"And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others."- Montaigne
Here is the video I was talking about today in class. Dove did a experiment where they had men and women describe themselves to a forensic artist who drew what they described without ever seeing them. Then they had another person come in and describe the first person to him as well.
I think Montaigne meant that the way we see ourselves is often very different from the way others see us. What Dove found in the experiment was the men and women described themselves in a much more negative way than how others described them. Even if that does not hold true in all cases, it does demonstrate the differences in how we see ourselves vs. how others see us.
Beware: This video is a bit cheese-tastic.
6 comments:
Cheessayyyyyy. It was a cute video though. The difference between the two portraits were pretty big. I agree with you in that the "ourselves" is what we think of our character and the "us" is what we truly are. Many times the two differ. That's not to say that "us" is constantly changing, another of Montaigne's points. We are volatile creatures; our only constant being change. Montaigne also opposed the conquest of the New World as we discussed in class. He thought Europeans were just as barbaric as the Native Americans, and this concept of the white man having superiority over the uncivil barbarians of the New World was silly because they were in fact more humane than most Europeans.
We could also relate this video back to the motif of appearance vs. reality. The people who described themselves say that they are less attractive than they are in reality. In this case the roles of people perceiving the false reality are reversed since the people view their own reality as false. This is contradictory to Cladius's reality because he knows the truth but portrays a false reality to everyone else. In the dove commercial everyone else sees the true reality.
I love this analogy. This video points out how we perceive ourselves physically and mentally, as well as the drastic differences between our perception and another's. It makes us stop and question the person we've thought to have known for so long: ourselves. It can be crushing. This was just a simple "test" that got us thinking about our "true" appearance. Can you imagine how devastating it would be if someone told you that your entire persona - what you consider yourself to be - was completely false? That you embody the qualities you never even considered, or wanted to consider? We would begin to question ourselves, and it would probably drive us mad. I think there's a positive and a negative to Montaigne's thinking. The positive, which Brooke has pointed out with the Dove video, shows that humans are sometimes greater and more important than they think to be. The negative: by questioning who we think we are, we accept the possibility that we can change into our worst nightmare.
This was a very interesting video Brooke! Thanks for sharing! Thats a very interesting point Kincy. I wouldn't have thought about it like that.
I saw this video a few months ago, and I'm so glad you brought it up. Everyone brought up good points about appearance v reality and Montaigne. It's so interesting the vast gap between women's self image and other's perception of them. Women's looks have such a big place in our society's valuation of worth when it should be based on the same standards of merit and honesty as men's. I wonder what would happen if they conducted this experiment with men instead of women. I'm sure men have some of the same insecurities, but because they are not judged by them they are not as intensified.
That was pretty cheesy, but you have a good point. Also, this does kind of tie into relativism with the whole multiple views of the same person thing. Good job relating this to Montaigne.
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