"Honoring" the Working Class

In class last week, we took an in depth look at social classes in society. We watched a movie that took us into the lives of people from different classes and also saw how they interacted with each other and felt about each other. There were a few segments of the movie that showed people impersonating or "honoring" blue collar people. They did this by stereotyping them and acting like them. For example there was a "Hun Fest" held in Baltimore, and a couple of "yuppies" going to "dive bars" as they called them. After this though, they just went back to their normal lives, I did not see this as "honoring" the middle class. This is as I said before, stereotyping. They acted upon these stereotypes they've seen in pop-culture or that they've heard of and they believe that this gives them some sort character. Though, this is pure delusion, just because they impersonate someone doesn't give them character. They go back to their normal lives after shortly experiencing theirs' through stereotyping, this can be seen as offensive by people of the working class. Its just like me and my friends would impersonate our favorite characters from tv or film when we were children. We would wish to have certain traits that these characters had and acted like we did but in reality it was just false.

Money/Wealth in America

This week in class we talked about money and wealth in American society. We mainly focused on the fact that these things are not evenly distributed in America. This was something I suspected although, not to this degree. The fact that the top 10% of society has 72% of the wealth baffled me. Not only that but the top 1% of Americans owns 37% of the nations entire private wealth is ridiculous. According to this the top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 90%. I'd heard the phrase "The rich are getting richer, while the poor are getting poorer" before but I did not know the rich were getting richer at such fast rate. And although these statistics may be shocking and may anger people, what are we supposed to do? We cannot just put shame on the people that have all of this money because a lot of them have earned it by working hard and applying themselves. Granted a lot of them have also just been born into such lives of luxury but we can't just take their money and distribute it more evenly, that wouldn't be right. These statistics are the consequences of a capitalistic nation and it is up to the people with the extraordinary amounts of wealth to decide on whether or not to donate a part of their money to charity.

Deviance in Society

When you think of deviancy you usually think of some illegal or evil act. In other words you think of deviancy in a negative sense. In class last week though we looked at deviancy in a positive sense. As an act of kindness that is outside of the norms of society. Things like helping an old lady cross the street, these acts really highlight the brighter side of human beings. In a culture that is over-saturated and emphasizes the darker side of humans in the media, it is both refreshing and sobering to hear of nobel acts of deviance. I vaguely remember someone's positive deviant act from years ago. When I was little, my mother took me with her to the super market and I walked off to find her a gift because her birthday was a few days later. When I found her gift and went to go pay for it the cashier told me I was short a few dollars, and to my surprise the cashier covered the amount I was short. This was not very meaningful to me until I remembered it years later, then I understood the gravity of the act. I realized how unusual what the cashier did for me was. And how it made me feel to be on the receiving end of the act showed me how rare and meaningful it really was.

Adults?... Already?

Recently in class we have been discussing the development of human lives and the milestones that we pass while on this journey. I found it interesting that in class we were only naming milestones placed on us by society, "artificial" milestones as I like to call them. Things like getting your license at 16, being able to go see R rated movies on your own at 17, and being considered a legal adult at 18. Then when Sal said "how about learning to walk" I felt like I should have face-palmed on my own behalf because, actual developmental milestones like those didn't even come to mind until then. I then realized how we as a society put much greater emphasis on these "artificial" milestones, rather than the developmental milestones that actually have meaning like learning to walk, talk, etc. This also relates to conformity (a topic on which I touched on in my previous blog post) in the sense that the "artificial" milestones are expectations put on us by our society. For instance, in July I'll be a legal adult. This is strange because I haven't thought about it very much until recently, at 18 I'll be legally responsible for myself. I'm sure not much will change in my life besides the fact that I'll be moving out of the house and going to college. Hopefully I will make an easy transition but I can't help but think about teens my age who won't be prepared for something like this. Like the article we read in class "Putting Teen-Parent Conflicts into Perspective", we are forced into adulthood perhaps before we are ready. Like a small child being thrown into a pool, will we swim or struggle to keep our heads above water.