I found this cartoon really interesting. When Ms Finn asked us to write down what each person could possibly be thinking, I had no clue what to write. I ended up writing for the woman "These grocerys are heavy!" or something that was totally unrelated to the point of the exercise. I guess I was thinking that she would be concentrating on what she was doing and maybe be thinking of the man subconsciously in the back of her head. We all make judgements whenever we see or meet a new person. It is hard to overcome jumping to conclusions, but it's a natural instinct. For some reason, I think that we do assess the good and bad qualities of each person, but we tend more to look for the bad. When we think of a bad quality, it turns us away and we don't want to associate with that person. I don't think we evaluate the good and bad qualities to see which one is greater (as in the picture) because if I saw 2 bad things about a person, and 3 good, I still wouldn't want to interact with them. Judgements like this happen everyday without thinking about them. We humans feel like we have to protect ourselves from other people; this keeps us from opening up and taking chances. We assess the bad more than the good until we know a person really well.
i totally agree with aileen said. i think that because humans are animals, we come "pre-programed" with some instinctive defense mechanisms. but i do not believe that because humans have the cognition to evaluate not only their actions, but also the reasoning behind these actions, that we should be responsible for every action. snap judgements like those depicted in "street calculus," illustrate the instict for humans to categorize to make sense of all the different variables and mutations that people have, without such an ability to do so, we would have to start with a totally blank slate everytime we encountered a new person. this is not to imply that biases and judgements are okay; often they are based on arcane stereotypes or misinformation, which i believe is more the root of intolerance and racism. basically, my probelm with the cartoon is that it appears to be a critizism of making snap judgements, which is not something that i think should be under the microscope. instead, i think that a statement about where things like being bak as a risk factor, are coming from? shouldn't we critique the definitions of risk factors rather than the process of assessing risk itself?
I agree with Julia that it is more important to focus on why we consider certain characteristics as "risky" Why did the artist place the words in each column where he did? Who chooses what is "risky". In real life situations it is a single person's nap judgment, but I think it's society as a whole as well as the community we live in that influences the judgments. Who decides what i "risky"?
I definetely agree with Tal in that the illustratos's own bias toward his opinion of "risk" affects the overall message of this illustration. However, I don't feel that there is ever one person who decides what is risky and what isn't, and therefore most of these assumptions and instinctive judgements and stereotypes are unique to every individual based on their own worldviews, family background, status, gender...etc. Another thing that I wanted to comment on was the title of this drawing, being "Street Calculus" and the author's intention behind the title. S/he protrayed this interaction between strangers on the street as being very methodic and "mathematical," including check boxes and functions at the end to determine the "risk factor" of the opposite person. I'm not sure if I would neccessarily agree that the interactions between strangers is quite that straight-forward and mathematical, in that everything can be determined so quickly. I feel that our brains do move quickly in determining whether we feel safe or comfortable in certain situations, however there is usually more to human behavior and interactions, as we learn in B & B. What other sort of behavioral or mental observations give us certain judgements and intuition??
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4 comments:
I found this cartoon really interesting. When Ms Finn asked us to write down what each person could possibly be thinking, I had no clue what to write. I ended up writing for the woman "These grocerys are heavy!" or something that was totally unrelated to the point of the exercise. I guess I was thinking that she would be concentrating on what she was doing and maybe be thinking of the man subconsciously in the back of her head. We all make judgements whenever we see or meet a new person. It is hard to overcome jumping to conclusions, but it's a natural instinct. For some reason, I think that we do assess the good and bad qualities of each person, but we tend more to look for the bad. When we think of a bad quality, it turns us away and we don't want to associate with that person. I don't think we evaluate the good and bad qualities to see which one is greater (as in the picture) because if I saw 2 bad things about a person, and 3 good, I still wouldn't want to interact with them. Judgements like this happen everyday without thinking about them. We humans feel like we have to protect ourselves from other people; this keeps us from opening up and taking chances. We assess the bad more than the good until we know a person really well.
i totally agree with aileen said. i think that because humans are animals, we come "pre-programed" with some instinctive defense mechanisms. but i do not believe that because humans have the cognition to evaluate not only their actions, but also the reasoning behind these actions, that we should be responsible for every action. snap judgements like those depicted in "street calculus," illustrate the instict for humans to categorize to make sense of all the different variables and mutations that people have, without such an ability to do so, we would have to start with a totally blank slate everytime we encountered a new person. this is not to imply that biases and judgements are okay; often they are based on arcane stereotypes or misinformation, which i believe is more the root of intolerance and racism. basically, my probelm with the cartoon is that it appears to be a critizism of making snap judgements, which is not something that i think should be under the microscope. instead, i think that a statement about where things like being bak as a risk factor, are coming from? shouldn't we critique the definitions of risk factors rather than the process of assessing risk itself?
I agree with Julia that it is more important to focus on why we consider certain characteristics as "risky" Why did the artist place the words in each column where he did? Who chooses what is "risky". In real life situations it is a single person's nap judgment, but I think it's society as a whole as well as the community we live in that influences the judgments. Who decides what i "risky"?
I definetely agree with Tal in that the illustratos's own bias toward his opinion of "risk" affects the overall message of this illustration. However, I don't feel that there is ever one person who decides what is risky and what isn't, and therefore most of these assumptions and instinctive judgements and stereotypes are unique to every individual based on their own worldviews, family background, status, gender...etc. Another thing that I wanted to comment on was the title of this drawing, being "Street Calculus" and the author's intention behind the title. S/he protrayed this interaction between strangers on the street as being very methodic and "mathematical," including check boxes and functions at the end to determine the "risk factor" of the opposite person. I'm not sure if I would neccessarily agree that the interactions between strangers is quite that straight-forward and mathematical, in that everything can be determined so quickly. I feel that our brains do move quickly in determining whether we feel safe or comfortable in certain situations, however there is usually more to human behavior and interactions, as we learn in B & B. What other sort of behavioral or mental observations give us certain judgements and intuition??
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