Perceiving: Write up

Life is a matter of perception. A great deal of interaction occurs with the understanding that what one believes to be true, is what others believe to be true as well. This is not always the case. I may perceive a call in a basketball game to be correct, while another person sitting at the same vantage point may disagree. Take the idea of Pablo Picasso and his abstract imaging. Some may look at his painting, Painter and Knitting Model, and perceive his rendition of the painting within the drawing to be a jumble of lines, not making any sense. However, if one were to look more closely, and try to see the world in an abstract manner as he did, they would see that he was in fact drawing lines of movement. There is no doubt that Picasso could draw a traditionally beautiful painting if he had liked, but instead, he drew the beauty of things unseen to the eye of those not able to think, or see, in the abstract.

The idea of perception comes in to play frequently in my topic of good versus evil. As my presentation suggests, the lines between the two are at times blurred. What action to take in response to different circumstances may be a choice between bad and worse, and at such a point, there would have to be a process of deciding which was the lesser evil. In other cases, what one person perceives as evil, may not be as serious to someone else. Let’s consider my students for a moment. During one class discussion on following school rules, they said I should just ignore the rule concerning leaving the campus to get lunch and bringing fast food in to the room, and let them do what they want. I asked them how many of them would be willing to put their job on the line, and deliberately disobey their boss, in order to make a friend of theirs happy over such a small thing. Half the class raised their hand. This same half said they would go to jail for a friend, over a crime they did not commit. I perceived these situations differently. I personally value my freedom, and if I have a friend who is willing to put me in such a position, then I would rethink that friendship. My students view evil in degrees, and they aren’t alone. They see breaking the food rule and leaving campus rule as a lesser degree of wrong than say, leaving campus to get lunch and going home after. They view the situation and say, “At least I came back!” I perceive this situation differently. I know that when students leave campus, they are leaving our supervision, and according to the law, we are responsible for them between the hours of 7:35 and 2:20. I know that if an accident were to occur, not only would the school feel responsible, they would be legally responsible and open to possible law suits for allowing students off campus. My knowledge of the situation influences my perception.

This idea of good and evil being subject to interpretation was what I was trying to capture with my project – the idea that good and evil exist, and that there will always be both. It would be impossible to know what is truly good, unless it is paired with something evil. Sometimes, as in the song Devil went Down to Georgia, good wins, but at other times, we aren’t so lucky. This is the yin and the yang – the balance of the universe.