Umwelt
Challenges
Recap
Transcript:
One of the things I like to do on a jeep is, to look around at people, inside, outside, and stare at them. And. Wonder where are they going? Where are they coming from? What are their lives that their living? What are their problems? What are their little joys in life? Their own worlds.
Coined by Jakob von Uexkull and Thomas A. Sebeok. Umwelt is a word, a German word, from the root “welt”, which means world. Umwelt means “environment” or “surroundings”. And to quote, it is the “biological foundation that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human and the animal.”
In layman terms, it means the self-centered world. Not that it’s centered on your self, but it’s from your self to what you see around you. It’s your perception of your needs and of relevant reality. It’s commonly known in zoosemiotics and anthrosemiotics, it deals with the interpretation of signs.
One example would be a tick would be sitting on a blade of grass, it senses the butyric acid that is emitted from a mammal as it passes by, and it blindly leaps into the dark, and searches for that right bit of warmth, it goes around their fur or hair, for the right spot to drink from. They have 3 carriers of significance: the butyric acid, the sense of touch, and the sense of heat.
Again, the umwelt theory is that the mind and the world is inseparable, because it is the mind that interprets the world. Every different organism experience a unique and individual umwelt. From a worm that lives underground looking for leaves, right up to a giraffe the eats their leaves up from the tops of the trees.
How much more are we humans? From birth, our culture that surrounds us, the family that raises us, the education that grows us up, to getting mature, and we age to die.
What are our carriers of significance? Your umwelt. What is important to you? I believe that we have our umwelt, that we have different ways to perceive the world around us. Even our right eye sees differently from our left eye. Right now, we have our speeches to make. You lucky two who are already done, to the people who are next. What are you feeling right now, compared to those around you? Are you confident? Are you really scared in the boots, like me? Are you having problems on what you’re going to really say in your speech?
For example, two people of different backgrounds, can work really hard. One person studies at a public school, the other at a private school, living in different situations, and working at their utmost best. But end up in entirely different places. Being poor does not equal being lazy.
To know that something is there, is the first step to overcoming it. Umwelt is also a boundary that separates our perception from those around us. I believe much of prejudice, judgement, and social conflict can be solved by the belief that the other person is seeing things in a much different way than we do.
So I challenge you, that knowing is also overcoming, and try seeing what other people see. Have compassion. And understand.
Thanks to
Citations
https://www.academia.edu/1216926/Umwelt_or_Umwelten
https://www.academia.edu/25110772/Animal_and_Human_Umwelt_Meaningful_Environment_Continuities_and_Discontinuities