"The Social Construction of Life." What does this title mean to you? Take a minute and jot down your thoughts.
While you do this, here is a non-distracting graphic.
What was your response to being asked this at the outset? What did you feel? Think? Do? Take another minute and explore your responses? Be honest.
An other non-distracting graphic.
Probably most of you just turned over the pages to see what point I intended to make by starting with these questions. I could make you wait if this were a lecture you were listening to. If you were students, I could have used my authority as a teacher to get you to write down something. But this is a book so I cannot enforce readers' compliance with my directions. Let me then move on and explain the meaning and associations I attach to key terms. But first, note that:
- I value people not accepting anything without questioning.
- I am also prepared for you, the readers, to feel disturbed or even anxious, unsure of what constitutes the expected response.
- I want to open for your questioning many issues which you might have taken to be well established or which you would previously have waited for someone else to provide complete and tidy answers for.