Why Must We Be Cautious

There's a saying that every cloud has a silver lining.  In essence this means that for every bad event or situation that occurs, there will always be a positive side or a positive spin that you can put on it.  For example, maybe you try out for a leadership position in a club that you participate in, but you don't end up getting the position.Obviously you will be sad, but there is also an upside that you now have more time to participate in other clubs or relax at home.  Conversely, I feel that the opposite of this saying is also true.  Essentially this would mean that for every great discovery or event, there will always be unforeseen consequences.  This idea is expanded upon in Chet Raymo's "A Measure Of Restraint."  In this piece, an example is given of a lustrous powder that seemed magical at first but turned out to be a dangerous chemical that after the people made that realization, turned from an "instrument of healing" into an "instrument of death."  With this example in mind, any discovery can have a negative side to it.  Nuclear fission can be turned into atomic warheads, orbital satellites can be turned into mass spy devices, etc.  Humans are always striving towards new technological discovery, but with each one we will have to be careful of the possible negative implications that may result from it. Even with government regulations, bad people will still find a way to turn a beneficial discovery into a deadly one, and it is for this reason that no matter what, and with how far mankind goes into technological advancement, we must be cautious about how we use and come up with every discovery that we ever have, no matter how small or insignificant we think it is.

Why Are We Hypocritical

So much of human nature and action is hypocritical.  People will say that they want one thing while they really prefer the exact opposite.  This idea is explored in the article "Words Don't Mean What They Mean."  In the article, Steven Pinker shows us how humans say that they want complete and brutal honesty and direct when people are talking to them but are then offended when people don't say it in a nicer way.  In a similar fashion I have noticed that people are also hypocritical in the way that they say they want people to be selfless when they act but mostly only act in their own self interest.  One example of this is people always advocating for being green to save the planet from pollution and global warming.  The majority of people would agree with this claim but at the same time they probably also use many fossil fuels to get energy in their house and to power their cars.  They most likely don't even recycle to their fullest extent.  I know I am guilty of this and so many others are as well, but "such hypocrisy is a human universal."  It is a common thing for people to act selfishly even though we want others to do the opposite.  In a sense, the most likely cause for this is that the human mind only knows the thoughts and needs of its own self and has never experienced the thoughts and needs of others.  This causes a feeling that other people's needs are not as important as those of one's own.  So the reason that people are contradicts their words with their actions in this case is just a case of human psychology and the way we interpret our needs against others'.

Why Has The P.C. Culture Occurred

In our day and age there is a chance that almost any sentence you could possibly think of could be offensive to someone in some way.  There are many hypotheticals in that claim, but it goes to show the uncertainty in everyday conversations.  You could be having a nice conversation with a friend of yours and by saying the wrong phrase the conversation turns into a fight.  Now as stated in The Word Police, the idea of a more "inclusive society in which racism, political correctness, and prejudice of all sorts have been erased" seems amazing, but the public has taken these values too far in how something small can offend.  Why has our society become like this?  Just a decade or two ago this problem was not as apparent.  Right now in America our sitting President is a very polarizing man. People either love or hate Donald Trump without very much in between.  One of the most distinguishing things that Trump has done different than any other of our previous presidents is that he is constantly tweeting and voicing his opinion about things that he doesn't like.  Now the President of the United States is the biggest role model for the American citizen, so when he is seen voicing his opinion and seeming upset about even minute things when he is the leader of our nation it makes the general public feel that they should be criticizing every little thing as well.  For the people who despise the President, the problem still stands because they work to disagree with everything that he agrees with.  The President making a remark against any race or culture will cause a torrent of people criticizing his view and anyone who has views even remotely close to that.  All this has developed over time and caused a feeling that any topic or view can be spun to look offensive in the eyes of another person.

Why Do We See Ourselves As Superior

The world around us is filled with many different forms of life.  Some include plants, insects, animals, and other people.  I find it interesting how each of these is a form of life, but are still seen in many different lights when seen through the human mind.  We perceive ourselves to be the most intelligent and dominant species on the planet due to our enhanced mental acuity.  On the other side of the spectrum, insects are seen as one of the lowest forms of actually moving life. We are made up of the same fundamental elements as insects and our bodies are both made up of cells, yet we live such different lives and perform such different functions.  When focusing on the life of a simple insect like a moth, Virginia Woolf stated that a singular moth sees to have the "energy of the world within him," but when looking at the world as a whole, the moth seems to have a "frail and diminutive body."  When focusing on ourselves it seems obvious that we would see ourselves as superior because we have only seen life through our own eyes, and this makes us see our lives the most important.  Unfortunately this causes many people to feel little to no sympathy for these "lesser" animals when stepping on them or using other methods to kill them.  This is similar to a previous piece we read called "Consider The Lobster," where lobsters, also called sea insects, were mass killed without remorse just for luxurious food.  In all these cases the common factor is humans asserting their dominance over another species.  It is true that the human race has higher mental processing than any other species, but that does not give us the right to mass kill another species just on a whim.  Besides, in the end, no matter what the species is, we are all bound to die in some way or another.  So no matter if you are seen as inferior or superior in the eyes of another, death is the great equalizer and will bring you on to the same level as all others.

Why Does Stockholm Syndrome Exist

The psychological term of Stockholm Syndrome has always been interesting to me.    Common sense would lead you to believe that in the event of a kidnapping, you would feel despair and hate the perpetrator of your capture, but this is not always the case.   Stockholm Syndrome is a feeling of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim toward a captor.  Stockholm Syndrome is not the norm since most people will continue to be terrified during a kidnapping.  One large example of many people being held captive is the time period of slavery within America.  Millions of slaves were held against their will to work on plantations.  After the Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves were free of their captivity, but the slave owners still wanted workers.  When one slave owner asked his former slave Jourdan Anderson to come back and work for him, Jourdan replied with the biggest understatement of the century by saying "I have often felt uneasy about you."  Because he disliked his captor, Jourdan did not return to work for his former owner.  However, if Jourdan had Stockholm Syndrome, he may have never left his owner in the first place, even after he was free.  Now we must wonder what would cause someone to feel any form of affection towards their captor who took them away from their normal life.  The only explanation that I could think of is that it is a coping mechanism that went too far.  If you are in a situation such as a kidnapping, you are under  great amount of duress and your mind had to find ways to cope with the terrible situation.  In these cases, the victim usually only gets to interact with their captor and the captor brings them the food and water they need to survive.  To cope, the mind probably sees that as a sign of good and starts to form a bond with the only person who is "helping" them in this time of need.  In the end, Stockholm Syndrome is probably the result of a person in a very stressful situation and trying to make the best of it.

Why Do We Judge

I've always been interested in thinking about how other societies see American culture.  There are all the memes and stereotypes we hear about how Americans are all gun toting and morbidly obese people who are selfish and feel that all other countries are irrelevant.  This doesn't just go for America though.  Many talk about how all British people are snooty and wealthy people whose only purpose is to live until tea time.  All societies seem normal to the people living within them, but from the outside it can seem extremely unusual when shown to an observer in the right way.  This is shown very well in Horace Miner's "Body Ritual Among The Nacirema" where American society is described in a way that makes it sound primitive and repulsive.  When first reading Miner's article I did not realize that he was describing America and I was just thinking about how terrible this "tribe" seemed to be.  It is just weird to think about how the source that I was getting my information from made a normal action like brushing your teeth seem like a "ritual" that "strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting."  If the wording of just this article could do so much, it opens up the world to so many other possibilities.  The media has such a large impact on our lives that the, and they can easily manipulate the information they show us to make us believe what they want.  The government in China has been censoring any content on the internet that they do not want the public to see.  For example, any records on the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989 and the infamous "Tank Man" have been erased and are forbidden to be remembered.  The government there is only allowing the general public to see things that make them look good which is a distorted reality for the citizens. If there is such a large possibility of the information we observe to be misleading, then what can we do to get our own truth?  The only true way for someone to see the truth in something is to experience the event or situation with your own eyes and make your own judgments without the outside influence of others.  If we had been able to observe the "Nacirema" ourselves, then we would not have been as disgusted with their society as we had been while reading Miner's article.

Why Do People Need Support

In class this past week we read the passages titled "On Dumpster Diving" by Lars Eighner and "From Serving In Florida" by Barbara Ehrenreich.  In both passages the authors were experiencing less than ideal living conditions.  In the first story, the author is homeless and living off of scavenging through the refuse left behind by other people.  In the second story, the author is working a hellish job at a diner in a cramped home and barely any free time.  Other than bad living conditions, another similarity that the two stories share is that both authors, previous to their downfall, were decently successful and were living and working in normal conditions.  Going from a successful life to experiencing many more hardships is a rough situation for anyone.  The question we must ask now is how do these people manage to get through these tough times? The solution we see in the passages is through a support system of people to talk to that can help you when needed.  In the case of Eighner, he had the support of his fellow scavengers who helped teach him how to survive by scavenging as well as the love and support of his dog.  Ehrenreich made friends with the fellow employees on her shift.  Ehrenreich's supprt group at the diner would "'bev' a table or even carry trays" for someone if they are felling ill, and they would "do their best to conceal her absence" from the manager if she needed to go on a bathroom break.  Without these support groups the authors of the two stories surely would have fared much worse than they actually do now.  Everyone in life experiences some sort of hardship, just with different severity.  Support groups are one of the best ways to deal with this and get through rougher times.  This is one of the reasons why many alcoholics and drug addicts go to support groups to try and get better and go clean.  It feels good to know that you're not alone and many others are experiencing the same as you and want to help you.  You never know the hardships someone is going through so you never know how one of your small actions of support may greatly impact someones day for the better.

Why Are Stereotypes So Powerful

Stereotypes are ever present in our society.  No matter where we go people are just judging each other based on previous notions of what they believe to be true about an entire group of people.  This was evidently shown when we read "Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?" in class.  In this passage the author starts by talking about how "the stereotype of of female talkativeness is deeply engrained in Western folklore and often considered a scientific fact."  This idea was sparked from a statistic printed in a neuropsychiatry book saying that "a woman speaks about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000" and the general public chose to believe this for over a decade  He later on disproved this idea by conducting her own scientific experiment and statistical tests. This made me think about how once a stereotype is in place in our society it is very hard for it to be broke, even when evidence is shown to prove it untrue.  As I stated in my previous analysis of "There Is No Unmarked Woman," stereotypes exist in the first place because they act as almost shortcuts in getting to know a person.  They may be completely wrong, but by stereotyping someone you have an idea of what they will be like even before you have spoken a word to them.  Now this shows a possible reason as to why people don't like to change their stereotypes even when presented with evidence that refutes it.  Similar to electrical current, humans like to take the path of least resistance and by using stereotypes they can skip past many of the parts of getting to know someone.  By trying to change or get rid of preconcepted stereotypes people would have to make an effort to first get rid of those ideas from their heads and then actually make an effort to look at each person in society as a completely different identity that can't be fully classified into groups.  To paraphrase, what I am trying to say is that humans stereotype because they are lazy.

Why Do Marks Matter

In class this past week one of the passages that we read was "There is No Unmarked Woman" by Deborah Tannen.  In this piece Tannen talks about how there is a standardized appearance for men so that they do not stand out from the crowd, but women do not have the ability to do the same.  Tannen believes that no matter what a women does, says, or wears she will always stand out.  In some ways this can be bad as Tannen explains "some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business."  At the same time however, being marked can have its benefits.  For example, in a job interview it is your objective to try and stand out to the employer so they think of you first when looking through the potential candidates for the job.  By marking yourself it is easier to stand out in a situation like that and it gives you a higher likelihood of success.  Some people may wonder why these marks exist in the first place.  Marks are very similar to stereotypes in that they allow the observer to get a quick overview of the person after just a brief encounter.  They may not always be true but in many cases learning something insignificant about a person after meeting them is better than knowing nothing.  These marks can tell you how to deal with a situation like if you see a guy with a lot of tattoos, they might be a criminal and you may want to stay away from them.  This may not be completely true, but due to your prior knowledge you know that this man is potentially dangerous.  For all you know that man could just be a guy who likes tattoos as well as taking care of his 3 kittens at home,  This is just one example of why marks are useful but should not be what you base your entire opinion of someone on.