Umwelts in The Gods Must Be Crazy

Every living being has its own perspective about the world, about how they understand the world. Jakob von Uexkull, a German biologist, developed a theory in which every organism has its own world, or as he call it, “umwelt”. There can be as many umwelts as there are life projects. In these umwelts the organism will give meaning to the things in it in relation to the use that the organism can give it. They tend to be personal to the organism that is living in it. An umwelt, then, will be determined by the learning, experiences and environment among other things that the organism has lived in.
For example, in the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, two different men from completely different societies are presented in the same situations. Their umwelts have been developed according to the environment they grew in, so we can see them giving different meanings to the same things because of the exposure they have had before and the use they give to that thing. On one side we have a man who has grown up in civilization by the name of Andrew Steyrn. He lives by the technological advancements created by his society for the environment to adapt to their lifestyle. He is constantly adapting to new situations and processes. He has grown, just as many of other people, in an environment that has been adapted to the human being. On the other hand there is a “bushman” named Xi that comes from a society that lives in the wilderness. His social environment is normally made up by a family and they live fully off the earth. They have no knowledge of laws, rules, punishment, etc. They have no sense of time more than that of the day and night. For them everything that exists in this earth is good, nothing is evil. They live in isolation unaware of ot...

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...ociety where the basic purpose is known, other meanings are given like a person who empties the liquids inside and later on utilizes as a candle holder. So an object does not hold its meaning in the purpose of the making, but rather the use that it serves.
To conclude, organisms will shape the meaning of things and actions that occur within its umwelts according the use it is giving to the thing in that particular umwelt. These are personal because even within the same communities and environments umwelts will be completely different among the subjects because each one is performing a different project.

Works Cited

The Gods Must Be Crazy. Dir. Uys Jamie. 1980. Web

Uexküll, Jakob Von, and Jakob Von Uexküll. "Theory of Meaning." A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With A Theory of Meaning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010. 139-205. Print.