Compare how our culture, our membership of a group, and our existence as a

unique individual affects the way we know about the world in at least two Ways of
knowing.

My knowledge issue is To what extent does our external environment affect our
ways of knowing?
Our environment affects our emotions to a certain extent as the difference in
discursive background of us affects the way we know about the world.
This is evident as emotions are easily influenced by our environment, perhaps in the
form of a memory or being affected by our current surroundings. When we
experience different forms of emotions, this would affect the way we know about the
world as emotions have the ability to cloud our judgements.
For example, I was brought up in a family in which dogs were forbidden because my
dad was allergic to dogs. Therefore, I never had any direct experience with dogs my
whole life until I went to my friends house for a sleep-over when I was in Middle
school. Because I was really unfamiliar with pets, especially dogs, I irritated her dog
unknowingly and unintentionally and it bit my foot, causing it to bleed. From then on,
I associated the emotion of fear with dogs whenever I see them, even if they were far
away from me. Due to the minor emotional trauma I had when I was quite young, this
clouded my judgement against dogs and I felt fear and hatred whenever I see them
while others might feel the emotion of happiness and love when they see dogs.
Therefore, this shows that our external environment affects our emotions.
On the flipside, the difference in discursive background could affect our emotions
differently but emotions could be altered and changed by factors such as hormones
and drugs. There are instances when emotions do not stand on its own and is
affected by other factors and not the environment that we were brought up in. For
example, my mother takes medication for high blood pressure and she has been
warned that the side effect might cause depression. Hence, if my mother feels
depressed, it is not the effect of her environment but because of drugs.
Hence, I think that our environment affects our emotions to a certain extent as it is
evident that emotions are easily influenced by our surroundings.
Moreover, our environment affects our language to a certain extent because
language has to be part of our surroundings in order to communicate about things
that are central in the environment we are in.
The different surroundings we experience vary in terms of landscape, food, tradition
and more. This results in alteration of language such as new languages being
formed and some languages dying off. This is evident just by looking at how many
different versions of English there are in the world.

For example, Chinese, Malay and Indians are the 3 main races in Singapore. In such
a multi-racial country like Singapore, they speak a common language (Singlish)
which is heavily altered to suit their environment. The vocabulary of Singlish consists
of words originating mainly from English, Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, Tamil and
even the grammar is altered from the Chinese grammar. As Singlish exists in
Singapore, Hinglish exists in India, Chinglish exists in China and more. This shows
that our environment has affected and evolved our language to a certain extent.
Another example is when the Roman Empire was the most powerful political entity in
the Western world, the language Latin was widely spread. However, after the
decline of the Roman Empire till today, Latin became a dying language. This
therefore shows that our environment would affect our language to a certain extent,
with the formation of new languages and the extinctions of some languages.
On the other hand, due to globalisation, our language might not get affected by our
surroundings as several countries have the standardized language and as we
connect by means of internet, our language gets influenced by the standardized
language irregardless of how different or unique our own surroundings are.
Therefore, I think that our environment affects our language to a certain extent as it
is evident by looking at the evolution of language over the many years and how it is
still continuously evolving.