Is Television Really Entertainment?

Television is a huge part of the American Lifestyle. We watch tv while doing housework or homework, we watch tv with friends, we even use it as a way to bond with our families. According to Nielsenwire, "82% of homes have more than 1 television set"; Americans even have multiple television sets in our houses so everyone can watch their own show.

This week we talked about television and we were asked to watch TV while counting the technical events, watch the news without the sound, watch someone else watching TV, and then watch the TV set without it being turned on. The results were interesting. 

A TV set is just another inanimate object, but what's on it is what entrances us to keep watching it. We even label it as a form of entertainment even though all we do when we watch TV is sit there and just stare. The sports games, the talk shows, the reality tv shows, and all the other shows we enjoy watching trick us into being interested by adding many technical events such as voice overs, fade ins/outs, zoom ins/outs, and cuts to different scenes. This way, there is so much going on that you don't even realize what you're watching really isn't that exciting. You just sit there and stare at a screen, mesmerized by all the "exciting" things going on before you. 

Thrive!

In class this week, we were assigned a reading on thriving, focusing on happiness. Buettner, the author of this novel, claims that six factors will determine whether you thrive or not; your community, workplace, social life, financial life, home, and self. Limiting the work week and shopping hours and adding on vacation time and taking a maternity leave will help you become more social. Doing so, helps you create stronger interactions and connections with other people, leading you to that happy life you've always dreamed of. Finding the right job for you, one that you are passionate about, will help you become satisfied with the life you are living, as well. So many people choose their career due to the salary they will earn, but most of those people quickly lose interest and gain a confusion of their role in life.
I was relieved to find that, even though he talks about financial life being important, Buettner never says that money equals happiness. He mentions that "individuals who thrive tend to possess enough money to cover their basic needs, but rather than striving for more cash, they focus their time and energy on developing a caring group of healthy friends, working at meaningful jobs, engaging in enriching hobbies" (210). In America, even if we have enough money and materials to live, we want more and more...and more. Instead of doing so, we need to realize that the gaining bonds with the people around us is more important.
Overall, he talks about how we should reach out to different types of people, prioritize what's most important to them and value that, and get involved in their community/environment actively. Americans could learn a lot from this, and following these rules would be ideal, but we are shaped by our surroundings to want more, to have that desire for instant gratification, and do what the media and money tells us to do instead of what we want to do. These factors are great and beneficial, but the most important thing that can determine what "thrive" means to you and your life is where you live.

Hard work, Achievement, and Success

In the movie Tuesdays with Morrie, the values consuming Mitch's life are hard work, achievement, and success. He is always going from state to state, rushing to cover the latest sports news and rushing to meet every deadline. He wants his work to shout "perfection" and his values lead him to ignore everything else in his life. Not only is it true for my parents and myself, but I believe these three things are values our whole country finds important. Even if some people don't act on the hard work and achievement and never reach success, they like the idea of achieving something through hard work and may even envy those who have succeeded in something. I believe we learn to glorify hard work, achievement, and success at an early age. In Elementary school, we start learning to spell and eventually are given the choice of working our hardest and competing in the Spelling Bee. My teacher persuaded my whole class to do so. The winner of the Bee ended up receiving all kinds of medals and recognition for his success; he became the coolest kid in school. From then on, my classmates and I were programmed work hard to get what we want, whether it be receiving a reward, being recognized by others, or just having the ability to know we can succeed at something. This message has never gone away. The goal has just changed, though. It used to be the Spelling Bee, now it's getting into college, and later it will be landing a stable job in our field of work. There are a lot of different types of success, though; success doesn't always have to lead to a good, well-paying job. You can succeed in love, putting others before yourself, being kind to everyone, and being loyal to your family and/or significant other. You can succeed in understanding, knowing that different cultures have different values, being open-minded, and never judging others. Of course there are more, and sometimes they may overlap, but I believe school only teaches us how to succeed in graduating school. Sure, that's what their job is. However, these other things we can succeed in may give us the ability to achieve all we can achieve. For example, lack of success in love can lead to mistreatment of others and potentially ruin our success in school and success in getting a job because of that. Learning how to succeed in areas other than getting a job can help our society become a well-rounded, more understanding generation and lead us to more accomplishments. 

The Values Americans Live By

In class we read an article, "The Values Americans Live By". It discussed 13 general values that Americans live by and described how each is an important part of our lives and our country, as a whole. The value I believe is the most important to our country is "competition". Our culture, unlike many other cultures in the world, stresses individuality to an extreme. Ever since Elementary school, our teachers have taught us competition and to do things all by ourselves. Stickers were rewarded to us for the best picture drawn in Kindergarten, candy rewarded to us for getting a "-0 wrong"on a spelling test in the second grade, and now we are rewarded with good grades when we study in high school. Some high schools post class ranking and some post the Honor Roll list out in the public, to glorify their best students. Students fill their schedules up with AP classes in order to obtain a stop in their favorite prestigious school and possibly become valedictorian of their graduating class. We go on, after graduating from school, to compete with each other for the best job. Even our entertainment stresses competition. "Celebrity Apprentice", "The Bachelor", "American Idol". These shows are flooded with the big picture and goal of winning, becoming the best, beating everyone else. This idea of rising to the top has been pushed on us for so long that, if someone asked me to define America, "competitive" would definitely be one of the first words to pop in my head.