Subjective knowledge

Today in TOK I came to realize how much the importance of different types of knowledge is subjective and personal. In an exercise where we were given the IB hexagon subjects and ranked them in order that we thought was closer to the Truth, my three top subjects were my Higher Level subjects: Maths, Physics, and Art. If I were to justify my reasons for each of them, I would find my personal views and preferences would interfere.

This was really interesting because, although for example maths is thought to be close to the truth by many people, personal taste could change this opinion. For a person who feels maths is less significant in their life, maths would seem further away from the truth.

Also, I honestly can agree with the quote by Louis Armstrong, "Man, if you have to ask what it is, you'll never know." I've been through personal experiences where whether or not a person 'feels it', or 'gets it' really changes their knowledge and perception. I think this is appears in most art forms; Personally I see this most in music, where I have a wide range of taste. If a person likes one genre but doesn't like another because he doesn't 'get it', he'll never know. When a picture paints a thousand words but an interviewer has to ask an artist why what he has done is good, the interviewer will never know. 

This relates to how personal opinion affects our perception, because a person may not be able to see the importance of something, due to 'not getting it' or 'not feeling it'. I think understanding this helps in trying to create compromise and enables people to empathize.