Colin Turnbull

          Colin Turnbull was a famous British-American anthropologist whose work on the African BaMbuti Pygmies is one of the most important works that made him a famous intellectual in the 1960’s and 1970’s. He was raised primarily by a series of German nannies and was educated at the prestigious Westminster School, where he became a renowned organist. He considered his privileges to be a duty to help those people of color, in other words, people who are discriminated.

          Turnbull first became interested in African ethnology on a motorcycle trip in 1951 during which he viewed East Africa, the Congo, the Sudan, and Egypt. It was on this trip that he first visited the Pygmies. He then met the BaMbuti tribe, which he considered to have social institutions more humane and more sophisticated the ones that were practiced in western civilization. The people lived in peace not because they were ordered to by the laws, but because of their wish to be united and to be treated equally amongst themselves.

          Later on in his life, in 1959, he met his partner Joseph Towles, with whom he exchanged marriage vows the following year. After his partner’s death, Turnbull donated all his research to the College of Charleston, and he insisted that this donation was to be named only after Towle’s name alone. He then died in Virginia in 1994 due to a complication of AIDS just like his partner.

What factors influence our perception?

There are internal and external factors that affects your perception.

      The internal factors are those that origins from inside of oneself. Like emotions, intelligence and your senses. So because no two people are the same, when they face the same situation, their reactions will be different. Our internal perceptions build when we experience something, especially when you were little. For example, I like Saturdays because it was a break from school and you don’t have to worry about homework until the next day. This started when I began school in kinder garden, so from then on, I perceive Saturdays as a day to relax and enjoy.

 Another thing that I like that is due to internal factors is those games that you have to spot differences between two pictures (which is influenced by our senses), because I can almost always find them.

The external factors are those that affect you from the outside, like places, people and culture. I like to use an umbrella under the sun, and everyone thinks that’s normal in Taiwan, but then when I went to Chile and did the same thing, people was staring and muttering “but it’s not raining! What is that for?” and so now I almost never do it and consider it weird when someone uses an umbrella under the blazing sun too… I also don't like buses, due to injury caused by a  buse when I was 6...

Perception is Reality

          The definition you see on a dictionary for perception is : the representation of what is perceived. Then if you look up reality, it will say : all of your experiences that determine how things appear to you. So we can deduce that the phrase "Perception is Reality" is right in a way, because we all have different lives, so we have different perceptions. So it is safe to say that everybody's reality is different. Reality is based on how we live and see this world. Imagine that you are a cat,  but if you've been place in an enviroment that only contains dogs, it is very probable that the cat is going to think that it's a dog and behaves like one and have no idea what a cat really is.

          My perception is constantly changing by itself. I think it is because i lived in many countries and they are all very different from each other. Maybe the perception that lasts the most in your brain is the one that you get in your infancy and childhood. So when i went back to Taiwan from Chile, everyone says that my personlity is not like one of a Taiwanese person. Well mainly they think that it is rude to get up in class to throw out trash, but I don't consider it rude at all, in fact, I think I'm doing something good by cleaning after myself.

Why did I take IB Psychology

   Well, I have to say that the reason I took this class is because I decided to try out for the full IB student program, and one of the six group subjects is psychology. Although there weren't other options in school, I think that I would still have taken this class because it is always very interesting to know how the human mind is working. When I think about psychology, what usually come to my mind is psychologists helping you in daily life to deal with the problems you can't solve alone. And in a way, helping others is helping yourself. I wish to be able to help others when i finish this course.