearly depicted in Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), allows for digressing witness accounts in court or simply many possible interpretations of a single event.

What we see and understand, we do so as it is in relation to ourselves and hereby only one side of an intricate matrix. One’s ability to manipulate people and situations stems from the disability of those acquiescing persons to see and understand “things” from an objective viewpoint that incorporates one’s own.  Clear representations of such subjective situations, with respect to the subject’s knowledge needs, are depicted in all stories of capitulation due to the fear of discomfort or danger. We, as people, may be scared, outgoing, nervous, ambitious, lazy, ambitious, territorial, naive, caring, approving, disapproving, selfish, wealthy, poor, with power, without power, betrayed, faithful, leaders or followers, depending on our relative circumstances; how we see and understand things with accordance to our situations. The prejudices, that attend to the defining curbs of the breadths of our horizons and designate where under the sun we may want to stand, are aroused by our unique social and personal circumstances and histories.

Join now!

Perception is how we view an image; a telescope built up of prior experiences and, aside other factors, stereotypes. It sets various criteria, basic tolerance boundaries and our attitudes and, though it affects our acknowledgment and rationality less than strong emotion, it remains a leading factor of the understanding of a problem.

The deeper the foundations of the margins of perception are set, the harder it may be for, say, a stereotypical Palestinian, to surpass them by describing a Jewish Israeli man as simply a “man”, rather than an “Israeli Jew”; to allow for objectivity to prevail over bias. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay