Perception is Everything

The presentation by Beau Otto is about how us as humans perceive the world and about the factors that can influence it. There are other influences that can change how we see something, such as previous experiences which can affect how one can few circumstances. Two different people might view the same thing differently and can react completely differently to the same situation. Different media news sources can completely change ones views on the world, reading Middle Eastern news sources like Al Jazeera or Russian news like Russia Today compared to a USA news source like Fox which has a different slant. Each news source has a different bias on the same news story, such as the Libyan civil war where Al Jazeera reports on the suffering of the people, Russia Today reports against the US and NATO involvement while Fox does not support the money going to the war. Listening to only one news source can change how one can perceive world events, everything has bias but if someone only listens to one corporation's view point then that is how they will view the world events. It is like when Beau Otto took the same colours and put them on a different backgrounds, the same event can look different depending on how one views it. Colours are perceived differently when they are on a white background compared to a black one, bias can have the same effect on things such as the news. Different culture backgrounds will also affect on how people view different things. One race might consider something acceptable while another does not, Otto said "no one is an outside observer of nature" therefore no one group can set the standard of what is right or wrong. When Western cultures looks at some Middle Eastern cultures we sometimes see somethings as almost "barbaric", like when they force the women to wear a Burqa. But could it not be considered racist to judge another culture by our own? Can one apply our own culture to another and assume ours it right while a woman from the Middle East might look at us as forcing women to dress a certain way and wear certain popular styles. Whether or not one is more right or better than the other I don't know but each should be judged on their own accord using their own morels. On each background the same colour might seem different, for Western culture we might see it as bad but with their culture whether or not they view it as good they should be the ones deciding what to do and not us.