Notre Dame All American linebacker Manti Te’o was in love with Stanford University student, Lennay Kekua. They met online and were frequently online together sharing experiences as young lovers do. One thing they shared was her battle with leukemia. Even though they had not yet met in person, their love for each other grew. Then a tragedy occurred. On September 11, 2012, Lennay died in a car accident. And although Manti had never met her in person, he was devastated. But even in his grief, he continued his football season as he had promised Lennay, became an All American, and was drafted by the San Diego Chargers.
Manti’s story now takes a strange twist. In the following January, after an anonymous tip, two reporters reveal that there was no such person as Lennay Kedua. She was a hoax created by family acquaintance, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.
Manti Te’o had been led to believe that such a girl existed and for several months he carried on a virtual relationship with her. The pictures of “Lannay” were actually those of a former classmate of Tuiasosopo. On a Dr. Phil television show Ronaiah Tuiasosopo confessed that he was very attracted to Manti and this was his way of getting close to him.
Manti Te’o believed that this girl Lennay existed. The reality he created was that she lived and was his girlfriend and it was this reality that guided his decisions and actions.1
Dr. Louis Gottschalk is a renowned psychiatrist from the University of California, Irvine. It is estimated that he lost between $1 and $3 million to a Nigerian Internet scam. In 1995, Dr. Gottschalk received an unsolicited email from a “government official” or “banker” looking for someone to help him get a significant amount of money out of that country for a portion of the total amount. Dr. Gottschalk began sending money.
For the next 10 years, Dr. Gottschalk was a victim of the “scam.” He even traveled to Nigeria and met with a person he knew there only as “The General.” In the end, he never made a cent. The reality he created in his head was false and the decisions he made on that reality cost him dearly.2
Finally, have you ever looked at a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife of a friend of yours and wonder, “What is wrong with my friend?” “Can’t my friend see that this person is all wrong as a companion?”
These examples lead us to the question, “Why do people see the world in so many different ways? Or to put it another way, “Why do different people see the same situation and draw such different conclusions?” An example of this was the "Occupy Wall Street" movement that was interpreted in many different ways.
Beginning September 17, 2011 activists began camping in Zuccotti Park located in the midst of Wall Street. Their purpose was to publicize what they felt was an inequity of the distribution of wealth in the United States. Their slogan was, “We are the 99%” which was intended to emphasize the difference in wealth between the wealthy 1% of the population and the other 99% of the people in the USA.
How was the Occupy Wall Street movement viewed? As the hero spokespeople for the masses, as the dregs of society who need to get a job, and everything in between. There were a wide variety of interpretations of this action.
Radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh told his audience, “When I was 10 years old I was more self-sufficient than this parade of human debris calling itself Occupy Wall Street.”
President Barack Obama viewed them as expressing “the frustrations the American people feel.”
Former U.S. Representative Eric Cantor described the movement as a “growing mob.”
According to Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, “Demonstrating like this is as American as apple pie. We’ve been marching up and down and demonstrating throughout our history…”
As Michael Bloomberg, New York City Mayor at the time, stated, “What they’re trying to do is take the jobs away from people working in this city.”
Jon Stewart, comedy news anchor of the Daily Show, tried to figure this out when he said, “So, (Tea Party) rage against duly elected government is patriotic – quintessentially American – whereas (Occupy Wall Street) rage against multi-national shareholder –accountable corporations are anti-American. OK, gotcha.”
Fox News Anchor, Steve Doocy, compared them and their protests against the United States in the Arab world. “That almost looks like what happened last week in Libya and in Cairo.”
We all can observe the same thing, but “see” something different. This is common to all of us. What we have done is create a “personal reality” based on a shared environment. Many arguments begin here, where the purpose is to resolve this difference of interpretation in an attempt to determine a common reality.
Key point: We don’t argue what is actually out there in our environment, but instead we argue the realities we create from that environment. We don’t argue if the Occupy Wall Street movement is good or bad, we argue the reality we have created in our heads about whether the Occupy Wall Street movement is good or bad. Or to put in another way, we don’t argue if the actual Cowboys are a better football team than the Packers. We argue the realities we’ve created in our minds of these two teams.
We use our perception process to create our reality. What do you see in this picture?
11.1.2: "German postcard from 1888" (Public Domain; Unknown via Wikimedia Commons)
Do you see an old woman or a young lady? Do you see both?
This chapter is all about how we use the perception process to create realities about people, events, and things in our environment. And, finally, how we can create the most accurate reality possible.
