Perceive a Witty Title Here

Perceiving is using your senses (sight, taste, touch, etc.) to “see” something. But this definition is an oversimplification of the issue, just as “having knowledge” is an oversimplified definition for knowing. These two seemingly different ideas are completely intertwined.

It is true that you see the world with your eyes, but what you see is up to your mind. You can pick a familiar face out of a crowd, or hear your name from across a noisy room. Why is that? Do we go around all day consciously listening for our name or scanning every face for the ones we are looking for? Well, I guess we could but it would seem like a rather large waste of time and energy. So if we are not consciously doing these things than that would suggest that more than our senses play a part in how we perceive the world.

Your preexisting knowledge of something affects how you perceive it. It is this knowledge that makes your ears perk up at the sound of your name, and draws your gaze to a familiar face. Along with affecting what you perceive, this knowledge can also affect how you perceive it.

Your preconceived notions make your senses more attuned to things that support your way of thinking. This affect is the foundation for stereotypes. If it’s in your head that a certain group is suppose to act a certain way, you have a tendency to only notice that group acting in that way. Lets say that you subscribe to the school of thought that believes Asian students are better at math than other races, with this in mind, you would be more likely to notice an Asian kid that got a 98 on his test than the one that got a 78. The first student reinforces the stereotype you believe in, making your senses more adjusted to it. Here your knowledge of the math skills of Asian students has skewed your perception, and in tern, you perception has skewed your knowledge.

You cant really know much, with the exception of 2+2=4, with absolute certainty, yet we seem to think that we know a lot of things. Our knowledge is largely based on our perceptions, and if those can’t be trusted, how can our knowledge be either? Taking the same example as before, by perceiving only the higher math score, you have reinforced your knowledge of the math abilities of Asian students.

It is not just familiar things that can be misperceived due to your knowledge, even your perception of something that you have never seen or heard of before is affected by what you know. When you encounter new things the first thing that brain tries to do is to relate it to other things that you do know or put it into some kind of context. In this sense, even thought you have never come across this thing before, you already know it. And it is this “knowing” that will prevent your senses from objectively perceiving it.

If you wanted “superior” knowledge, you would most likely back up your knowledge with facts. But if you accept that perception is subjective, and knowledge is based on perception, then it would seem that facts, a type of knowledge, would also be subjective. All and all, it seems like a futile pursuit if you ask me.

For further discussion of the topic of knowledge please refer to the quotation from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure over to the side.

Know Thyself

Knowing yourself means that you have an understanding of your own morals, thoughts, and behavior. This knowledge of yourself is what allows you to give context to your actions. Knowing yourself means that not only do you know how you react, but also you know why you react in that way. Self-knowledge helps you to know what motivates your actions and allows you to accurately predict how you will react to a certain situation.

Knowing how you will act under certain circumstances allows you to control your behavior. If you know that you have a tendency to act certain manner, particularly one that you don’t like, you can actively work to compensate for it.

Knowing yourself is also a key part to knowing others. Understanding “what makes you tick” gives you insight into other people. If you don’t first understand yourself, then you will never be able to understand others. “Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes”-as cliché as it is- is a good way to do both. If you were able to figure out how you would react to someone else’s circumstances, by comparing and contrasting their actions with how you would act, you can learn about that person. You can try to understand their motivation, their morals, and their point of view. Threw trying to understand someone else and their actions you can gain insight into yourself and your future actions.

By knowing your strengths and weaknesses you are able to know in what areas you will excel and in which you will struggle. With this knowledge you can better compensate for your weaknesses and prepare yourself for the future.

My worst quality would probably be an overall lack of determination. It’s has been a longtime since I ever felt “driven” to do anything. I have resolved my self to coast along, putting in minimal effort. Around fourth grade I discovered that I could put in about 20% effort (not doing homework, doing weeklong projects in an hour, not studying for test, often not even reading the material) and still get 75-80% out put (grades) and I was more than willing to take advantage of the situation. Sense then this negative quality has spread into other aspects of my life. Sophomore year, I quit playing football because it took too much effort. Juror year I didn’t try for honors art because I didn’t feel like putting together a portfolio. This year, even thought the regular deadline for a lot of schools is less than 3 weeks away, I have yet to even finalize my list of schools, never mind getting recommendations or finalizing my essays.

The strange thing is, even thought I am fully aware of the fact that I’m perpetually screwing myself; I don’t really seem to care. I don’t actually know why that is…

I would like to say that I am actively trying to compensate for this behavior or that I have a plain on how to change it, but I’m not, and I don’t. True to my personality, I’m just waiting for it to work itself out.

Well, enough of that…

I think my best quality would have to be my knack for logical thought. I don’t claim to always act logically, only that I’m aware of how irrational I am acting and chose that ignore that fact.

I have seen others demonstrate what I consider to be a lack logical thought. They tend to fail to grasp how complex, or in some cases how simple, things actually are. With things like answering question they tend to get caught up on unrelated tangents and completely avoid the actual question. People who I would consider lacking in logical thought usually get lost in details and fail to grasp the big picture.

Logical thought helps me to put thinks in perspective and have a broader understanding of a concept.

It’s difficult to write about your own strengths and weaknesses because there is no external source of information. There is no website or book (to my knowledge) that can give you the answer, only you can figure it out.

Please disregard what I had previously posted. It was a poor choice of subject for the assignment, I apologize.

"There is no permanence"

Gilgamesh comes to Utnapishtim, the man that was given immortality by the gods, asking for the secret of eternal life. Utnapishtim replies by saying "There is no permanence" (106). He is telling Gilgamesh that nothing last forever. The world is constantly changing; by the time I wake up tomorrow the world will have changed and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it. This inevitable change gives us a need to try to hold on to the past.

If you drive around you will likely pass one of our attempts to hold on to the past. These large collections of individual monuments dot the landscape. People come to these places to remember the parts of the past. It is same as when Gilgamesh spent seven days mourning the death of Enkidu. Gilgamesh was unable to move on, and it was his grief over Enkidu that caused him to seek out Utnapishtim and immortality. But these memorials have another purpose, they stand as your individual, eternal, legacy.

In these graveyards each person has a piece of stone that says that they were born, they lived and they died. The steady change of the world creates this desire to have something that will last for a long time attached to your memory. Gilgamesh is the same way, “None will leave a monument for generations to come to compare with his” (118).

Although nothing can last forever, people achieve “immortality” in less physical ways. People reach a kind of everlasting existence by being remembered. For most people it is their friends and family, specifically there children, which preserve their memory. Gilgamesh ultimately achieved his immortality threw stories that we have of him, it is now over four thousand years latter and we still know the Epic of Gilgamesh.

heros

If you were to look up “hero” in a dictionary you would get such a vague definition that it is difficult to get a sense of the meaning of the word. It is seems strange that something as universal as a hero can be so undefined. This is it because there is no set definition, no official group of characteristics, for a hero. Every group has it’s own idea as to what a hero is. A hero is the embodiment of ideals of the society that created it.

Look at Beowulf. He is strong, courageous, loyal, generous, and a good king, the perfect personification of Anglo-Saxon heroism, but also boastful and arrogant. The only reason that Beowulf is victorious over Grendel is his arrogance, he says that not only can he kill the monster that all the Danes can’t; he will do it with his bare hands. Would such unnecessary recklessness be found in a modern day hero? Someone casting aside his or her weapon out of ego would be seen as stupid rather than heroic. And after he slays Grendel he goes on to bask in the glory of his accomplishment, this is not something a modern day hero would do. Our heroes must be both strong and modest. But although we might not consider him one today, there is no uncertainty that Beowulf was a hero.

If a hero is the characterization of societies ideals then what would that make a heroine? She wouldn’t be strong and bold, for these are seen as masculine traits. So a heroine would have to depict feminine traits like beauty, sensitivity, and gentleness. It seems so far from Beowulf that that it does not even seem possible that the same word could be used to describe the two.

When Bertold Brecht said, "Unhappy the land that needs heroes." He is saying that happy people don’t need a fictional character to look up to. He thinks that happy people have no need for a hero to come in and defeat the evil. Maybe that’s true, but if it is then the world has never had any happy lands. Or, maybe, even happy people need something to aspire to, they need that vision of perfection to inspire them.