Introduction
Seeing and looking are two different activities needed to achieve results for a person to try to do something. As such, the difference between these two activities lies in the amount of interest and type of expectation. The degree of looking as opposed to seeing and vice versa can be interrogated in light of the ability to perceive original thought as opposed to a rehearsal or a checklist approach to the development of the mental image in the form of an experience.
By quantifying the level of satisfaction by certain amounts of a similar level, it becomes apparent that the value one attaches to a sight they look at is not equal to that of the next or another individual. In fact, the value attached to sight by the first encounter is different from the next and consequent sights of the same. The subsequent viewers are different in attitude, expectation, and impression.
Impression
Discoverer’s impression of an event or activity depreciates as the event or activity is duplicated, formalized, and revised. Garcia Lopez de Cardena’s impression of the Grand Canyon is full of original first impression experience of the terrain, the air, the atmosphere, and most of all of the beauty of the environment. His value of sight lies in the nakedness of the wild and the native newness founded in the discovery. This can be conceived as what the Grand Canyon truly is and what an exotic experience is attached to it. It is the true value of taking part in the discovery.
This value is, however, depreciated and at times devalued by an act, such as government nationalization of the Canyon as a National park with prescribed features rules of discovery and predefined definitions of the experience. “Seeing the Canyon is made even more difficult by what the sightseer does when the moment arrives when the knower confronts the thing to be known. Instead of looking at it, he photographs it” (Percy 5).
This deprives them of the actual interaction with the elements in the sight, and they are, therefore, left to create a different experience with the registered list of items in the photograph. It is, therefore, “nearly impossible to see the Grand Canyon apart from the way it has been appropriated by a symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer’s mind” (Neumann p334)
The collection of these impressions made while residing in a Lodge comprises of extremely different perceptions of the Canyon and falls short of what it truly is. This includes the artist’s impression of the park as opposed to experience (Kelner 113).
This can be cured in three main ways. The first way involves divergence from the beaten path of expectation inexperience. A good example “involves a lifetime of avoiding the beaten track and guided tours” (Percy 9). The second approach is by revisiting the familiar. The approach and method rely heavily on the approach and strategy adopted in registering the experience. Therefore, a New Yorker who has lived all his life can still recover the authentic view of the Statue of Liberty.
The final strategy involves an accidental encounter. This is probably the most effective method to deliver an authentic actual experience to the viewer. In an extreme example of a passenger whose plane, unfortunately, crashes in the middle of the Canyon, he does not know that he is in the Canyon, and, therefore, he will register the experience as a strange new place. He may have actually visited the Canyon before and toured the length and width of the park, but until he is made aware that the plane is actually in the Canyon, he continues enjoying the confrontation in a whole new original and naked confrontation.
The expanse of authenticity can be analyzed and evaluated based on the comments that emerge after the experience is got. The planners of a tour to the Canyon cannot guarantee an authentic experience, especially if the tour involves a step-by-step planed outlook of the Canyon. In effect, “the person is not something one can study and provide for; he is something one struggles for. But unless he also struggles for himself, unless he knows that there is a struggle, he is going to be just what the planners think he is” (Percy 70)
Analysis
From the discussion above, it is apparent that the true value of an experience can only be derived from an authentic confrontation. The confrontation occurs in the mind before it does in the physical. It is, therefore, apparent that learning is never a part of education, and all the curriculum can offer is an education package. It lies within the mandate of knowledge to gain experience from the information.
Lack of authenticity in the experience causes double losses in creation and conception. Subsequently, the learning experience is a personal initiative, and just like a museum, it is for an individual to construct the sight from the show in the museum. I, therefore, intend to engage in the struggle to learn from the education and guarantee an assurance of utility from the elements involved in the cause.
Works Cited
Kelner, Shaul. Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism, New York: University press, 2010. Print.
Neumann, Mark. On The Rim: Looking for the Grand Canyon, Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2001. Print.
Percy, Walker 1954. The Loss of the Creature. Web.