Is there any significant philosophical literature on how culture shapes our perception of objective facts?
To what extent can we be aware of this influence? The death of a human can be seen as an objective fact. Obviously, individual experiences of witnessing such a fact can differ from person to person. Yet, this personal experience seems to be shaped by the objective reality we live in to a very large extent.
To illustrate this: I recently saw a video from 1997 of some young men watching the news of Princess Diana's death. Their reaction was very different from what I would expect today. Those young men were shocked and watched the unfolding of the news quietly; across large parts of society, there was a sense of collective grief. Today, young men would make memes about it, and there certainly wouldn't be this much collective grief. Even those without traumas like war have become less sensitive to death because of seemingly unrelated circumstances.
The collective default of subjective experience has changed, even though it is very hard to point to the specific aspects of our individual relationship to life that shaped this.
Ultimately, it seems we do not have a lot of control or awareness over how our experience of reality is shaped. It seems to be our environment that decides how we see that same environment.
Posted Sep 5, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC · locked