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.

Differences in Culture

Throughout this week, we have been discussing the differences we encounter from culture to culture. We talked of differences in language and daily lifestyles, we read an article regarding how cultures value time differently, and we even compared and contrasted toilets from different cultures. This reminded me of something we learned in AP Psychology recently. Researchers placed a basket with food, clothing, tools, etc. and asked a tribe in Liberia, the Kpelle tribe, to sort these items. Of course, we would sort the food with other food, the clothing with other clothing, and so forth. Members of this tribe didn't do this! Instead, they sorted a tool and a food together, the knife and the potato, because the knife is used to peel the potato. Then, the researchers asked them to sort the items the "fool's way" and they sorted the items exactly as we would. This shows that cultures develop different ways to see things around them. When we look at that basket, we place items together that are similar. When they look at the basket, they pair the items based on their functions. We respond differently, than other cultures do, to almost everything. In order to comprehend the world around us and avoid developing ingroups and outgroups, we must remind ourselves to see things cultures do/think as "different", not "wrong"

Gang Leader for a Day

This week we read an excerpt from the book Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh was interested in studying the poor living in the projects of Chicago. He was just beginning to learn the procedure of interviewing someone and he set up a list of impersonal multiple choice questions he expected would be answered easily. To his surprise, he was not welcomed to the neighborhood by a gang, called the Black Kings. The part of this chapter that really surprised me was when the leader of the gang told Venkatesh he could meet him and his gang members at the same spot the following week, and that Venkatesh actually accepted his offer. Eventually, he ends up hanging out with them and learning a lot without interviewing them directly. It was really brave of him to do this for his career and it was shocking to see that he would go this far. Relating to Charon's article regarding categorizations and generalizations, Venkatesh uses his natural skill of categorizing when he hangs out with these gang members. Since he was studying to become a sociologist, he had the advantage of knowing that using negative assumptions when categorizing makes them his categorizations inaccurate. If you notice, he never judges or racially stereotypes people in the gang or people in the neighborhood. When generalizing, he makes intelligent ones. For example, even though the gang members wouldn't let him accomplish his goal when he first came into the neighborhood, he shouldn't try to harm a gang leader or gang members because he could risk getting hurt. This shows that no matter who you are, sociologist or not, people generalize others naturally. These categorizations are useful because they protect us and help us understand our surroundings. However, we should be careful to prevent these categorizations from becoming racial stereotypes or negative assumptions about a group of people.

Complex You

In class, on Wednesday, we sat in a huge circle and we were asked to classify ourselves in groups we are a part of. Whether we put down that we're apart of a certain sport, a family, a group of friends, or a certain sexuality, we were also asked to list our status within each group. Finally, we placed a star by the status we saw as being the most important, the status we define ourselves as. The people who thought their role/status in their family defined them said so because they were so close to their family members that, without them, they would be a different person. The people whose top choice regarded their status in sports, believed their lives are the way they are today because of the sport they play; they believe they have the type of friends they have because of this sport, they manage their time the way they do because of this sport, and their attitude is the way it is because of that sport. This activity showed me how complex people are because of one thing; one group they were involved with had such a large effect that it has made them the person they are today. People are used to developing schemas about people in their mind, and by using confirmation bias, if they see one person in their schema group that fits that schema, they will see everyone in that group as the same. This activity really showed that everyone is different; no two people are ever replicas. We should open our eyes and realize that everyone is their own, unique individual.