Imagination, Culture, and Perception

In this blog I am going to give my opinion about the way in which we perceive things around us can affect our lives. First off as we can notice, information that we have studied provides us with a very good example of how perceiving a thing in our own way, shapes the way in which we think about that thing  during a long period of time, or sometimes the rest of our lives. All of us know that in order to see all what happens around us our eyes collect information and transmits it to our brain, but the way in which each of us imagines how that happens is so different. In that situation we can say that the way in which an individual is imagining a situation is affecting the in which the individual is living.

Besides of this depending on the way in which we perceive things, our reaction for most of the events will be different. When I lived in Spain I knew one person who was from a different country. After becoming friends with him I realized that for each event that happened, his reaction was way different than the reaction of the rest of individuals. I remember that one time this person had a pretty bad score in an exam, and started to cry. Many people would see this as a really weird thing, but my believe is that this person used to cry for failing an exam, due to the fact that education in his country is taken so seriously, so this really impacted me, because I could see the way in which the culture of this person shaped his reaction to one event. While this person was crying for having a bad score, other students were laughing and not carrying about it, due to the fact that the culture of those students is different.  

So as we can see, in this case the culture of the individual shaped his thinking about studying, so the way in which he perceives some information is different to the way in which a different individual from a different culture is.

Besides of this, another good example for this is the way in which each person sees the death. Many people imagine death, as an event in which the soul of one individual is reborn in a plant or an animal. So this people maintains that believe all their life and perceive the world on a different way, while for example followers of God may believe in different beliefs that affect the way in which they perceive the world and life.

This difference of beliefs will probably create a variation In the way in which this individuals will react to certain events.

Culture and Emotion

How does your own cultural background influence your emotional responses?

 

First off we can find a variety of opinions that have to do with this phenomenon, but these opinions opinions can be divide in two categories. The people who does not accept this phenomenon thinks that emotion is part of our evolutionary history, that each emotion carries a function, and also that emotions are the same everywhere, no matter the culture nor the cultural background.

 

On the other hand the people who supports the idea that culture truly shapes the emotion of an individual, bases this idea in several facts. The first fact is that culture suggests what are the appropriate solicitors of each emotion. This statement implies that each culture has a specific way of thinking in an emotion,for example, depending on the culture of an individual, the individual will have a different image on his mind about what happiness is.  Besides of this, culture shapes appraisals of emotions, which means that the same appraisal will lead to different emotion depending on the background of the individual.

 

Furthermore studies have shown that culture totally shapes the way in which individuals express their emotions. Being more specific, when, how and, why would and individual express emotions. For example in America, and most of Europe laughing in public is seen as a pretty normal thing, but in some Asians countries laughing in public is considered a bad and impolite thing.

 

The next factor is the valuation that each culture places in experiencing emotion, or also known as the way in which each culture puts more or less importance to different emotions. An example of this is that Western individuals have as ideal feel the feeling of positivism, while Asian individual reports tell us that their ideal feeling is calmness.

 

Lastly, culture influences the kind of emotions that a person emphasizes, which also can be described as the emotion that a person highly regards, or the emotion that most captures the attention of an individual.

Challenge of Translation

Even though English is the common language at Raha, what may be some potential issues caused by connotations or different cultural understandings of words?

 

First off, it is important to know that each culture shapes the idioms of each individual. As we have studied it is proved that some sentences or some words can have a meaning in one language, and a different one in another language.

 For example, while some individuals coming from one culture understand that the word dog is a word that  expresses friendship, different individuals coming from a different culture will interpret this word as an insult. This statement basically portrays how people from different countries, as in the case of Raha International School, sometimes would not understand each other, misunderstanding the meaning of a word or sentence. This problem is due to the idioms that each culture have in its language. Once the idioms are translated to the English, they do not mean the same thing since the idioms are understood just by people of the same culture. 

This phenomenon is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which points out that the structure of the language affects the way in which an individual conceptualize its own world. This theory presents two versions, the strong, and the weak version. In my personal opinion I think that language can affect thought, and non-linguistic behavior, but it does not limit or determine cognitive categories.

 

Understanding a little more about the challenge of communication, how might Raha communicate more effectively to such a diverse cultural group?

 

The best way Raha students and teachers can understand each other better, is to know that each person uses his or her own idioms depending on the culture and mother tongue, and that sometimes some words or sentences have a different meaning depending on the cultural background of the person who says the words or sentences, so we should not misunderstand some idioms, and ask for the meaning of them if it is not clear.

 

Process of Knowing

From my point of view, I think that this statements do not describe the same process of knowing. If we look at each of the examples that are on the sheet, we can notice that we will not be able to know or perform each of this activities or facts, just by learning only one process of knowledge.

 

First off if we look at the example which states that 2 plus 2 is 4, we know that we would not be able to know this before studying mathematical concepts, develop mathematical skills and learn mathematical rules.

 

 Furthermore, the example which says I know that today is such day, has totally a different process of knowing, one person knows the day in which he or she lives because he or she learnt how the calendar, the hours, and time work through experience.

 

 

We can say the same things for more statements, how to ride a bicycle is a process which requires falling so many times, learning to coordinate well our equilibrium while knowing that our parents love us or that God loves us requires one more time a different process of knowing, since what will determine it is the way in that our parents behave with us or our own opinion about what God means for us.

 

Besides of this to know the statements which are scientific, based on scientific knowledge, like that the hydrogen atoms in neutral form have only one electron, we need to study chemical properties and behave of the molecules, which implies reading many hours and remembering information, but, if we compare this kind of processing of knowledge to the process of knowledge that is used for learning to ride a bicycle is totally different.

 

 

So as a conclusion, I would say that this different statements effectively describe different process of knowing because the skills, the facts, or the factors which are required to know them are completely different.

 

Understanding of time reflection

Time is a super common thing which is present all the time in our lives. Dictionaries define it as the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole, but in my own words I would define it as the thing that passes while we live. Even though we count every single day that passes, and we know the date of each day that we live, we do not notice how fast time goes.

 

Mankind has always wanted to control the time, to know how the time works and how we can measure it, besides of this calendars were also created so long ago. There is evidence which has demonstrated that artifacts were used to reckon time in the Paleolithic, 6,000 years ago, by looking at the position of the moon. The first calendars also appeared in the Paleolithic, called lunar calendar, using the position of the moon as reference as well. And after that many other people tried to figure out a way in which time could be organized, like for example when in 45 BC Julius Cesar arranged the Roman World in the solar calendar, or when the Pope Gregory XIII introduced a correction in 1582. It is important to mention this points because they can be used as a proof to demonstrate that human beings have always wanted to control time, even at an early stage as Paleolithic.

 

Furthermore, the calendar that we know today and the way in which we count the ours is more  precise that the methods which were used in the Paleolithic, but if we think on it, the time always remains the same even though some people counts it in some way or another people counts it in a different way. Overall, time is an abstract thing, we cannot see it or touch it, it is a concept created by the humans.

Memory Blog Post

I think that there were differences in the way we recall the situation and the atmosphere, because each person has his own way to perceive the information that surrounds him or her, some people will pay attention to some events taking place in that moment, while other people would pay more attention to different events. For example, in my picture my family and I were taking a walk, while I recall the situation as a moment in which I was mainly focused in reach the end of the park with my bicycle, my father only remembers that in that moment he was relaxed, taking a walk, and he had to pay attention to me because those were the days in which I recently learnt to ride a bike, so he was concerned, because he did not want me to fall off the bike. We both remember that we were taking a walk and just enjoying Malaga’s sunny summer, but the way in which we remember it is different. I think that our memories of that picture were different because we had our minds focused on different things.

 

Memory is basically one the most important part of us, without having memory we would not recall anything of our daily life, our name, our family, our friends. We cannot life without storing all the information that we receive in our memory. Memory is what allows us to recognize a person unconsciously, once we have been introduced to a person, the information that we already know that person is stored in our memory, without memory we would not be able to know that we already know that person, and not only this, even basic things like knowing our name or the way we look would not remain in our mind. So as a conclusion I would say that without memory life would be really different, we would not be able to recognize our parents, friends ,siblings, or basic information that the memory stores at early age.

Intuition Blog Response

Intuition as we have studied is when we know or understand something without having to think on it, by using our instincts, and the atmosphere that surrounds us, we perceive that we have to do something in a certain way, or we respond to a certain situation unconsciously. Besides of this in my opinion it can be described as a moment when we feel that something is not right and we have to do something about it.

 

There are several kinds of intuition, intuition sometimes can appear in dreams, where an unconscious voice tell us some sort of information that could be important. Intuitive seeing is another kind of intuition,depending on what we can see at some point seeing a specific object or person can remind us an important think, and therefore respond to that by doing something that we instinctively think that must be done. Intuitive hearing must be also considered intuition, in some situations, hearing a specific sound or, a specific word can produce in us the unconscious feeling that we have to do something, for example, one time my father was driving while suddenly we randomly stopped the car and a small child appeared from nowhere, and crossed the street, after that he told us that he had the feeling that he had to stop, and that is what he did.

 

Based on my personal experience I would say that intuition most of the time is reliable, but it is not perfect though. Deciding whether to trust or not trust our intuition, would depend on the consequences of the mistake. If I had to take a really important decision and an unconscious thought crosses my mind, telling me the answer I would not base my decision on that unconscious thought.

 

Besides of this I think that there are individuals who use more their intuition that other individuals, so that they got used to believe what their intuition tells them, but we cannot say that there is an individual with more reliable intuition than others' intuition, basically because every person has his own intuition for certain things, and since every intuition is different, every person sees a situation in his own different way, so we cannot know if the intuition of a person is right or wrong.