Maryam Smith - Perception

Perception

In a box (Flash Fiction):

You’re up, you’re down, you’re a leader, you’re a distraction, you’re too focused, you can’t concentrate, you’re cold, you’re clingy, where’s your emotion, you’re so dramatic, you’re so condescending, you’re such a child, you’re loud, you’re shy, you’re put in boxes. Who do you think you are?

Artist Statement:

Rationale:

All my life I’ve been classified as many different personalities by different people I meet and know. Most times, the ways people classify me contradict one another. This subject is one I’ve thought about for a long time. I believe that your “personality” is given to you by others based off of how they perceive you. My picture is layered with many different facial expressions that represent the traits that people have given me in the past. From my experiences I’ve seen that people don’t care what you think of yourself, they put their beliefs about you out there and expect you to take them. But what if people just lived? What if we, as a society, were able to go through our lives without having to follow what we’re “supposed to be” according to our assigned personalities?

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One Pager:

Society believes that we all have a distinct personality. Personality is defined as your distinctive and enduring characteristic patterns of thinking feeling and behaving. As a child, we are assigned one, whether it’s a creative thinker, a straightforward leader, or one of the many others. This explanation is one that we use to describe ourselves throughout our lives. It’s our excuse for many of the ways we act. We’re taught from a young age that our personality can be explained by traits that we have or actions that we perform. If someone in our society strays from their “personality” they’re said to have changed, they’re not like they usually are. When anyone shows signs of breaking the personality bubble, the one that can explain anything about a person, those signs are dismissed. If someone exhibits traits that do not blend with their personality types these traits are quickly forgotten.

In “The personality Myth” Invisibilia podcast, Alix Spiegel takes us into a prison where we find a man named Dan. The podcast centers around Dan and his ways or his “personality”. He’s seen as a kind man, he definitely doesn’t seem like he belongs in prison. As the podcast goes on we come to find out about the gruesome crime he committed to earn himself his prisoner status. This goes around to show that his personality now does not match the one of the criminal who was thrown in prison. Spiegel questions personality from its validity to its meaning. She explains “Maybe we aren’t thinking right about who we are”(Personality). Though this is still very confusing as she goes on to ask “why do they seem so consistent?”(Personality). Sigmund Freud also released information about his personality theories. His thoughts were very different than the themes presented in the podcast. He believed that personality was composed of three parts: the ID, the Ego, and the Superego. The ID is the basic animalistic side, the Ego is the rational grounded one, and the Superego is the intense perfectionist. These parts were said to counteract each other and whichever was dominant helped shape personality.

I have to agree with “The Personality Myth”. I believe that personality is a theory, not a fact. However, it’s not just any theory, but one that may not be valid. Given many instances, people have proven that their personality is not concrete. This is referenced in “The Personality Myth” many times. During the podcast it is stated that people's’ bodies don’t stay constant on a cellular level, so when the stuff inside the mind changes people tend to change with it. When we look at the people we see every day, and the people we know really well, we can see how complex the mind really is. With new discoveries being made about the brain every day I don’t see a way where we can simplify the essence of our beings into a personality. That’s where I think Freud goes wrong. His explanation, while valid in some instances, does not apply at all times.  People exhibit so many more traits than what they’re assigned in their personalities. These traits can even contradict what traditionally make up their stereotype. Why are we given these stereotypes? What is their purpose? I believe that it gives society a way to more accurately judge us. If we don’t exhibit the traits that are considered acceptable we are labeled as a defiant rebel. Being seen as defiant gives people a reason to believe that they have the right to look down on us. That also brings us into bias and how personalities contribute our own society’s view of us. I grew up in a very Arab centered culture. In this culture, women are supposed to be quiet, submissive, and covered at all times. When my family decided that we weren’t going to fall into those very restrictive stereotypes we were looked down on. People had biases against us that were totally invalid. Assumptions were made about everything we did, simply based on the fact that we didn’t follow what they expected of us. Cultural ideas of right and wrong are forced on everyone as a society daily. When you don’t conform, you are not as respected or listened to. What if we didn’t put ourselves and our minds in the box that is personality?