Cards

Our society's daily norms could be comical to someone from Japan. Just by sitting in a chair with out legs crossed would be recognized as a rude gesture to someone from a different culture. The card game we played this week helped us experience the diversity that is found all over the world. Each table was given a different set of rules for the card game and once the different rules were put into one game, the players could no longer understand what was going on. Just as if you took someone from America, Japan, Libya, and put them all together, their "rules" would also be different and it would make it difficult to understand eachother their their separate ways of life. Sociologically we are all brainwashed into thinking our ways are the right ways but outside of the fishbowl there's a whole world with different norms.

Social Construction of Reality

How is their reality in the neighborhood socially constructed? What are the unwritten rules that govern how you can or can’t act? How do you think this construction came about? Can you see their racist attitudes as a social construction?



Their social triangle starts at the bottom with the black and other races. the different races are seperated by the towns they live in, shown in the movie by a change in music. above the other races are the younger teenage boys who think they are higher in society than they really are, like C and his friends. Next, is the working class like C's parents becuause they are well respected but they arent in power. the highest is sonny and his group. they got the highest status not because people liked them so much but people feared them. the unwritten rules were that you couldnt disrespect sonny or anyone who he liked becuase he would get back at you. also, it was an unwritten rule that you couldnt go into other races towns. it came about becuase over time people did things that made them seem "better" than another social class. the lower social classes feared the higher ones so they were less than them. their racist attitudes are very apprent in their social construction becuase thats the basis of their social triangle and within the triangle, certain groups of races are higher than others.

Identity Molecule

As a person in our society, you are identified by what groups you belong to. These groups change over the course of your life and the changes in groups changes who you are as a person. When i was younger I belonged to many groups like sports teams,dance classes, and school friends but the most influencial and important group in my life was my family. They were the ones I spend the majority of my day with and they were the ones I wanted to be with and looked up to. My master status was a daughter or a sister. As I am getting older, my groups are changing and the influences on my life are changing. In junior high my biggest influences were the girls on my cheer team. I had hours of cheer practice each day all the way through freshman year and I indentified myself as a cheer leader, and thats what people knew me as. Now that I have stopped cheering, and that group is out of my life, the major group I identify with is my group of friends. I have plenty of different groups of friends, but there is a group of 6 girls who i consider my best friends. We are together at any moment we can be and they have a huge influence on my life. We talk the same, enjoy the same things, and think the same way. I couldn't imagine my life without them becuase they are my life. My family is still a huge part of my life but I think as we get older we realize that we have a choice of who influences us and we pick people that relate to us rather than our family becuase our family has been there and already had their share of influences on us. i think that everyone is who they are because of the people in their life. It's not a fact of liking them or not, but either way they have an effect on the person you are.

Are You Gonna Eat That?

The survivors of F-227 were extremely lucky to have survived the plane crash, however, they were less lucky than those that died. They were left with nothing. They had little hope that they would be rescued but as soon as they heard that the search for their plane had been called off, the little bit of hope left had vanished. They had no food and were growing weaker by the day. The dead bodies that lay in the snow had come across every ones mind, but no one dare mention the idea out loud. Since our societies have influenced us to think that no matter what, it is wrong to eat humans. Even if it's for survival, there's no way that it could be okay for a human to eat another human. The survivors could either die a slow death, or eat the human remains and live. Some made the unimaginable leap and ate the dead bodies, yet some could not change their mindset that society put on them. They knew they would die if they didn't do it, but there was no way they could do something so wrong. Now, in order to make a real decision, you would have to be in the situation, but, just thinking about it, if you were one of the F-227 survivors, would you have eaten the bodies? I've thought about this from many point of view and tried to figure out what I would truly do. I couldn't come up with an answer myself so I asked my parents. My mom had a simple answer of no because she thinks it would be too gross. My dad's answer is the one that made up my mind. My dad said he would absolutely do it. He said that if I was dead and some how I knew my dad was alive and had to eat my body in order to survive, would I want him to eat it? Of course I would. And if I was alive and my dad was dead he would absolutely want me to eat his body. It's repulsive to think about eating any human, let alone a family member, but you can be forgiven by that person, and you would never forgive yourself if you had the chance of food and gave it up because society taught you it is gross.