Identity Creative Assignment

 

 

This group of people right here in this photo is Brandon, Meredith, Kayla, and myself. We are all brother and sister and are very different from one another. Brandon is crazy; he’s 24, been in 3 car accidents and 2 motorcycle accidents… over the course of two years. Meredith is 22 and totally her own person; she loves Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, technology, and Hello Kitty. The girl with the weird expression on her face is Kayla, my youngest sister. Kayla and I grew up together so there is too much to tell. She’s 15, going on 16, the baby of the family and tries to milk it for all it’s worth. Kayla is a strange creature, she loves dinosaurs, animals, and music a great deal. Brandon, Meredith, and Kayla are the more risky siblings when it comes to the outdoors and other things. Everyone one them has wrecked a 4wheeler, got back on, and goes at it all over again. Me, after my first wreck, I was done. You see, my dad is a big motorcycle guy; corporate by day, biker by night, and he wants all of us to be crazy as he is. He always talks about how all of us Lowe’s are crazy… with the exception of me, in the risky, outdoor sense. When we go on our family vacations everyone else is ripping around and doing crazy things on jet ski’s, boats, 4 wheelers, etc., except for me. And for that, all of my life I have been compared to my mother, which I was actually kind of made fun of for, especially by my youngest sister, Kayla, because my Mom, Kayla, and I all lived together our whole lives until this year. My mom is calm, sensible, and a very smart lady, but according to everyone lacks a crazy streak, which everything thinks I lack, also. During my early teen years growing up, this really bothered me, I wanted to be wild and crazy like everyone else in my family and I started to grow apart from my mom. I think I had to do some serious soul searching or something, I desperately wanted to find myself and be my own person, not just labeled boring like my mom or crazy like the rest of my family. Music became a way to express myself in a way that made me comfortable and happy; whether it was writing, listening, or jamming out in the car, music helped me find my way. Traveling all over the country also helped me figure out what I want in life. Because of this passion of traveling, I decided when I went to college that I would major in International Business. But another factor that helped me find myself was my friends that I had throughout high school. They were my kind of crazy. Every weekend we would make some ridiculous plans like to stay a whole night in Walmart, sleep on a play ground for a night, or buy goldfish and set them free, even though they would die in the Allegheny River. We had done some odd things, but I wouldn’t skip out on any of that stuff for the world. By doing all of these different things, it had helped form who I am as a person today. I am still adding to my personality and finding more about myself, but who isn’t? Another thing that made me different from my siblings is that I am the only one who went to college. My brother went to Kansas State University, but after his first semester had to go back to California (where he lived at the time) due to his heart problems, but decided he didn’t want to go back after he recovered. My sister Meredith married right out of high school with no intentions of going to college, even though now she wants to, it’s hard when you’re in the process of divorcing your husband and working two jobs to make it by. And Kayla, even though she is just 15, going on 16, she doesn’t think college will be for her either, so she’s considering joining the military. My dad says all of us kids are different and do our own stupid things, but I personally think I am the most sensible out of everyone. But by going through different things, traveling, discovering music, and finding great friends, they each have different parts throughout my personality. They are the ones who helped me out, after all. 

Cultural Assignment #1

1. A social interaction that I’m involved in is watching series of television shows with my boyfriend when we find the spare time together in our busy lives. I find this to be somewhat unique to our culture because several other cultures stereotype that Americans are both very hard working and lazy, so this is how we tie both of those stereotypes together.  Currently we are watching Breaking Bad and I think the reason we enjoy this television series so much is because we can all relate to money hardships in America, dealing with illnesses within our families and friends, and our curiosity towards the illegal side of the law. Luckily this is one of the many television series that is somewhat intelligent that the American public enjoys. 

2. In high school I was involved in the drama club and once a year we would put on a play for the community. We usually started working on the play around January every year and we would put on the show in May. From January to May, five months of spending your Saturday mornings with 12-18 year olds who are equally as insane and creative as you, you tend to make up odd rituals, obsess over crazy movies, and make fun of the play that you’re trying to rehearse. In my freshman year, drama club discovered the Rocky Horror Picture Show and all of its magical wonders. There are many Saturday nights that a few of us would get together, bring snacks, wear bizarre outfits, and watch Dr. Frank-N-Furter strut his stuff for Brad and Janet while sucking down our Tim Horton’s Iced Caps. Our obsession started showing up at school functions, like Prom, Homecoming, and fundraisers. At each of these dances all of the drama club kids would beg the DJ to play Time Warp and usually towards the end we would get our way. All of us would gather together at the front of the auditorium, form a circle, and dance and sing to the Time Warp. I find this interest to very unique to our community because I am from such a small town that is not very accepting to odd things like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but we all waved our freak flags and enjoyed what we did. 

3. Over the past week I have been seeing this same group of people multiple times who look like they walked out of a Sex Pistols concert. The girl has blue and blonde hair, wears bright red lipstick, gets around on a razor scooter, and usually has a menthol cigarette hanging out of her mouth, her said boyfriend wears some hardcore boots with silver buckles and leather straps all over them, walks around with a Kurt Vonnegut book (He was reading Slaughter-House Five Tuesday at Hookah Bookah, then Jailbird on Friday outside of the library), and some jean vest that he put band iron ons on and silver studs, then some chubby guy with a Mohawk and almost matching jean vest and boots. I find this group of friends to be individuals to our society, even as college students. Every day I walk to and from different classes I see at least one hundred people (typically females) that all look the same; They wear Ugg boots (depending on the temperature), Victoria Secret yoga pants, a Northface fleece jacket, and have either a Vera Bradley backpack or wallet or some kind of designer bag, then with males you have your meat heads and then your normal looking folk. This group of individuals dares to be different from what I’ve gathered by the girl’s vegan choice of drink at Starbucks, the boyfriend’s choice of literature, and the style of the tag along friend. 

Introduction to American Life

1. A few things that I think international students would find different about Americans from movies opposed to real life is that we are not all perfect, rich, or have a ton of weapons and fast cars. The American public is viewed in several different ways, obviously some of us can relate to these scenarios, but not necessarily all of us. American movies usually have something to do with money, so a international student might think we’re obsessed with money as much as we are time. I find American culture to be full of people addicted to different things.

2. The pamphlet described Americans view of time as scarce and I completely agree with that statement from the pamphlet. We have some many rules about time and being on time, that it is just easier to have a schedule and follow it. I know in some other countries that life has a slower pace, almost no one is running around trying to do a bunch of errands in a single day. But I do believe that the pamphlet is right about this one.

3. The pamphlet argues that we (Americans) don’t like to be interrupted when speaking and reason being that we are use to conversing back and forth, like playing catch with a ball. In my social groups, we all usually interrupt each other and it being welcome or okayed, but when it comes to family, it’s usually frowned upon, especially by your older relatives, even though you have more thoughtful, fun, and spontaneous stories you want to tell your favorite aunt. When in a group project with people from a class, if you are all throwing in ideas, I think it’s okay to slightly interrupt if your idea correlates with theirs. Why do people make things so complicated?

4. “Although throughout U.S. history we have not always achieved this ideal (the idea that “All people are created equal”), it continues to be an underlying principle that guides interaction among individuals and informs how businesses, organizations, and officials treat people” is the sentences I chose because I thought it was interesting. I feel as if the pamphlet should go more in depth to this. In America, if you speak a different language or have a foreign accent, you will come across those jerks who preach about you should only be allowed to speak English in the United States. People are even racist against each other here and I think people coming from the outside should be more prepared for this. People coming from the Middle East, China, Japan, France, from all over… and even Mexico and Canada, should be prepared, there are always racist harassment cases that show up on the news and I think people should be informed on what to expect and who to avoid, even though it may be tough.

Globalization of Eating Disorders and Macho Men

1. Being an American female, many things influence my views on body image. Every time I turn on the television, go grocery shopping, or even shop online, there are always those skinny models who look absolutely fabulous; they have perfect soft, silky hair, straight pearly white teeth, a pretty face, and a waist line that most of us envy. For the longest time (and even now and then when I go clothes shopping) I thought that I was disgusting and that no one would ever want to be friends with a girl who didn’t even looking remotely close to one of those women on a diet pill commercial or sexy, glamorous person on the cover of Cosmo, but after going through my own brief time of having horrible body image and a slight eating disorder (typical middle school girl) I figured hey, we’re all human, everyone’s built different, has different genetics, and weight sits differently on people, on top of the fact that no one’s perfect, there is no reason you should totally hate on yourself just because you don’t look like one of those skinny bitches in a magazine. Today, I really influence myself when it comes to body image just by thinking differently when I watch television, movies, or look at a magazine. Screw societies view on women and men’s bodies. 

2. I definitely think that American culture has different expectations on men and women regarding body image, it even proves it in the text. Before Fiji actually had television channels, there were basically no cases of eating disorders, but then once they were finally introduced to what America, the United Kingdom, and Australia viewed acceptable when it came to men and women’s bodies, they started to become more self cautious themselves and began dieting and losing weight unhealthily. Also in other countries, it’s not just the women who have self image issues due to these different movies, shows, and commercials, it’s also men. They want to looked totally ripped and muscular, so they’re measuring their muscles, working out constantly and even consulting plastic surgeons. But here in America, chubby guys are more accepted than a chubby girl, which is definitely a double standard. I think we’re all so focused on image that we’re losing sight of what is really important; inner beauty. 

3. When I think of the term “Masculine”, the first three words that come to mind are tough, buff, and hairy. All of these words are thought to be masculine because society has painted an image in our heads of what real masculine men should look like. Rewind a few decades back and look what was on television in the 1970′s and 80′s, that’s when you had police shows with good looking men rescuing people from some evil mastermind, or rugged, mysterious cowboys (such as John Wayne) saving a village, kissing the girl, and riding off into the sunset. They are what is portrayed as the American man, a real hero, who is also very good looking and can get any girl he could possibly dream about. 

4. Two ways American males are pressured to act masculine are from images society produces and also from how society has told men how they are suppose to act, i.e. Boys don’t cry, no pain no gain, etc. Some of the images produced in society aren’t bad, it might give over weight males to maybe want to get out their and become healthy, but it could also make them want to become this super buff, muscle machine, when in all reality they’re addicted to steroids and pushing themselves to the limit physically and mentally; it is all how the person takes it and who is around them pressuring them into these things. Now, how men are suppose to act I think can be very harmful. The whole “No pain, no gain” thing could really hurt a person. Your body is usually trying to tell you to take it easy when you start to feel fatigued or hurt in a certain spot on your body, but guys sometimes think, hey, I’ll be okay, just need to push through it, so there they can be hurt physically, but with the whole “Boys don’t cry” thing, they could also suffer some emotional damage there as well. You need to talk about your feelings sometimes in order to feel better and be able to move on from a situation, but typical guy culture you should just get over it and quit acting like a girl. I know this past October my boyfriends dad passed away (They had not spoken to each other in a few years, but he grew up with him) and he didn’t really seem to want to talk about it much and let it stay inside. Recently I’ve been noticing him bring it up more often and him actually getting emotional, I think that has a lot to do with his new living situation. He was living with his mom and step dad who was a retired Marine who was totally a man’s man and told him to basically get over the death of his dad. Now that he’s living on his own he seems to have started coping with it and getting better. Guys (In my opinion) don’t like to look weak to other guys and that can definitely be harmful. 

New Politics of Consumption

1. There are several ways that a societal focus on buying material items could alienate  or isolate our society. We, as Americans, are so wrapped up in the latest technology, latest fashion, and newest cars where as other societies are working incredibly hard just to make ends meet. Okay, lets look at China, sure their government is set up differently from ours, but you never hear about the massive amount of credit card debt that the chinese citizens have, that’s because they work, pay bills, and buy their basic necessities, not that new 3D flat screen that will take them months to pay off. By being so wrapped up in material items, we as Americans will eventually lose sight on what is really important opposed to what makes our lives more fabulous. Also, if this continues, it could even alienate the different financial classes, and our financial society could become more like a caste system; Royalty first, religious leaders, knights, workers, peasants, etc.

2. If incomes were to rise the outcome could be both good and bad. Consumerism will be higher, but it also gives people who are in massive debt or are living pay check to pay check more wiggle room financially and may be able to live more comfortably. But in all reality, things would stay the same and the caste system could still take over. Just because people who didn’t really have much before have a little more now doesn’t mean that the wealthy and upper middle class wont stop spending and putting things on credit cards.

3. Some societal factors that encourage competitive consumption are commercialism, competitiveness between people, and the fact that humans are simply never completely satisfied. Every time you go to watch television, you will always see commercials showing the new iPhone, a massive sale of Keurigs going on at Macy’s, or a showing of the new Mercedes. As soon as you seem some of these items advertised, you want to run out there and buy them. Our society is so commercialized it makes people want to run out and buy the newest iPhone. My second factor is the competitiveness between people. Competition is not just in sports or games, it’s even when it comes to having and buying things. If you grow up in a family with money, that is what you want for yourself. If you don’t live up to those standards you become embarrassed and feel the need to buy things you cannot afford to make you, your home, or vehicle look better. There are several different scenarios as to which this happens. I have my own personal competitiveness with my roommate, if she buys or gets something expensive, for example, a North Face jacket or expensive make up, I feel that I need to keep up with her, so I buy these things that I really cannot afford, but it makes me look better thus me feeling accepted and accomplished. And finally, humans are never really satisfied, there will always be something new coming out that will be better than what we have now, so we ditch our perfectly working item for a new, more updated version.

4. Competitive consumption plays a small role in my life as of right now considering the fact that I’m a poor college student, but I still try to one up other people around me. I have always had the newest and latest technology and I always take pride in that, but since I’m 19 now and mom and dad think that it’s time that I start to buy things that I want opposed to what I absolutely need. Now I’m trying to figure out how I can still keep up in my new competitive consumption role as a college student. Competitive consumption plays a fairly large role in my families life, but its like that big secret no one talks about, they just do it and it always boils down to cars, houses, and electronics and typically it’s mostly among the men. Women are more concerned with the karat size of their diamond engagement ring, new clothes and shoes, houses, and their job status. I know even among my older brother, Brandon, 24, and sister Meredith, 22, and 19 year old me, there is even competitive consumption. No matter where you go or who it’s between, there always seems to be competitive consumption.

Moral Machines

1. The story in the text seemed to be a little far fetched, in my opinion, to actually have happen here in the United States. I’m sure it could happen, but I think that this new technology would have to really prove itself before the American government and public allow artificial intelligence to have such a large role in our society. If anything that catastrophic happened to us in the US I think the public would want to get rid of all of the robots immediately, as would I. I personally wouldn’t entrust so much responsibility in such things. So many things could go wrong; programmers not working out all of the bugs in the software and hard drive in a new robot and it having a complete meltdown, a foreign county hacking into the robots hardware and possibly manipulating it, killing thousands of innocent lives, etc. I would rather have a humans judgement opposed to something that has been programmed to respond to a certain event. 

2. For someone to create Artificial Intelligence and it actually thinks and reasons without human help I think that we have to come along ways in psychological science and understanding the brains and in computer and robot science. I honestly hope that it never comes down to that in my lifetime, after seeing iRobot, I want nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence or robots for that matter. Honestly, I don’t see how they could make something that’s like a human; thinks, reasons, reacts, etc. Everyone is born with a different personality, they would have to create millions upon millions of different personalities to put into this robots or whatever they may be. This would effect our human identities without a doubt, we would have some serious competition with these machines, they could make them perfect, but we could never be perfect.

3. Some positive examples of Artificial Intelligence are that they could help sick people, it could help lower the spreading of diseases and illnesses, do jobs that people don’t particularly enjoy, do dangerous things, like working in a nuclear power plant, rescuing people from burning buildings, etc. Some negatives are that humans could lose jobs, which is already a problem already. The AI’s could have a system malfunction and could possibly harm humans around it, and it completely ignoring human commands. Technology is so fragile when not worked with properly, anything could happen. 

4. I have had lots of technological problems in my lifetime. Most recently, my car. I have a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo with horrible electrical problems. Sometimes my windshield wipers wont work, my headlights turn off at random times, the car alarm goes off when you lock the doors with the electric lock, so you have to it manually if you want your stuff protected, it constantly says that I have ‘rear lamp failure’, whatever that means, and with the current security system in it, sometimes it wont start because it think it is getting broken into. So, long story short, I know that we have had some major technological advances since 1994, but what if we as a nation get all of the new AI machines, then after years go by, we don’t have the funding to replace/update them (like in my situation) and these sorts of things happen? They could be a possible waste of money and cause havoc across the globe. 

Morality

1. Almost automatically I thought that Mother Teresa was the most admirable because of everything she is know for, but after reading the complete article I thought that Norman Borlaug and Bill Gates really do not get the credit they deserve. Even though Norman and Bill did donate money to cause to get out our planet and the less fortunate, they didn’t dedicate their whole lives to helping others. You never saw Mother Teresa with a multimillion dollar house, fancy cars, or any of that compared to Bill Gates… Not quite sure about Norman considering the fact that he keeps himself under the radar, but I assume he is living comfortably. 

2. If I had to choose two living people that I found most admirable, it would have to be our service men and women (even though it’s a group of people and quite a few of them aren’t with us anymore) and Oprah. I’m not really a big fan of Oprah, but she seems to do an awful lot. The reason I chose our service men and women is because they give the ultimate sacrifice by risking their lives day by day just so we can keep our freedoms and live in a safe country. Oprah seems to do quite a few things worldwide; she has a school for girls in Africa, always gives away things to people, she just doesn’t seem greedy with her money like most famous people. I really don’t know what this says about my morals… I guess I just have respect for people who help out the less fortunate, sacrifice their lives, and try to help make the world a better place, even though the war in Iraq is a debatable topic.

3. No I do not believe that morality is universal. Different cultures do, in my opinion, crazy things. I do not think it is right to sacrifice a human being, mass murder a group of people, or terrorize a different country due to their religious or governmental status. If morality is universal everyone wouldn’t be killing each other because they didn’t agree, they should simply accept the fact that everyone has different religious and governmental preferences and leave it at that. I do not feel that there is a need to go out and killing thousands upon thousand innocent bystanders.

4. The five elements of morality, according to Haidt, are harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority, and purity. I think that Americans tend to rank fairness as number one. Every day on the news, due to the upcoming presidential election, you hear about these different candidates running and their salaries. Ron Paul got a lot of grief for how much he was making on top of how he didn’t have to pay that much in taxes on all that money because he found a way to avoid all of the taxation and Americans didn’t think that was fair. Even with wealthy people not having to pay that much on taxes, people in the middle and lower class found that unfair that they are paying more in taxes then the wealthy. Everyone seems to be worried about the tax equality between the various classes in our economy. That is only one example but the list could honestly go on and on. 

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