Scott Peck, author of The Different Drum: Community and Making Peace, describes community as "people living together in both freedom and love." Communities cannot be formed around people (individualists) who are busy satisfying their own needs first and who are not willing to work hard to make love work. Upon entering this class I realized that a community is not an automatic thing. It does not just appear out of thin air. A group must work together to build bonds between each other. The community in which we are trying to build upon is compiled of many different types of people varying in age, race, sex, class, career, etc. It is going to take some time to build the trust, communication, freedom, and love that we need to form a community.…
Conformity has always been a problem in American society. There have always been people who believe they are better than others and this still holds today. This type of thinking has been detrimental to our society, but there is improvement as the years go by. We continue to grow as a species and we will find peace and acceptance someday. It has been a long road to get here and it has not stopped…
Community is a web of relationships between humans who share common interests and characteristics. Albert Camus explains how, as humans, we live to be a part of one another and to share responsibilities. Although, there are those who wish to become absent from the constant hassle of society. These people wish to roam incognito without having to be responsible for anyone but themselves. This divorce from human relationship can become dangerous for the person as well as the surrounding people. Scott Russell Sanders makes a good point that, “...if we make a career of being unaccountable, we have lost something essential to our humanity, and we may well become a burden or threat to those around us.”…
Throughout American history, conformity has been used as a tool of deception to rob Americans of their individuality and freedom. From as early as European colonization in America to now, people have been forced to conform to the beliefs of mainstream society. It started with the Native Americans conforming to European culture, Puritans developing religion based societies, and the formation of antebellum America. Americans, now having complete freedom to do as we wish, are still pressured to pursue the American Dream, causing the American people to conform.…
False American Ideals As many call the Indian Holocaust, the poor treatment of Indians in America existed the minute Europeans stepped foot on their land. In 1492, Columbus arrived in the New World only to find that it was already inhabited. Still, the Europeans murdered, enslaved, and relocated the Native Americans westward. Still, hundreds of years later in the 1800’s, this indigent treatment of Native Americans still existed.…
To be born a unique being, one with the freedom of will, one with the ability to form independent beliefs and mindsets- to be human. The most honored of all creation, yet the most rebellious. As human life is deprecated in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the human life is equated to nothing more than the dirt from which it came. Huxley parallels himself, an aristocratic pedigree, to the upper class inhabitants of the brave new world that sought the meaning of human life above the accepted pretense of society. Aldous Huxley depicts the social isolation of the upper class through over-intellectual characters that see beyond the superficiality of society, thus magnifying the importance of remaining true to oneself in the midst of conformity.…
Whether it’s the way we behave in public, the way we dress before we step out of the house, or even the people we choose to talk to on a daily basis, people are governed or influenced by the way society has shaped them. Furthermore, we are controlled by social norms, values that tell us how to behave, which explain why we choose to socialize and spend time with the people that we do (Conley 91). In the American culture, most people nowadays are in their own little social bubbles and are intimidated or reluctant when approached by a random individual. By taking this into consideration, my group and I decided to break this social norm and spark controversy in this topic by approaching random individuals…
When I think of community, I think of a much larger concept. It becomes a large mess of interests, values, and sub-categories, which make it impossible to digest the large capacity the word community holds. Community is a mess and yet manages to maintain its wholeness and withhold larger amounts of diversity. Individuals in a community can be different ages, ethnicities, or come from different backgrounds, and incomes. The concept of being apart of a community goes beyond thinking and acting, as individuals bond over common beliefs about shared interests and life. I also see the importance of individual rights in the sense that we do have a duty towards change and individuality by making sure our society or government does not suppress it, and that is the beauty in the face of America. On the contrary, I see that face has become dull and I see community as lost because people have began to put up more walls. It becomes a hard thing to identify because it doesn’t seem existent. Pondering the titles of these communities becomes even more bizarre because I don’t feel as though I identify myself a “member” of these communities, but perhaps as a small and average piece of these large concepts. Although there is this lack of presence, I do feel there are responsibilities I fulfill towards these communities and I recognize the role it plays in my individuality.…
Sarah Shaffer Social Norm Violation Extra Credit A norm present in American society is not verbally communicating with other unknown individuals in public bathroom stalls. A violation of this norm would be attempting to communicate with other individuals in the stalls. Through an ethnomethodological investigation, I discovered certain aspects revolving around this specific violation.…
Many individuals may believe that gender stereotypes and typical norms amongst the sexes are long gone, but these traditional views for both men and women, according to society, are still quite prevalent today. This human experience, that men and women both have specific roles to play in society, has been around since the beginning of time and will most likely continue for decades and centuries to come. Men are viewed, by societies standards, as being strong, dominant (at least more dominant than a women), leaders, and they should always restrain from showing weakness. Ronald Levant, a physiologist, explains in his article Men and Masculinity that men are prone to be raised as their fathers were,…
I see where you're coming from, Anastasia. There are definitely some people who conform a majority percent of their way of living to American culture based on pure facts for survival. As a result of this conformity, they may lose that sense of where they originally came from. However, there are still a lot of people who still have close ties to their culture or just have developed a new distinctive culture, which is why I say where more of a salad bowl. Some people say we're a combination of both, though. So, American culture just may be what one of our fellow classmates said, a soup and salad deal.…
Losing one’s individuality is most common to individuals who are exposed and influenced by others throughout life. The idea from “The Sociology of Leopard Man” by Logan Feyes discusses how indi viduals are confronted with conformity in order to fit in with society. Conforming is one obstacle that many people face through life. When a person conforms it means that they undergo a change in order to fit in with society. Unlike conformists, non-conformists are the “unusual” part of the world that do not undergo a change within themselves to fit in with the world. These people are often looked down upon and ridiculed by their personal lifestyles. While some people decide not to give in to their personality, I believe that the idea from leopard, the influence of families, and the atmosphere of schools will dictate one’s decision whether to conform or not.…
Stereotyping is a form of pre judgment that is used everyday in conversations and in the media. There are many groups of people that are being stereotyped in society today. Whether or not you are the one being stereotyped or you are doing the stereotyping, in the end it hurts people’s feelings and brings down self-esteems. There are a few stereotypes in society that I have encountered which include the quality of people with tattoos, Athletes are not good students, and Hispanics working in the landscaping…
Human’s in our world today are taught to be individuals. As people in our society develop they become unique and different from every person. Furthermore, everyone has a voice and we as individuals can speak our opinions and beliefs. In addition, our community includes different races, ethnicities, and beliefs which allows us to develop a diverse world and a better society. In addition, everyone is outgoing and they strive to be their best so that their…
Everyone conforms in society at some point. John F. Kennedy claimed, “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” When it comes to the topic of conformity, most of us will readily agree that individuality changes the world. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of is conformity that bad? While some are convinced that conformity is great for the world, others believe that conformity is the death of us. I tend to fall on the side where conformity is the death of us, because without individuality we would not have a great deal of the advances in technology.…