Percribed Title 7

“We see and understand things not as they are but as we are.” Discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing.

The world is full of bias. There is no way to eliminate bias' either because we as humans do not have the ability to be objective. Therefore, we do not see and understand things as they are, but as we are.

We use perception and emotion to see things. When we perceive things, our own personal biases comes into play. We sometimes do not always see what really happens, but what we believe should have happened, or what we believe is happening. The initial perception we make dominates over any other perception we might later make. Sometimes we use our experiences in how we react/see things. I've had my fair share of trust issues. I've told things to people that I thought I trusted (i dont just mean that teenage he-said-she-said drama) only to have that trust betrayed. Now, when someone asks me to share personal things with them, I don't always take it they way they mean it. It shouldn't be such a hard thing to understand. Sometimes people simply want you to talk to them so that you feel better or so that they can help. I have a therapist who I have been seeing for over a year. I still have found it difficult to entrust them with things because I am so used to having things I say in confidentiality to people of authortiy in my life retold to someone else. I cannot see past my own bad experiences to understand that sometimes things are different.

Emotion also plays a role in how we understand things. I tend to keep my emotions to myself, but it doesnt mean that I'm upset or angry, as a lot of people seem to take that. They probably see people who don't express emotion as often as they do as sad because they are so used to being happy all the time that they don't understand that not everyone displays it like that. Sometimes it is difficult to see past my emotions. I'm diagnosed with bipolar disorder. My moods are unpredictable at times and can change on the drop of a dime, without real reasons. I dont understand how it works. My emotions get in my way of understanding things because I cant understand them. I am clouded by emotion to see things correctly. There are times when I'm really happy, so everything seems to be great, even if something really bad just happened. When I'm angry I take things people say in completely different ways from what they meant them. I might take somethign as rude when it was simply a curious question being asked of me.