Perception is everything

Many events in our lives are thought to be carried due to necessity but in reality there are very few that are; instead it is the context that surround these daily events that make them seem mandatory. An example that shows this concept is how girls in today's society wear make-up because they want to look like all the supermodels and to fit in with all there peers who are also follow this trend. Through repetition girls have turned this into such a norm that spreading potentially harmful chemicals on their body's seems acceptable because of the context and knowledge based around this subject. Beau Otto uses optical illusion's as a metaphor for this idea. He does this by taking 2 exact coloured dots and puts them on a white sheet and a black sheet, the end result is that they appear to be different colours. A situation that shows this is how 2 seemingly identical children could be born on different sides of the world but grow up to be totally different. They could differ in jobs, religion and over all character. The reason for this is not because they where born to become a doctor or a janitor instead it was the influences around them that made them pursue their careers in different ways. Parents are also responsible for creating the context that forms the child's thought and ultimately their outlook on life. This goes for religion as well for example, a child isn't born Muslim instead they are born then taught to be a Muslim. It is this ideology that shows that it isn't the colour on the dot or the baby being born that decides how it is perceived, instead it's the context that surrounds it that ultimately creates the perception for an individual.