Last week, in my Literature class, we started reading Farhat Shahzad’s The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning. By the title itself, Shahzad studied the role of communities in students’ memories in a learning environment to help educators improve their teaching strategies. How communities present facts influence your interpretation. An interesting topic that was conducted in Shahzad’s research was the War on Terror. Where you’re from, who you surround yourself will affect your view on that topic.

In my Sociology class, you and your communities’ view is called Collective Realities. This is the understanding that you interacting with your family, colleagues, and friends create patterns of thoughts that become “sui generis” or of it’s own kind. Your thoughts however are still unique since you surround yourself with different groups. Your interpretation then become a combination of all those communities.

But what happens when your communities have the same worldview?

I was born and raised in a religious community. I studied in a Catholic school and went to church every Sunday with my family. Basically, morals and values were imposed on me. An idea that was fed to me by everyone around me was that abortion is killing a human life and it is wrong. They even showed us traumatizing pictures of stillborns and fetuses. I was so against it I even made a paper when I was 13. Sexual intercourse before marriage is also immoral according to them. They say that you have to keep yourself pure for the person you’re going to marry. At one point, my Christian Living (a mandatory class we had to take about church) teacher forced us to sign a ‘contract’ saying that we’re not going to engage in sexual acts until marriage. My point is that the ideas forced on us or given to us by our communities aren’t always correct. All these facts are tainted by their own views of the world.

But how do we get pass their ideas? 

I got pass those religious beliefs by seeking information and educating myself. We shouldn’t limit our views on our communities since their ideas are only seen from one perspective. When we look from different sides of the picture, we can understand it more and see the whole picture much better.