Sharing Understanding

I think that we "build worlds" through communication mainly due to the fact the we use communication to create culturally accepted meanings. At first I though this sounded a lot harder than it is. The cornerstone of building a common understanding in any cultural is shared experiences. We do this through a varity of ways such as the United States's concept of pedestrians always have the right away when crossing the street. In Italy you take your life into your own hands when crossing the street, but in the U.S. it is ingrained through our experiences growing up, drivers training, and state laws.

These shared ideas taken for granted, however, I beleive that our personal happiness is tied to them. It is how we feel safe, and more over it empowers each of us to go out into the big crazy world with some sence of comminality and confidence. Without a sence of shared meaning we would have to recreate the world every time we left the house.