s the family” (McDonald-Wikler, The Social Construction of Unreality, p. 122). Due to the interaction between her mother and father, they both believed that she was not retarded. However, when the family spent time with her doctors and saw that she was incapable of doing all the things they thought she could do, the doctors influenced their reality.Fragility is the fourth feature of reality. “This fragility feature is even more evident in everyday life, where the rules are not implicit. People interact without listing the rules of conduct” (Mehan & Wood, Five Features of Reality, 61). This feature shows how fragile one’s reality can be. The three things that prove a reality is unstable are: 1) ceaseless reflexive 2) a body of knowledge 3) and interaction. During a class session, Dr. Anderson demonstrated an example in which she used the game tic-tac-toe. When playing this game, the rules were implicit. If one did not abide by these rules, then it would not be called a game of tic-tac-toe, rather a game where one makes the rules as they go along. “A usually unnoticed feature of the game is a ‘rule’ prohibiting erasing an opponent’s mark. When this unspoken ‘rule’ is broken, it makes its first public appearance. If we were aware of the fragility of our realities, they would seem real” (Mehan & Wood, Five Features of Reality, 61).The last characteristic of Reality is one that is also prominent in everyday life amongst individuals. Permeability is when there is nowhere to escape from your reality, no time to escape, and there is no one to provide evidence for you to hide from it. The Permeable Feature is basically showing another way of how vulnerable one’s perception of reality can be. “If your reality didn’t exist, you would start adapting to the reality youlive in. In other words, wherever you are or whatever you’re doing – you wi...
