The Book About How Our Perceptions Dictate How We Perceive Other Shit
I've started on the second book and I'm not sure if it's redundant or if I'm simply not understanding what the author is saying.
Everything communicated goes both ways. The words, symbols, in my mind, abstract yet producing concrete imagery, is passed on through this text to the reader's mind. You. That is 1 way. The second way is how it enters your mind. I can communicate at the best of my abilities to try to get exactly what I mean to across into your head, but you will perceive it differently because we don't understand things the same way. We are different people and our brains work in funny ways. Associations you've made over the years, my typos, the words your eyes miss, the experiences you've had that influence how you understand the world around you. Everything will come into play so that by the time it enters your mind, it could be a completely different message. Just like how people try to add 'lol' or ':)' in a text to let the other person know not to take the message too seriously. But then perhaps the other person will take that 'lol' or ':)' as sarcasm, or won't register it at all.
If I told a group of people to pick a word every time I showed them different pictures, there would be different answers everywhere. Some will be the same, but many will be different.
Everything we observe and take in, everything we critique is about perception. Our perceptions can heighten our ability to understand the world around us just as quickly as it can hinder us. When we try to solve a problem, the questions we ask and the way we perceive the results can drastically change what we do with that information and how we pass it on. This is influenced by our culture, just as we influence it.
At least, this is what I think the book is about. To be fair, I could be COMPLETELY misinterpreting it. Sometimes, I think I can read it, and other times, my eyes just flit right over the pages in a haze of disillusion.
The book, if you're curious, is Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation by Hodder and Hutson and is about archaeological theories. Before this book, thanks to the textbook and some google searching, I only knew a little about New and Processual Archaeology.