Reflection of week 5

Our class Thursday taught me how to use the constructivist theory in real life situations when it comes to dealing with other countries or in this case, aliens. Another thing it taught me is that no matter what, constructivism is always an open ended theory. Thursday’s class also made me realize how much we use the constructivist theory in a social setting almost every day. Let’s say you’re at a party and you start talking to someone you’ve never heard of or seen before. You don’t know this persons likes, interest or personality. You don’t necessarily wait for them to make the first move in a conversation because if everyone did that where would we be today? Instead you introduce yourself and start with small talk questions because you don’t know what their reaction and you don’t want to offend them with the harsh topic of politics. This is what we wanted to do with the aliens, start with small talk and not necessarily wait for them to make the first move in case they think our first move would be hostile. We would go ahead and try to establish some sort of outside communication with them by sending up some mixed radio signals. Those first mixed radio signals would be the “Hey, how’s it going? We’re the people of Earth, we’re pretty diverse and our favorite sport is soccer. What’s up with you?
I was thinking about this parallel in class and thought it was cool because I actually thought about it that day at lunch when I met someone for the first time.