R 8-Pinker

R 8

            Benjamin Franklin once said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”  Some may even consider life, God, and gravity as absolute truth.  Truth is, everyone has his or her own opinion about absolute truth, whether it is absolutely true or socially constructed.   Although, we all are occupants of this world, reality is viewed differently among everyone because of our various experiences.  Pinker 2002 explains that “According to the relativistic wisdom prevailing in much of academia today, reality is socially constructed by the use of language, stereotypes, and media images” (p. 198).  However, many times, our own experiences do not match certain situations, and that can cause issues.  For example, Pinker explains how a relativist views stereotyping race and gender as something that can cause oppression and discrimination, or how if we perceive a tree a wrong way, we may bump into (Pinker, 2002).

            As I was reading the article, I tried hard to link the concept of absolute truth with stereotype.  Pinker suggests, “Moreover, even when people believe that ethnic groups have characteristic traits, they are never mindless stereotypers who literally believe that each and every member of the group posses those traits” (p. 204).  However, I always thought that when people stereotype something or someone; they either consciously or subconsciously place all people or things that belong to a certain group in one category.  She discusses how some stereotypes can at times be statistically proven to be true.  In my opinion, since stereotyping is the act of placing all things and people that belong to a particular group in a certain category, how can a stereotype be proven?  Unless there is a stereotype that all mammals are warm blooded.  It just does not make sense to classify that information as a stereotype.  According to Xiuzhen Ren and Hongwei Wang, “That is to say, stereotypes assume that everyone from a group has certain characteristics and allow no room for individual differences” (Xiuzhen Ren and Hongwei Wang, 2006, p. 44).

            One statement Pinker mentions that I do agree on is, “When people are distracted or put under pressure to respond quickly, they are more likely to judge that a member of an ethnic group has all the stereotyped traits of the group” (p. 205).  Thus, I was immediately reminded of the Implicit Associations Tests I took for class in the beginning of the class.  The Implicit Associations Test is an assessment to show how our unconscious thoughts and feelings can surface up and become known to us through immediate and pressured situations.  I believe that subconsciously I favored certain things simply because those things were learned through media and my surroundings.  I was able to socially construct two realities, one that is conscious and another that is subconscious. 

              The fact that everyone constructs their own realities through certain experiences in the world can cause a significant amount of confusion and bickering in the world.  Thus, everyone begins to believe that their own realities are the only truths because it is often difficult to understand other people’s reality.  However, there are some realities that everyone has to go through and are unchanging such as life, death, and social class.

References

Ren, X., and Wang, H. (2006).  A Study of Cultural Stereotypes in Intercultural Communication. 

            Sino-US English Teaching, 3, 44-47.