Bumble: Post class 2/19 "is the tooth fairy real!?"

Are we real?
Is anything we do real?

Whenever I have a class that discusses reality or “REALITY,” I get sort of all jumbled up in thinking, well reality is all about perspective and who defines reality?

In light of reality shows, and acting verse truly representing real life and real people, what everyone always forgets is we are always all playing roles. According to the theorist Goffman, we all have many faces that we choose to project to the world. We have multiple realities and we present various aspects of ourselves all the time. We might be acting like ourselves, but the ways in which we act like ourselves will 100% be different depending on who you talk to. When writing an e-mail to your mother, you are yourself but inevitably the information you talk about presents only a certain fraction of who you are, it is impossible to always show everything so if it real if you have to be selective?
Is it real if you are asked on your way to class how your morning has been and you say good, and not elaborate?


The images which you showed us today can be real to some people, but to many it is such a stretch of the imagination. Is anything about the army a reality to us? My reality right now is being at Rollins College. This is even different from my sister’s reality which is at University of Chicago. What is so exciting about life is that everyone has different perceptions of reality and so you can feel passionately about different things and challenge each other to learn about each other’s realities.

For example to my little sister who just lost her tooth, the tooth fairy is very much real, and if that is what she wants to believe then it is a reality to her. So an image or photograph of the tooth fairy could be representing reality while to many of us in class it would not even be masking “not reality” it would simply be NO reality.

We can not forget that everyone’s lives have shaped their perception of reality so we can not assume that someone is wrong, but increasing our awareness then we can be less ignorant in the world.

My little sister's strong conviction that this fantasy creature exists proves that we can convince ourselves of anything. Again circling around again to the notion of the self fulfilling prophecy, or the ugly duckling syndrome, people's mental perception shape what they believe. The most basic of all examples is the girl who felt negative self images her whole life and finally develops into a beautiful lady yet her perceptions of herself are from her past and are so strong that, her self image reality is that she is still the "ugly duckling." Then, that reality is projected and other people will respond back to her, and the way that she translates how other perceive her, depends on how she views herself. (Wow very twisted but am I making sense?)

Another example of proof of the ambiguous meaning of reality is, for people who look at images of Roswell, a scientist who has one lens of the world would instantaneously right it off as “fake, not real” but what if you view the lens through a more liberal perspective? Those photographs of UFO’s could be real to them.



PS:
Back to the image of the caskets with the American flags over them, I think that this masks reality. The American flag masks the hardships and struggles behind the deaths and makes them patriotic and fighters. The reality might be very different and the flag represents them creating this notion that the death was credible and was for a good cause.