Social Constructionist Perspective

The view of a social constructionist says that we build worlds through communication by putting together collective ideas in the groups that we are in. With those ideas we put together a collective representation of reality. These are broken into symbolic codes, cognitive customs, cultural traditions, and shared roles and rules. I was trying to come up with some of our ideas that fit into our social construction model that other cultures may not think of. I came up with our obsession with celebrities and money. I think these two things attribute to the lack of happiness in this country. We are so worried and stressed about what other people are doing and have that we forget to be happy with the things we have. I am not going crazy and saying that we should not have money and that poorer countries are happier because they do not have money. That would be absurd! I am just saying that if we did not put such an importance on being rich and wanting an expensive lifestyle that people would have less to worry about. Then there time could be put into something more productive. I like the social constructionist model but I think that some of our collective representations of reality are wrong.