Post 6

Socialization, whether we like it or not human beings are wired from birth to crave human interaction.  From young ages kids interact with each other and create connections that help them learn and grow in society. Over the years media outlets and advertising company have  exploited these children need for human interaction. As we se in the documentery Consuming Children Advertising companions have gone to so many extremes just to make money off of the fact that children need to communicate. Like when the ad companies would go so far as to accompany small children into bathrooms to observe what they are doing and create ad campaigns based off of their findings. Given that situation in any other circumstance and that person is going to be on the sex offenders list for the rest of their life. However, these companies are successful in their proceedings. My nephew, who is eight years old, was over at my house before we left to go to a hawks game.  My brother recently bought him a stitched Stanley Cup jersey and the kid was asking for him to buy a shirt for him at the game. Then I started to think, my nephew was wearing a $30 T-Shirt, a $150 jersey,  $50 pants,  $120 shoes and even $20 socks. In about 6 months he is going to outgrow almost all of those items and all that money would be down the drain. But then it dawned on me, I was subject to this media and consumerism consumption swell. I often find myself buying the next big pair of shoes that I wanted. In the past year alone I've purchased 2 pairs of Sperrys (Even though my family doesn't own a boat) 2 pairs of Jordans and a pair of reeboks. Media has latently taught us that to be a true american you have to spend your money on the next best gadget or the new big thing or else you won't fit in with the societal norms. It has taught us that we as a nation need to become materialist because that is what they've been feeding us, quite literally, since birth.

Post 5

America, land of the free and the home of the brave. A place where man can travel across land and sea for opportunity and achieve success. However, to achieve such success requires time and effort. So much so that us as americans feel if we are not doing something productive or proactive every second of our lives then we are wasting our time. And as we all know, time is money, and money in america equals out to the success that we strive for. For example, In the movie Tuesdays with Morrie The main protagonist of the movie was so engrossed by his every day life that he barely had time to be with the people that he loved or do the things he previously enjoyed. Mitch was so caught up in his work that it took one of his college teachers and close friend dying to come out of the environment he and his american values put himself into. These values of success and time commitment are all around us in america. Although it is not only in our workplaces anymore, people are so concerned with their personal success that they starting to stress out over their future in High School. Here at our local High School we are drilled from the age of 14 with information and values of high ACT scores and amazing GPA's that any form of social life is near impossible to create. The stress that I have felt from as early as my freshman year is crazy to think that as an american we are programmed to think that the only happiness we will find is in what we can have in our future and not just taking a moment  to appreciate those who are in our lives now and being grateful for what we have and letting the future come got us instead of us going to the future.

Post 4

In class we have been going over culture and how it each society has its own different and specific cultural values. We've learned that somethings that would be unusal or strange to us can be considered normal to someone else's culture or vice versa. Like in the film we watched in class God Grew Tired of Us  we saw the Sudanese me talk about how if they were seen cooking or doing anything feminine in nature that they would be laughed at or looked down upon within the community. On the other hand, here in America it is normal to see a male chef or main care giver for their respective family. Like, I grew up in an all male household, minus my mother, and both of my parents worked so my brothers and I had to learn how to make food for ourselves and each other whilst our parents are woking. Also in the film we saw all the Sudanese wearing non name clothes and eating whatever they grew or hunted. However, in America we would never see this kind of behavior. The capitalistic society that we have developed in our country has made us in to a society that needs to have the latest and greatest product and made us a very material driven country as a whole.