Vagaries of Perception

Collective Conscience?

Is everything just an illusion, a grand social construct?  Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect that has been trying desperately to justify an existence that is supposedly without meaning or purpose? 

Social constructionism is the idea that through human choices, rather than laws related to human judgement, the social mechanisms, phenomenon, or categories are created and developed by the individuals in society.  Social constructs are the by-products of these choices, and this explains why nothing in society is absolute or standardised.  Every individual has their own social reality because of these constructs.  This involves examining social factors and beliefs, and how they become institutionalised, known and engrained in the human psyche.  The social construction of reality is an ongoing, dynamic and fluid process, open to change (yet denied by society), that is reproduced by people acting on their interpretations and knowledge of the society they live in.

But the question is, is everything we know and relate to just an illusion as social constructionism suggests?

Are emotions, for example, just words or labels with no real emotional or mental ramifications?  Are they purely a tool for defining something otherwise incomprehensible, whereby the meaning of the word is in what it means to an individual?  No matter the answer, the key is the implied connection of the words and labels to the person involved.

Are our beliefs of “reality” intrinsic to our human form and the design of our universe, or are they perceptions, a socially reinforced mass delusion? 

We choose our beliefs because the nature of human reality is subjective, yet we are deluded into accepting these beliefs as objectively absolutist. 

We are victims of being fed twisted and biased information from an early age.  There are no truths.  Our universe is ever changing and so are our facts about everything we currently know along with it.  We live in a continuum, a vacuum of progressive factual statements.  We are drowning in a deep and evolving sea of relativistic facts.  So why do we so hastily dismiss societies and beliefs that are radically different from our own, when they could one day be proven right?  Contrary to popular belief, it is okay to swim against the tide to prevent drowning in propaganda. 

Accepting as true various notions paradoxical to widely accepted opinions is not so radical or drastic.  It encourages free-thinking and debates on far-reaching issues or matters that most of us freely accept without challenge.  We should be inspired to reject the indoctrination of false and common beliefs about our humanity and the nature of our society.

We should not allow ourselves to fall prey to various vagaries of perception that allude to the closure of independent thought.  Nothing is set in stone.  Nothing is definitive.  We are free-agents, and consequently we should not deny ourselves the opportunities to expand on our prior knowledge with thoughts and attitudes that are deemed different and distinctive.