The Social Construction of Reality

In class this week, we learned about the social construction of reality; our reality is what we create. Our society creates the "norm" and the norm is different everywhere you go. At Stevenson, we've constructed a society where we sit down at 8:05 every monday-friday morning, watch the announcements, take out our notes, and stare at the teacher until he/she speaks. We get 55 mins to eat lunch and, if we leave campus, we usually just go to a fast food restaurant. In Europe, it's completely different. They get enough time to go home for lunch, because they have constructed a reality where eating with family and friends is really important. Going back to what Sal was talking about in class, regarding the bathrooms we have in America, we have constructed a reality where we have the toilet, the shower, and the bathroom all in one room. In Japan they find the fact that we bathe in our own filth when we take baths is disgusting. In Iran, they believe that our toilets are unsanitary. Their norm is a toilet that is built into the floor so you can avoid the germs that come from sitting on a toilet seat. When I visited my family there, about five years ago, I was so shocked to see that and I even thought it was weird. However, everyone uses that type of bathroom so they've constructed it to be normal. In the diverse community we live in, we should become more open-minded of the realities other societies construct, in order to understand people better.

Iranian-style Toilet: