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.

Understanding Language

Most of the time we do not second guess anything that we say or do. Everything that we see or do has been taught to us since a young age. Little did we know the way we do things in the U.S. is not how other countries do things. When we try to say something there is a pre-set idea of our own language and how to interpret it. In other places in the world they may not have our set of language "rules." For example in the U.S. giving the sign of "ok" with your hands means just that, but in other countries it could mean an obscenity. We don't usually second guess how our language could possibly be different, because we are so used to it. We have been taught what to do for so long that anything else seems unusual to us. I'm sure that this holds true for people in other countries who see what we do here. This holds true for me. When I see someone walking and they do something out of the ordinary like sing very loudly, or skip, or even fall I always kind of look at that person with confusion. It is just something out of the ordinary, and that is how other cultures view people that do things in a "strange" way. Because they are not used to it, it seems strange and that is how our mental languages are different from other cultures.

just a generalization

As we learned it is human nature to generalize and create categories. Not that creating categories or using generalizations is wrong, it's just the way we do things when we are in certain situations. The problem with these generalizations is that we tend not to second guess the way we perceive things. Therefore our generalizations are less accurate then we would like to believe. To learn how to use our generalizations in a different way we need to be able to step back from the category and realize that not every person in our generalization will fit into it. When someone doesn't fit into a category we created that is called a stereotype. Stereotyping is the flaw with generalizations because, for example, if someone said that all Caucasians had mini vans that is our generalization. For the sake of the argument lets say that for the most part that is true, but if you went up to a Caucasian person and didn't know who they were and assumed they had a mini van that would be a stereotype. What if the person doesn't have a mini van? This is the flaw with how humans generalize. It may make us intelligent but at the same time it redirects our perspective and makes us less accurate in our assumptions. Everyone is guilty of doing this. One time I had a substitute teacher for one of my classes. I have categorized that all substitute teachers don't know what there doing and it will be an easy day. Unfortunately I stereotyped the sub because that person had a degree in the subject we were learning and made us do a lot of work. I generalized that all substitute teachers were there just to pass on the time,but little did I know she also taught the subject. Even though we make these categories as a way of intelligent thinking, we are at fault because our perceptions are thrown off at the individuals that don't fit the category.

clix

Surprisingly this concept of being part of a group is no surprise. The idea that we discriminate or have allegiances to a group is a surprise. I may have been aware of certain groups I was apart of, but never really second guessed it. When we watched the experiment of the teacher and the kids, it actually became obvious of how we segregate and discriminate people. When I'm in school there are certain people I hang out with and certain people I don't. It's just that simple, you can't be friends with everyone. With the groups you hang out with you tend to be nicer, more comfortable, and more loyal. With your "in-group" you feel a sense of belonging and trust. Now in the other groups you don't have this sense of belonging or trust. Because of this lack of trust you tend to give them the "cold shoulder" or simply ignore or make fun of them. In school these groups people are a part of are "clicks." basically I am much more comfortable with my own click and when I am forced to interact with another person from another click for a little while a very likely outcome could be mocking them or just not being nice to them. It's not that we have anything against that person, it's just we don't have any allegiance to them and we really don't know the person, so we decide that it is o.k. to discriminate against that person because they are not part of your own group. Also the reason we become loyal to our group is because usually there are similarity's that make us closer. For example one group may like Kid Cudi, while another group enjoy Lil Wayne. These are the types of similarity's that can bind people together. You are able to form an allegiance with people who share your same intentions and interests, and if someone who does not believe in the same things you do, can be judged and disliked.

double snowday

I'm not sure if I've ever had two days in a row off of school. No joke I was extremely surprised, most likely along with everyone else. They predicted a bunch of snow, and guess what they were right. One thing they neglected to mention, at least to my knowledge, was the drifting of the snow. Anyway what I'm trying to say is that this was one monster of a snow storm. This storm was able to do something that has not been done it a while. After the snowing part of the storm was over everything stopped. Many places were closed down and it seemed as if the city just stopped for the entire day. The snow was just so massive that it seemed to be able to pull people together. I woke up went outside to somehow shovel my driveway, when a few of my neighbors came over to help me out. I'm not sure about most neighbors but when it usually snows we tend to do our own property and then go inside to where it is warm. This storm was able to unite neighbors together, because it seemed that we were all in the same situation. For that one day we all were united together and came together to help each other out when we needed it. Once my neighbors helped me finish my driveway, I went to my neighbors driveway and helped them complete their driveway. So it seems that when things get tough the people around us are able to come together and put aside what they want to do and help others.

outliers

This week in sociology we discussed the excerpt "outliers" basically the idea of outliers was about how our social groups such as who we are close to or where we live have an affect on us as people. It is hard not to agree with this because we are around those people or things for so long that some ideas must rub off on us and shape who we are. For example in "outliers" there was a lower level of people with heart disease. A man named Wolf was curious about that situation. The explanation was that the environment those people lived in somehow made them healthier. Not because they lived healthier lives because they lived just as unhealthy as everyone else. Something they did have was a connection with everyone in the town. That connection those people had made them have less risk of having heart problems. This idea is about people being affected by their social groups. In this example the town all those people lived in acted as their social group and because of there happiness and peace they had less of a risk. There was nothing medically that Wolf could find with the village, so he shifted his idea towards the idea that the people were healthier because of the the values and ideals of the isolated village. For me one example of being affected by my social groups is when I hang out with my friends. When we all hang out there are certain things we do and certain things we don't do. After a while those ideas of we do and what we don't do rub off and even when I'm not with my friends sometimes I won't do certain things because I those ideas have been instilled in me. Now I'm no trying to say everything we do has an affect, but to just understand that because I hang out with a certain group I am affected because of what we do.