Consequences of Pragmatism - Essay Example

Consequences of Pragmatism In our lives, we go through numerous transformations as we grow up and mature. These transformations are sometimes evident while at other times, they occur within our minds and souls. At times, when we come across an old photograph or a note written by us, we wonder at our own immaturity. Sometimes we chide ourselves for being so naïve and so immature. We change as we encounter different people, different challenges and different experiences but most of all we change because our mind adapt to the environment around us. Change is something that is constant in our lives. When we are born, we are born with a lens. This lens is special in the sense that it allows us to see something that we want to see or what we have been trained to observe. This lens is a gift to us from our parents, our families, our friends and mostly from our society. Even the media is a big contributor to this lens. The question here is, can people change outside this lens. Can we change to become better persons when that change is not acceptable by our family, our friends, or mostly importantly our own perception that has been fed into us since the time we were born? Recently, I read an article on Reel Bad Arabs. It claimed that the image that we have of Arabs is people who are bad and prone to violence. While I was reading the article, I realized that my image of the Arabs was a lot like that image. But in truth not all Arabs are like this. There are good Arabs and bad Arabs in the same way that there are good Americans and bad Americans. The point that I want to make here is that our society and more specifically our media forces certain viewpoints on us that they present to us as the truth. These viewpoints are so constantly fed into our minds that we finally accept them as the truth. Consider the case of the Arabs here. When I came to China, I realized that even I was living with certain stereotypes about America and the American people. I had a notion that America was a happy country but it was only when I came here that I realized that even people here was not happy and everyone had different worries. I also realized that the Americans had certain perceptions about the Chinese. These may seem true but they do not realize the core of the Chinese. They understand the people but not their philosophy. Sometimes we continue to live our lives without realizing that our perspective has become stagnant. We consider our viewpoints to be true because the people around us accept it as the truth. When we went to war against Afghanistan, we saw them as the bad guys. But when we read about the horror that we inflicted upon them, we realize that we are the bad guys. The truth changes meaning for different people and different times. Therefore I argue against fact that there is something known as the absolute truth. Absolute truth changes with the viewpoint of the society. It changes with people, time, ideals, leader etc. For instance, the absolute truth changed for me when I came to America. Even as I interacted with the people in America, their viewpoints also changed and so did their absolute truth. Considering the fact that stereotypes guide our understanding of the people and world around us, is it possible for us to embrace the concepts of the positivists. The positivists came as a reaction to the prevalent racism and nationalism that was hindering man’s search for the absolute truth. These positivists aimed for a universal language that could bring together people from different wakes of life. But when asks whether it is possible to develop that one universal language, the answer is not that simple. According to Wittgenstein, ‘It is only in language that one can mean something by something’ (Rotary).Therefore, in order for a word to mean something, there must be people giving meaning to the world. The people giving meaning to this word already have a lens on their eyes that makes their world from the other person who though has a lens but his is a little different according to his cultural and social background. The different lenses thus become a major impediment towards the development of a universal language. When I say that the development of universal language is not simple, I do not mean that it is impossible. In order for the development of such a language, it is imperative that people in the society open up their eyes and tilt their eyes to avoid the lens from obscuring their views. People need to change their ideas and viewpoints from the ones that they have been born with. They need to accept the reality that while there may be no absolute reality, there are multitudes of reality; each one real in its own sense. In life, change can only occur when we open ourselves to new viewpoints and perspectives. We need to challenge our definition of what is true and what is good. Here I agree with Rotary, when he writes that ‘the sense that there is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no criterion that we have not created in the course of creating a practice, no standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a criterion, no rigorous argumentation that is not obedience to our own conventions’ (Rotary). I agree that the criterion of right and wrong is something that we have created. There is no truth as Plato argues. The truth is only the stand that the majority takes against an issue. If the majority endorse war, then it becomes good but when they criticize war, it becomes bad. I believe this to be true because the society in China lives by different rules than the society in America. Both are right in their own sense and in the context of their own people. Coming to America, I had to change my own concepts of right and wrong but I was not able to change my entire concepts since I was born with them and accept them as a part of me. A person changes when the environment around him changes. For example, take the recent recession. Because of recession, there occurred a great change in society’s lifestyle. Budget hunters grew in numbers and people became very conscious about where to spend their money. They were no longer frivolous but rather they were prudent. Change also occurs when we explore the world around us; when we open up our minds to new perspectives, ideas, thoughts and opinions. But before we immerse ourselves in new ideas, we need to challenge our own ideals, perspectives, thoughts and opinions. We need to ask ourselves whether the ideals that we have fought for, are really worth fighting for. Is America really democratic and open to diversity as we claim we are? It is not easy to challenge our own ideals. This is because we have been spoon fed these ideals for so long that we can longer separate ourselves from these ideals. They are part of us. For instance, a Chinese like me cannot rebel against my elders in a harsh way. While we have been constantly fed with the concept that we cannot argue with our elders but because the American philosophy is seeping in my mind, I take a roundabout way of going against them. Change can only happen because of two reasons: either he went through a life changing experience or he was going through this process without realizing it. At times, we do not realize the change that is occurring within us. It is only after we change that we realize that we have changed. We did not understand the process while it was occurring. Often it so happens that we are highly opposed to the change. We oppose a certain belief very strongly but some time later, we accept that change and we even look forward to it. Why does this happen? This happens because our mind is fighting with us to accept the change; but because our ideals have been so strongly rooted inside our minds that new ideas find it difficult to foster. The language that our tongue speaks is against that change because it has been speaking that language for quite some time. It does it out of habit while our mind actively fights for the change. But once we open ourselves to change, we realize that there are different shades of goodness and truth. Life is no longer black and white but rather it is 265 shades of grey. Once we realize this, we have truly opened our mind to change. It may occur that after exploring these shades of grey, we may go back to accepting life in black and white. We may agree with Plato that there is an absolute truth. We would accept that killing is wrong; whether it is done by our enemies or by allies. But for this to happen, we first need to explore the shades of grey. Work Cited Rotary, Richard, Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1982, Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm Read More