Sarah Short - Perception of What is "Real"

Ever since our second class, I've been thinking a lot about the discussion we had regarding if there is one single reality for all of humanity or if everyone has their own valid reality. Or, beyond that, if most people's reality is valid, but not those who are deemed to be insane.

In my opinion, we're all crazy or unbalanced in our own unique way. But most of us pick a particular delusion to name "real" and those who disagree with us are labeled "crazy." If you think about, we use the word "crazy" all the time in our everyday lives to refer to someone's different perception of the same event. For instance, a couple breaks up. The girlfriend tells her friends her version of how the breakup occurred, which she believes to be accurate. The boyfriend tells his friends his altered version of the breakup, which he also believes to be accurate. But neither of them was able to step into the other person's being while the event occurred, and so they only obtained one understanding, one perception of the event. Thus, when each hears through the grapevine what the other has said about what happened, which differs from their own idea and memory, they will each automatically say, "They're crazy!"

But is it really accurate to call anyone crazy, even those with diagnosed, mental psychoses? Obviously, their perception of reality is different from ours, but does that make it inherently wrong? I would liken the perception of reality to the perception of art. The same painting hanging in a museum can be viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, and each individual is going to perceive a different image, intention, and meaning. To go further, no one seeing the painting will ever have the same perception of it as the creator of the piece. Is life not the same way? I see life differently, I find a different meaning in life, and I think differently about why life exists that the person next to me does, and the person next to him, and so on. Does that make me crazy? If I look at that painting and see love, and someone else sees hate, does that make one of us crazy? I think not. Each of us is basing our interpretation, our perception, off of past experiences and past knowledge. Past imitation even.

The question "what is art?" is then akin to the question of "what is reality?" No two people will have the same answer, but everyone's answer should be respected, and treated as an individual perception. Because for all we know, those whose perceptions are labeled as "crazy" or as "folly" may just be right in the end, if there can be a "right."