We can start many discussions just by reading our title which states that “We see and

understand things not as they are but as we are”. Usually we don’t spent lot of time thinking
about this, now because it’s mentioned, we can see that there are lot of ways for answering
this question, lot of examples to be given out and lot of questions that we may introduce.
Some people may ask, how do we define our persona or define what understanding means?
But, for me, crucial three questions that are connected to this title and that we should answer
in order to give as extensive as possible reply that is represented from most points of views
are; How is personal experience distinguished from shared knowledge? How does our
personal knowledge influence the ways of knowing in our acquisition of knowledge? To what
extent does new knowledge influence our personal knowledge? For answering these
knowledge questions, we do need to know key terms mentioned, so knowledge is facts,
information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical
understanding of a subject while experience is the knowledge or mastery of an event or
subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it1. It is important to note difference
between personal (I know) and shared (we know) knowledge. Personal knowledge is hard to
define; it is something that we gained through different type activates while perfect examples
of shared knowledge can be all subjects in the IB diploma program 2. One more key term
worth mentioning is ways of knowing, we have talked about these a lot and we saw that there
are plenty of ways knowing and that all of them are unique, some of them are worth
mentioning such as language, reason, emotion and precipitation. We will consider all of these
and answer our knowledge questions mentioned above as extensive as possible with lot of
examples from different points of views in order to get the best answer to our title question
which will consider our knowledge and nature of human.

How is personal experience distinguished from shared knowledge? Personal

experience is something used or gained in areas of knowledge which personally interest an
individual or in which an individuals want to pay more attention because those areas of
knowledge are more interesting for them while shared knowledge may be picked up
accidentally. Shared knowledge is an activity through which knowledge (namely,
information, skills, or expertise) is exchanged among people or organizations. Great example

1
Definitions of knowledge & experience, website visited on 27.12.2015;
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience
2
Difference between personal and shared knowledge on 27.12.2015
http://theoryofknowledgestudent.com/tok-personal-knowledge-shared-knowledge

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that supports this argument is the following thing. I love playing basketball, I have watched
constantly basketball games since I was four years old, just by watching the games constantly
I was learning things about basketball. Then I started training basketball when I was eight
years’ old, in the beginning I was quit bad in playing the game, but because I was personally
interested and because I was going on trainings frequently, which my interest made me do,
my personal experience was increasing and so were my skills. I was better and better every
day and when I was sixteen years old I have won Bosnian & Herzegovinian championship,
personally I always say it is only because we all had lot of experience, which was gained with
lot of failures and lost matches, if we were not personally interested in basketball probably
most of us would quit but because we were personally interested we continued training which
gained our experience and skills. While for example shared knowledge can be picked up
accidentally in areas of knowledge that do not interest an individual, like for example I was
never interested in physic but because Bosnian education system is formed like that, I had to
study physic for five years and it was not only basic knowledge but high school extended
knowledge as well. I gained lot of knowledge which was shared in area of knowledge that do
not fulfill my personal interests.

On the other hand, many people would argue about the statement previously
mentioned. Those people would say that we can pick our shared knowledge and that my
example is irrelevant because we all should have knowledge in subjects that we learn in
schools because that is education. For the other example where we get shared knowledge on
TV about something that does not interest us but we get it just by looking at some TV
documentary etc., they would say that that is not knowledge but information and facts. Great
example for this counter argument would be something that mine cousin Eldin told me. He is
on university studying medicine, and his argument about this topic is that he has picked
shared knowledge he wants to get. He was always interested in medicine and that is his
personal interest which lead him entering the university for medicine. He is getting shared
knowledge every day for last two years and everything is under his area of interest. As you
can see we could make a debate about this one for sure, and different people have different
opinions just like me and Eldin.

To what extent does new knowledge influence our personal knowledge? There is a
significant influence of new knowledge towards personal knowledge. As mentioned
previously personal knowledge or “I know” is knowledge gained individually and most of the

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times it is difficult to describe that knowledge. Great example of personal knowledge is
knowledge of our biograph gained from mind pictures and from our memories. Something
that may support my argument is following example. I memorize spending my winter
holidays with my uncle Namik, when I was 6 years old I strongly believed that he is my
uncle, I gained knowledge of my personal biography including Namik as my uncle, that was
my family knowledge as well, but recently I gained new knowledge, Namik has no blood co-
relationship with me he is just a great friend of my family and as in Bosnian tradition we call
people that are that close to the family uncles, but I as I kid did not know those traditional
habits and I misunderstood my own biography or personal experience which was
significantly changed by new knowledge that was added to me. Or other great example would
be fact that I was perfect in ice skating, I started ice skating when I was 4 years old and I was
doing it for 4 years but I stopped when I saw terrible accident happened to a boy that was
skating with me. That accident gave me new knowledge and showed me what might happen
during ice skating and how it can be dangerous which made a significant change on my
personal knowledge, since then I never stepped on ice and my personal knowledge and skills
connected to ice skating dropped significantly.

On the other hand, many people would say that new knowledge cannot influence our
personal knowledge. They would not agree with any of my examples and they would
represent different counter argument examples. Some may say that for my first example,
tradition and cultural context of Bosnia played important role and that in other countries that
example would not work because I would never gain the knowledge in which I call Namik
my uncle, so it would not be able to be influenced by the new knowledge while for the other
example they would probably say that my age played significant and important role and that
influence made by the new knowledge towards my personal knowledge is totally individual
and that it would not work with all people, some other boy would not stop ice skating. We do
have to agree that even for this knowledge question we have different points of view and that
we could make different arguments.
How does our personal knowledge influence the ways of knowing in our
acquisition of knowledge? Personal knowledge has a significant influence on our ways of
knowing. People may argue that the knowledge which was gained by us individually has a
significant influence on ways of knowing such as emotions, language, sense, imagination etc.
the more our personal knowledge is developed, more we can control our ways of knowing.
Great personal example that supports this argument is as well connected to basketball for

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example In the beginning of my basketball career it was more than difficult to hide emotions
and be “professional”, if we would lose the game, I would probably be in the changing room
by the end of the game crying like a baby or if I would score I point I could show my
emotions of happens but after more games played and more personal knowledge gained I was
able to control my emotions on the pitch and in the arena. As well another example that
supports this claim is something I personally believe its true, artists that make more and more
pictures and/or images and that improve their personal knowledge change their imagination
and sense about something. Great examples that prove this are Monet, Picasso, Dali etc.

While some would disagree with this statement. My friend Nejla who is painter in
Sarajevo would say that improvement or any other kind of a change to personal knowledge
would not make any difference to ways of knowing. She is painting for few years now and
her skills and personal knowledge improve all the time but her ways of knowing such as
emotion, imagination, did not change a bit. Famous Bosnian writer and Nobel price winner
Ivo Andric said “No matter how and why you improve (referring to knowledge), the best
writer is the one that is left with childish imagination, emotion and precipitation” 3. We can
see that even Ivo Andric thinks that our personal knowledge does not have to influence our
ways of knowing and that those things can be separated by a thick line. Personally I would
not agree with these statements but it is something where we have more points of view and
personally I think that is the whole point of knowledge to see answers to a question from a
different angel.

To conclude, after answering on three significant knowledge questions we can come

up to a conclusion that states. This question is debatable and many people may have different
opinions. Some may agree some may disagree. I would agree that we see and understand
things not as they are but as we are and I would support this statement just by representing a
typical example of optimist and pessimist. Both of the type of people are looking at the same
thing, but they see two different representations because they are different people. We
thoroughly see and understand things as we are and not as things are, of course there is lot of
environment influence but that is for another analysis.

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Ivo Andrić quote, page visited on 29.12.2015
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2147.Ivo_Andri_