American Culture

Throughout the week in Sociology, we have learned about culture in other regions.

We saw a series of memorable videos about problems that can happen when people go to other nations with their own specific cultures. My favorite was the one where a British man is eating with a group of Chinese people. In England it is a custom to finish the entire plate of your food; in China, if you finish your food that means you aren't full. This is made worse because the food is an eel, something that the British man finds repulsive.

In America, we are a competitive group of people. We like building things- as kids, we build with LEGOs and Lincoln Logs, and as adults we build with stocks and factories. Capitalism has become a part of our way of being, making us aggressive and always on our toes. Some might view this way of life as greedy, and one could defend it by saying that we just want to put food on the table.

Today in class we watched a video with Oprah where she visited Denmark, a socialist nation. It was almost like an advertisement for the country, which seemed like a great place to visit or live in. But I personally would feel like I wouldn't even have a reason to work with a 50% income tax. And I imagine a lot of Americans would agree with me, as American culture is all about independence, competition, and of course, materialism (the tiny apartment in Denmark was the definition of not being materialistic and still being happy.)

Clearly there is no way to quantify happiness. We will never be able to truly know if they are happier than us. But what I know is that I'm proud of America, and that if I were born and raised and accustomed to Denmark's ways of living I'd be just as proud to live there too. It's all relative- a good example of this is the kid's room in Denmark. It was tiny little room, and I imagine a kid from America would cry and refuse to live in that thing. But "Denmarkians" don't know any better (Danish people, I know) and they have nowhere else to live besides that teeny tiny room.

Culture Conflict

This summer I experienced an issue that was caused by two different cultures. I worked at a summer camp, and each cabin had a separate small room for the staff members. There was a bunk bed and a cot, and the cot was where the oldest counselor would sleep (there were two counselors and one specialist in each cabin) and it was a sign of respect to the oldest counselor, or a kind of privilege.

The problem here was that our specialist was from Israel, and he didn't really care about or understand the culture we had at our camp. He was the oldest out of us three, and thought that because he was the oldest, he should get the cot. (Note: I was the youngest and a first year counselor. There was no way I was getting the cot.)

So these two went on and on, arguing about how they thought things should be. In the end, they made a compromise- they would switch after half of the summer was over, so they'd get even amount of time on the cot.

In the end though, the oldest counselor got the cot for the whole time because the specialist didn't seem to care after that fight. This was a firsthand experience of two conflicting cultures, the camp culture vs. Israeli standards. It's a good thing that this argument was over something really stupid like a cot, and not something serious, because they both were stubborn and weren't going to change their minds.

Do Nothing

This week I was given a challenge that required me to test my patience and put me out of my comfort zone. The challenge was to do nothing for ten minutes.

I am a pretty self-conscious person. I can't say that I don't like attention, because I do like certain types of attention. If a teacher points out something I've done in front of the class and says it's good, I like that kind of attention. If I tell a funny joke and people laugh, I like being noticed.

But in this case, I was supposed to just stand there and do nothing. You see, this is not the kind of attention I like; this is the kind of attention where people can judge me for how I look, and how I act. In the other cases, people were focusing on something I had created, something I was proud of or worked hard on. In this case, all of their focus goes on to me, myself, and I.

Fortunately, I chose a place to stand for ten minutes that people would just pass by me without noticing. Tons of people went by me in the wood commons. I didn't even get laughed at or anything of that sort. Most people didn't even notice me! It was a huge relief.

The biggest challenge was actually standing there for ten minutes without thinking. I like to think I'm not a boring person, and if I can be thinking deeply I can entertain myself. However, I was not supposed to be thinking about anything at all in this situation. So I was bored out of my mind! I checked my phone for the time constantly (which I guess broke the rules, but I didn't care) because I was waiting for it to be over so I could do something again.

Doing nothing can potentially allow you to put yourself out of your comfort zone and into the real world. For me, it definitely made me uncomfortable. But it is not something I would want to do again; if I had hypothetically gotten a higher understanding of the world around me, I'd be more inclined to do this again. But nothing of that sort happened. In fact, nothing happened.

Freud

This week at school was a good week at school because it wasn't much of a week of school at all. Having two days off in the middle of the week and then having to go back on a Friday is both awful and awesome. It's kind of like tomorrow (this is being written on Thursday) is both a Monday and a Friday. I'm coming back from two days off, but getting ready for two more days off.

This Monday in class we were given a post-it note that told us what we were to read about it in our textbooks. Although it wasn't as good as having two snowdays, I was happily surprised to get Sigmund Freud. I was in psychology last semester and he's a really interesting person.

Considered the father of psychoanalysis, Freud talked about the importance of our subconscious thoughts and how they affect our every day lives. He believed that each person had an id (representing primal instincts and evil thoughts), superego (representing kindness and empathic thoughts), and the ego (the happy medium that is affected by the other two). A good metaphor for this that I learned in psychology was to think of it like a cartoon.

In lots of cartoons, the hero or some character will be faced with a decision. On one shoulder stands a demon (id), and on the other stands an angel (superego). In the middle of course, is the person himself(ego).

What does this have to do with sociology? Well, if we believe Freud's theories, then when looking back on someone's actions, we have to not only look at the obvious motives, but we also have to think about someone's innermost, deep thoughts. It's fun to try and predict what someone else is thinking, but as Freud points out, it's not easy at all.