UnTV-

Today in class we talked about the experiment from the UnTV. The challenge was to watch the TV. Not the show, but the actual TV. We were also challenged to watch someone watch it. In class, the discussion was carried by the overwhelmingly obvious theme of commercial bombardment. The TV is constantly sending you messages about what you should wear, what your life should look like, and the things you need to have. We get so attached to the constant movement of the screen, that we rarely stop to see what we are actually filling our brains with. All day long, we are filled with stimulation. We go home and flip on the TV in order to relax. However, what we don't realize, is that the TV is sending us messages as well. Not only messages, but the TV is filled with constant movement. I think that people that make TV shows know the way that Americans think. We have a go-go-go life, that we expect out TV to be like that too. In fact, we expect everything to be like that. Car rides, a book, computers, food and almost everything else. I think that's why we get so frustrated with life. We have been trained to constantly go. However, when we actually have to slow down and work for something, we decide its not worth it.

This week in class we talked about the different ways that socialization occurs to a person. Some of the categories, were work, religion, school, family and friends. Groups like religion and school can shape our overall outlook on our world. School gives us tools and helps guide us in the ways that we should deal with people and work ethic. Religion creates a general moral compass of what the culture sees as acceptable. Things like family and friends may give you a more specific moral and intellectual attitudes than just school and religion. These groups, which you are more directly affected by, influence us more specifically in the ways that we dress, how we talk, the music we like, etc. As a teenager, I've seen the effects of socialization from these categories in my own life. Due to the high school that I go to, and the friends that I hang out with, my work ethic, my outlooks on other people, as well as my opinions about other topics, are all shaped by them.

Tuesdays with Morrie -
Over the past few days, my class has been watching the movie 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. During the last few months of Morrie's life, he passes on some of his wisdom and his thoughts on to his friend Mitch. Mitch, like the rest of us, has a busy life and gets uncomfortable with topics like death. Morrie begins to pose some questions at Mitch about love, death, family, relationships etc. One of the big questions was, why are people (especially Americans) so afraid to receive love? Personally, I think the reason why we get so afraid of people loving us, is because we don't want to get hurt. Just listen to all the songs on the radio! Half of them are about a broken heart or how someone cheated on them! If we open ourselves up to love, than we also open ourselves up to pain. In our culture, showing that you are in pain is a sign of weakness. And for some odd reason, we get it drilled into our minds at birth, that to be weak and to need something is bad. Our culture is so against asking for help. I think that's because we think that we have to be so independent.

Norms -

In class over the last week or so, we've been talking about our social "norms". We talked about the classifications of the different types of norms that we have. Things like folkways, taboos, and mores, are all things that we know exist in our culture, but we aren't really sure how to define them. For example, something that our culture classifies as a Folkway, is something like eating with your hands. Now, in our culture, we do say that certain foods are okay to eat with your hands, but in general, we see eating with your hands as something that is uncivilized. In class we also talked about the general ways in which our culture interacts. For example, the pace of life. The expectations we have for our fellow citizen and so on. We have a mind set of that "go go go" personality and we can't help it. When we are asked to just relax, we can't do it. This was proven to me while doing the homework assignment where we literally had to do nothing. No thinking, moving, watching, etc. was allowed. As Americans, we are constantly thinking. If our body isn't in motion, our mind is. We can't stand to be int he present. We have to be planning or reminiscing about the past. We cannot simply be.