Life as we know comes from our perception of our surrounding environment. A person’s entire reality stems from their perception of the world. A saying that describes this phenomenon is: “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, does it still make a sound?”.
To answer the question, the tree would not make a sound as sound does not exist in nature. Sound is the perception of energy by the human brain. Just as color is the perception by the brain of varying speeds of light being reflected off of objects. A person’s idea of society as a whole is also a perception as a person is unable to know every person’s morals and beliefs just like a person is unable to see what color appears as in nature. People’s behavior, for example, arises as the perceived way that society expects people to act. Societal norms are all just a consensus manifested by a person when in reality they don’t know other people’s actual beliefs and morals.
For example, a 2020 democratic presidential hopeful by the name of Pete Buttigieg is a popular candidate that happens to be homosexual. He currently is polling ahead of most other democratic candidates, but when his supporters are asked how likely they think it is for him to be elected president in 2020, they seem to lack confidence. Almost all of the Buttigiege supporters who are asked this question express their reason for not expecting Buttigiege to win is that the U.S. won’t vote for a homosexual candidate. This is similar to when former president Barack Obama was running for office in the 2008 presidential election as there were many of his supporters thinking that his victory would be unlikely as many voters in the U.S. were prejudice and racist and would never vote for and African-American for president. Statistics from Pew Research Center, however, do not support many of the claims of Buttigieg supporters as “About six-in-ten Americans (61%) support same-sex marriage…”(David Masci, Anna Brown, Jocelyn Kiley 5 facts about same-sex marriage). This poll presents the fact that over half of the country supports same-sex marriage and would likely have no problem with voting for Pete Buttigieg in November 2020. From the point when a person is born, they are constantly forming consensuses about everything through their perception of those things. It helps condense information in the fast moving manner of today’s world and create a reality for people to live by.
Reference:
Masci, David, et al. “5 Facts about Same-Sex Marriage.” Pew Research Center, 24 July 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/24/same-sex-marriage/.
Rimal, Rajiv N. “Media Campaigns and Perceptions of Reality.” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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