You look Deviant

Deviance is all about perception. One act could be interpreted in different ways depending on the perception of the person, and the people who see it. As we read Saints and roughnecks we could easily see that the same crimes committed were treated differently because of the perception of who committed it. Even at my school this is obvious. Obviously this is just an example and not necessarily what exactly happens but the idea of it does. We have two kids in the same class, one who is barely passing the class, and the other who is doing just fine. When the kid who is barely passing doesn't show up to class the teacher will clearly be angry and may even hint at what a bad kid that is. While if the kid who is passing easily misses class the teacher won't even notice or care. In reality the kids both ditched class yet one kid was discriminated against because of the perception about him. One time it was about three in the morning and I was with a group of kids. We walked into Ihop to get some food. At the same time there was this group of other kids who dressed in a much different manner than us, that also walked in. When both groups walked out there was a police officer in the parking lot. We acted casual because we just got some food. The officer perceived the other group of kids to be deviant and went over to talk to them while letting my group leave. Neither group did anything wrong and still the officer thought that because they dressed more poorly than we did that they had to be trouble. It shows that perception is everything when it comes to determining deviance.

I feel Deviant

It's amazing how much our society influences us, we are brought up in America a certain way. We learned earlier that there are social norms in our society. If we take this one step further those norms also decide what is considered deviant. Deviant doesn't automatically mean a bad thing, as we discussed there are two types of deviance positive and negative. Negative can be described as something looked down upon in society such as driving while using a cell phone. This is a strange situation because before it was acceptable to drive while talking on your phone. An example of positive deviance would be doing something to help another person that you do not normally do, like buying a lunch for someone else. To sum deviance up, it is something that is not normally done, good or bad, and sometimes it is even looked down upon. I will admit I have been guilty of some negative deviant behavior. Occasionally if I'm expecting a call from someone while driving I will answer my phone. In today's world this is unacceptable and people that see you do it sometimes give you looks or go as far as to yell at you while driving past. Who knows how long this phase of deviance will last because deviance is not absolute and it does change depending on the time period.

Manliness or violence?

In the American culture a man has to be strong. Strong can mean a lot of things but in this case it means being tough, emotionless, and being strong physically. As kids we grow up learning how to "be a man" and that molds who we are as people. As teenagers and young adults this idea of having to be strong shows up frequently. If we don't have a lot of muscle or if we don't play sports society looks down upon those people as being weak or not masculine. With boys being stigma as weak and more feminine it can sometimes take away our sense of pride. Society marks the tough boys to be true men and the weaker ones to be pathetic. We take that to heart, so if you shun someone because they aren't a varsity athlete, or would rather play chess than to play basketball it really affects the minds of kids. This correlates with school violence. Kids who feel picked on because they are not "tough' lash out. In the more severe cases they will even hurt fellow students just so they can feel strong. For example the shootings at colleges, the kids are able to hold a gun in their hands and hurt other people. This is a type of strength and they are able to wield it. So in killing some students they are simply following the social construction of being a tough guy. For me I was always pushed to play sports as a kid. The sport didn't really matter but as long as I was playing people respected that. Also when I was a kid and I got hurt my dad would always tell me to rub some dirt in it and stop crying. This is exactly what we are brought up to be like, just be tough and you will be a true tough man, and Anything less and we feel like failures and rejects.

I love me some TV

In todays world so many people own televisions. Televisions have become almost a necessity among Americans. People watch T.V. so much every single day. How can we not? It is so entertaining! It is able to take the edge off! unfortunately from the experiment of watching someone watch T.V. it is easy to see the reaction of T.V. people are constantly moving and nothing is going on in their heads(most of the time). T.V. uses technical events to make people interested, because the T.V. itself is just a boring screen with nothing on it. We spend so many hours a day almost trapped by it. In fact some people have the T.V. on at home when they are not even watching it. This is almost an emotional attachment to T.V., just like being attached to a family member. Yet it is hard to blame people for acting like the T.V. is a person or just needing to watch T.V. We are basically trained to watch T.V. since we were children. All of the colors and the noise sticks with us and we become attached to watching television. I know for me I love watching T.V. what is better then coming home from a long day than sitting down and letting other things take my mind over? I used to watch T.V. non-stop. Everyday I would come home sit down and turn on my favorite shows. I have changed since then and I do limit how much I watch T.V. a day because I can do something a bit more meaningful than stair at technical events on a black screen.

Nurture and nature

We don't usually think about how we know things. In fact the idea that we didn't know how to chew, how to walk, or how to talk did not come naturally to us. As people we need both Nurture and Nature for us to grow as people. Nature are all of our instincts that we are born with, but nurture is something that is learned. Most people probably take things we do everyday for granted. Could you imagine not being able to walk right, not being able to talk, or even no being able to use a bathroom? These are all things that we learn at a young age and that is why we are able to do them today, and that is why those daily routines are second nature to us. As we learned in class we need to be nurtured to reach our full potential. We saw this video of a girl who was locked in a room for years. She was never able to be nurtured. She was never able to learn things that we take for granted. Because of this she can't walk normally and can't even eat solid foods. Another person affected by this nurture idea was a boy who lived with a dog. He grew up nurtured by that dog and because of this he actually thought he was a dog, and acted like a dog. As humans we need both Nurture and Nature to grow, both are equally important and as seen by those two kids if you are not nurtured in a positive environment you can't obtain your full potential. My experience with nurture and nature is learning how to walk. According to my parents I would watch them so much and try to copy  their movements. slowly I learned how to walk, and ever since I have used it to the fullest. Even today I have taken my original nurture of learning to walk and used to to play sports such as track.

death taboo

In our society death is a topic that many people are afraid of talking about. It is almost as if it is a taboo to talk about it. You walk into a room and it could be a very pleasant mood, and one mention of the word death and the mood could instantly drop.  The question is why are we afraid of it? Death is a natural event that everyone must go through, so what makes it so hard to talk about? One thing that makes people fear death is that we are a materialistic culture, and when we die we lose everything we have. We can infer that some reasons we are afraid of death is because we lose all those objects that we put so much value into it. Another reason that could possibly tie into our fear of death is that it is the most unknown thing we know of. There are no answers to it, and it works in mysterious ways. We constantly seek answers to everything, so our materialism is one way we express our knowledge. The more you have the more knowledge you could possibly have. How could we have something that gives us insight to death? We are afraid of death because we are afraid of the unknown, because we need material items to validate us, and help explain the meanings to ideas. I remember a time when I was at a funeral for one of my relatives. Even though death was standing in front of everyone no one said anything about it. As the naive child I mentioned the taboo, and instantly my parents told me to be quiet. At the time I didn't understand. What was the big deal? He had already passed on and the word still had its affect on everyone there.

crossing the street

In the United States crossing the street seems like second nature to us. We wait until the white sign flashes the person walking and we cross, or we just go across when no cars are coming. If you travel to a different country things might not be the same. In some countries you need to walk at a steady pace across the street whenever you want and have the cars avoid you. Or you have to navigate through traffic without getting hit. This is an unbelievably strange thing to imagine, especially growing up and being molded to strict rules with crossing the street. It's hard to imagine it because we as Americans have been trained to be "organized" in crossing the road, while to us the way they do things in other countries is pure chaos. To those other people in those countries this is the normal thing to do though. They see no problem with it, as if it was natural. I could not imagine doing anything like this, regularly, it just seems like to much chaos for it to be safe. One time, though, I was fooling around with a friend and we crossed the street while playing leap frog. Now this may not be the same thing as what people do in other countries but if you compare the chaos of crossing with all those cars to playing a game in the street it is sort of similar.