I had a TOK moment when I was watching the movie, Room. In this movie, a mother, Joy, and her five-year old son, Jack, are held captive in a one-room shed. She was abducted by a stranger, Nick, and has been there for seven years. Nick only visits the room for a specific time and Joy refuses to let Nick to meet her son. Jack was born there and the room is his entire world. When Joy tells Jack that the real world is behind the walls and the room is just a spite of the universe, Jack gets angry and doesn’t believe what Joy’s words. At that moment, Jack’s belief about the world crashes down.

Joy meant to make Jack believes in the wrong idea that the room is the whole world, then how does this incorrect belief form, and how reliable it is to Jack? There are several ways of knowing in the process of understanding the world to Jack, which are sense perception, language, imagination and reasoning. People born with some simple beliefs such as “Once I cry, the food comes”. As infants grow, they have more chances to get in touch with the world. When they observe and feel the world, they get to have their own understanding first, and more questions come alone to them. Curiosity drives them to keep asking questions, and this is how language gets involved.

In communication, information flows back and forward in language. People exchanges the thoughts to each other, and the “thoughts” include beliefs. In Jack’s case, the private idea about the world to Jack is from the communication between him and his mother, who is the only human being that he is able to communicate with. Jack believes every word that Joy said because nobody can prove her wrong, that’s why he firmly believes the room is the world. In real life, people are able to communicate with different people and access to multiple types of media to get information, and so people need to process all the information before they have a conclusion. As a result, people may or may not have the same belief. Interestingly, two people who have opposite belief both have their own reason to prove they are right. This is called reasoning.

When Jack lives in the room with the belief in his head, he tends to find some evidences to prove his understanding is right. At this time, sense perceptions as a way of knowing comes back with reasoning: the room is all Jack can see and touch, and he has never heard of any voices apart from the room, this proves the belief is right—-the room is all. Jack also uses imagination to solve his own doubt about the world in his understanding. For example, he thinks the food that is bought by Nick is from TV. Together with these ways of knowing, Jack strengthens and proves the belief that the room is the whole world. People act like Jack too; they tend to protect the belief that they just have, this is why some people get obsessed with a belief, and others are hard to change their mind even though the belief may not be right. In fact, the deeper the belief is, the more emotional the belief-owner gets.

I could not make a certain conclusion of to what extend is belief is right, but I know that the beliefs in our mind are always reliable before someone breaks the wall of the “room”, and leads us to another circumstance. Watch out, your belief may be wrong.

Watch the film, Room, if you are interested in:

http://www.bilibili.com/video/av3860771/