In a subjective sense, what is “right” and what is “wrong” appear to be definite. Many abide by “the law of human nature,” with the notion that everyone follows and can distinguish a set of standards that revolve around morality. C.S Lewis discusses this distinction and refers to the law that “people thought that everyone knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it.” In other words, there is a ubiquitous standard of right and wrong that everyone understands and agrees upon. However, what happens when it extends beyond just simply right and wrong, when factors such as life and death contribute to the decision? Is this law still valid?…
From the day you are born, learning and education are the most important skills for survival in today's society. The most valuable thing learned on your journey of life is the ability to distinguish "Right from Wrong", both technically and morally. Though easy at first with the minor day to day issues we deal with, it can become quite difficult when more pressing issues are placed in front of you. Many things influence a person's judgment. While one person believes that their view is the absolute truth, another sees that person as idiotic and uneducated. The important thing to remember when making a decision is to be open-minded, and push the outside influences away so that you can see both sides of the issue and make a decision for yourself. Is there really a moral right or wrong, or is it just a view point?…
5. What is right and wrong or how can we know there is a right and wrong?…
Unlike the idea of the essentialist perspective of believing in the innate essence of everything visible and tangible, the constructionalist perspective adopts the idea regarding the origin of reality as being shaped by society including time. Commonly, the concept of time is hardly discussed, much less thought of as something more than always present or as a way of organization. Yet time had to undergo a beginning and a process to reach its current state. The idea of time highlights the progression needed in order to become a reality. It was not something that simply was nor originated naturally. Time is ingrained into the mind of societies after a progression of social construction. Slowly, but steadily, the concept of time came to be what…
Social constructionism accepts that there is an objective reality. It is concerned with how knowledge is constructed and understood. It has therefore an epistemological not an ontological perspective. Criticisms and misunderstanding arise when this central fact is misinterpreted. This is most evident in debates and criticisms surrounding realism and relativism. The words of Kirk and Miller (1986) are relevant when they suggest that the search for a final, absolute truth be left to philosophers and theologians. Social constructionism places great emphasis on everyday interactions between people and how they use language to construct their reality. It regards the social practices people engage in as the focus of enquiry. This is very similar…
In “The Social Construction of Reality,” by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the authors performed a sociological analysis of the reality of everyday life. The goal of the article was to analyze everyday life not in a scientific way, but in an empirical fashion. An empirical analysis was wanted most likely because the authors wanted to observe and analyze the everyday life from the multiple perspectives that it exists in, and not just from a completely scientific and logical viewpoint.…
For example I feel it is ok to wear whatever color I want to wear regardless of what someone else may think and that it is wrong for someone to take my life over the color I decide to wear. On the other hand a gang banger may think it is right to take my life simply because I am wearing what they consider the wrong color in their neighborhood. I can confidently say that it is wrong to harm a creation of God. So when it comes to right or wrong it is up to the individual on what they consider this to be, but we must be aware that our views on this may differ which is ok because that is was makes us…
Before we take any form of action we must first have the thought to carry or to not carry out a certain action. The thought creates a feeling within what we will call the human soul/spirit (where we feel our feelings) then we act upon that emotion. Moral principals that were conditioned into us from childhood have an effect on our thought process. It depends whether or not we learned about accepted right and wrong such as rape, murder and theft are wrong and that helping others is…
According to the secular humanistic worldview, right and wrong are subjective to a person’s viewpoint. One person’s view of right and wrong could be very different than another’s, but a person shouldn’t judge another’s version of right and wrong. According to Powell, this view is called “ethical subjectivism.”…
Measuring the effectiveness of social constructivism in the classroom will take place in two different ways. When working on group projects or when engaging in class discussion, students will be expected to demonstrate the five essential elements that are unique to a cooperative learning classroom: positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, and social skills (Moreno, 2010). This is very abstract and therefore, will be measured through direct evaluation because it allows the teacher to receive quality information on individual participation and give each student specific feedback. The second measurement will be a criterion-referenced assessment using either an exam or paper…
Social constructionism is a core concept in sociology, so strongly integrated in every society globally, that it has affected the way we all think. Social constructionism displays the fact that the social world is not natural, it is not revealed, and it's not even fully determined. It is completely made up by people, who also continue to transmit and cultivate such views. Everything that we have learned, that has not originated from our own senses, intuition, or reasoning we have learned from other people. 95% of what we know, we have accepted from others, which is why some say that even our own reasoning is influenced by those around us. Essentially, social constructionism explains how and why we give everything reason, from feminine…
Is there an objective set of rules governing our behavior of right and wrong decisions, or does morality come from our personal own preferences? The phrase “gut feeling” is something most people would describe as our own guide to what is right or wrong. It is like when we feel pain, we do not need someone to tell us it hurts, we just know it does on our own. However, as young adults, we tend to fall back on our society’s morals and change our objective morality to subjective morality. This means that instead of thinking about how our decisions will affect our society as a whole, we focus in on how it will impact our own lives. The generation of today does have a sense of what is right and what is wrong, we just push it aside from time to time to benefit our own lives. Young adults and teenagers are capable of understanding what is truly right or wrong. We have the maturity and the intelligence level to discern a good decision from a bad one. In our society we understand that murder is wrong, drugs are bad, and eating healthy is good. As a whole we have a general outline as to what are acceptable and unacceptable choices. It is when we stop looking at the big picture and hone in on our own personal needs that we veer off the path of our moral compasses. We then develop a very selfish and unequal way of living due to everyone being out for him or herself.…
Social construct of reality is defined as what people perceive and understand as reality is a creation of the social interaction of individuals and groups. What this means is the environment we surround ourselves in molds our perception of reality. How we were raised and what we were raised to believe affect how we present ourselves, how we perceive others, how other perceive us, and how we react. For example “How Beer Saved the World” tries to convince you that beer not only changed the world throughout the course of history, but also saved it and provides a convincing argument as to why. The Salem witch trials are another example of a social construct because the community created their own beliefs that there were demonic possessions and used this as an explanation for anything peculiar that happened. In short, our perceptions of reality are colored by our beliefs and backgrounds.…
Social construction is one of the important sociological concepts that can be seen in this short story. Generally, social construction means that we perceive something in a certain way because our society is built that way, but if we functioned differently, we would view it in a different way. In this case, we can talk about social construction of death. In our society death is perceived as something unpleasant, as opposite of life and as a result it’s feared and resented. Additionally, we believe that humans are superior to other creatures, and as a result, human’s death is more painful than death of something else. One more thing that makes death even worse is that we believe in importance of individuals and in self, so when a specific individual that is close to us dies, we are mourning end of his/her life and his/her presence in our lives.…
To start my reflection on the Gergen’s (2009) chapters 1-2 of Invitation on social construction, I would like to share my story. Two years ago I made a difficult decision to move to the United Stated from Eastern Europe and to start over my life in a new unknown cultural environment. I was looking forward to the great adventure and prepared myself for the challenges I could potentially anticipate. I had a lot of professional and life experience. I already built a bright career at home, I traveled a lot around the globe and felt assertive and resolute in dealing with obstacles that could appear in my new social reality. But singular essence of my experience appeared to be not in the field of materialistic and rational day…