Blog 4

Question #1 - How does society get reproduced from one generation to the next?

Dogma. Faith and Doubt are the two elements which comprise the sum of human belief. That being said, societies get reproduced from one generation to the next in a variety of ways. First and foremost, the elements of Faith and Doubt. The entirety of an individual’s beliefs about the universe around them is formulated from either convictions of truth or the lack thereof. Societies tend to claim that their way of life is ‘best’ and that they possess some sort of unique insight that the rest of the world is not privy to. Moreover, many societies tend to claim that they have the ‘one and only’ truth about how to live and treat others in the world around us or that they have the ‘right’ answers in regards to the origins and/or purpose of the human experience.

All over the globe, societies from every spectrum of belief, moral, ethical or religious conviction are able to reproduce themselves - which then begs one to ask the question - “If my society is ‘right’, then how come societies in the ‘wrong’ are also able to thrive?”

“If my truth is the best or only truth, how are people able to live in opposition to it?” “What’s more - how are they able to live enriched, fulfilling lives; competitive to the satisfaction we are finding in our own society?” “Does my society know truth?” “Do I have the truth?” “IS there such thing as truth?”

It is easy to see how the elements of Faith and Doubt are at play here. Faith in a belief or a thought will cause the holder to fall under conviction, and live according to that structure. The internal conviction that one has the ‘one and only’ truth - and that another does not - causes an individual to desire to instill their beliefs and values in the lives of others, as they “should be living according to my truth, too. My one and only, irrefutable and incontestable truth.” This is a very rapid and straightforward form of societal reproduction.

Doubt. An individual’s doubt, or lack of faith in a given conviction causes them to leave the traditional accepted truth or structure and wander hopes of achieving enlightenment as to the truth elsewhere. Doubt causes one to question what is generally unquestioned, and perhaps even challenge the authority or validity of the previously accepted thought.

Dogma. Dogma are actions, beliefs traditions etcetera that are simply accepted without inquiry as to the actual truth or purity of a given concept. These are the ideas which spread from generation to the next most rapidly, as those who are new to these ideas are likewise susceptible to practicing them, as the generation prior to theirs had been. 

In the end whether Faith, Doubt, Dogma or some other method is the vehicle for societal reproduction, all of these elements are pervasive and constantly on the minds of individuals living within a given society.. and are therefore soaked into memory storage portions of the human brain - and to at least some minuscule extent - they scientifically become a part of us.

Question #2 - How does ‘culture’ reinforce social hierarchy?

How doesn’t ‘culture’ reinforce social hierarchy? An Anthropology professor I had told us that in Mayan culture, the king could not wear the same outfit twice in a year. Every day he had to have a new outfit tailored to be ready to wear after he went to bed that night and woke up in the morning (he did not need to be present for this, as they had his measurements pretty well mastered). The purpose of this was to show everyone else in society that he was the only one who could realistically wear a new outfit every day - the people demanded he keep this tradition because it helped to set himself apart as a god from the commoners, who were obviously mortal.

‘Culture’, which is supposed to unify people as groups - has an equal and opposite reaction of pulling these people into their own segregated worlds and setting themselves apart from others in some way. This causes people to tend to think of themselves as clearly different and usually special in some way or another. Compounded by all the messages delivered through advertising and other media, people then begin to think of their life chances, and therefore overall opportunity for experiences to be limited to their tier, speaking in terms of social hierarchy. For example, there is a certain pressure for lawyers and public officials to wear expensive or lavish attire, whereas those who are more like plumbers or construction workers hierarchically speaking, would actually be more expected to have comfortable, functional and durable clothing. This helps those who are expected to dress lavishly often come across as more luxe, or in possession of greater wealth or discretionary funds. In any given advertisement, the target audience is tailored to the perceived economic standing and demographic that would best fit the target consumer. An easier way to say this is: any given commercial for Zales or De Beers or KAY jewelers will not feature someone from a rural area or a farmland walking in with their boots on. They would likewise not have a commercial for Aldi grocers featuring consumers in dinner suits running in for a bottle of wine before hors d'oeuvres. This would present kind of a cultural shock to the target consumer for both retailers. 

Question #3 - How do people end up getting to represent themselves?

By and large, I don’t think they do end up representing themselves. To be able to accurately represent oneself, you would have to lose all definition of who you are, what you are made of, capable of and ultimately where you come from. Then, I assume you would have to start to rebuild the world around you and set your own standards of definition to first understand yourself and then discover how to share that with others in a way so that they understand you similar to how you understand yourself. With people so saturated by the culture which concurrently exists within society, they already have a pretty solid understanding of the social spheres in which they ‘belong’ and they already are pretty occupied with the expectations and pressures, duties and obligations they have to fulfill within their own lives that it is unrealistic to expect them to be able to live unaffected by these and redefine/exemplify themselves free of influence.    

Paper Preview

Hello all! This is a preview of my paper, which will be typed up for class Tuesday or whatnot.

Land Of Promise: Chasing the Dragon

As we assume for this assignment that our readers have no idea about our socioeconomic background, I will go into a richly detailed but maximally streamlined summary of my socioeconomic standing and history. Who am I; socioeconomically? I hadn’t really stopped to think about it extensively before but this assignment has opened up my eyes on a few different levels. 

First I must explain the concept of Life Chances. Life Chances  are exactly what they sound like -  much like the first turn in the games of Life or Stratified Monopoly, Life Chances are essentially the random grab-bag of capita and opportunities we are handed at some indiscriminate time in some incomprehensible way before birth. Whatever kind of life we know that we deserve or are owed or belong in is irrelevant. We are trapped with ourselves and we are forced to play our hands. The hand I have been dealt with my Life Chances is arguably as fair as anyone else’s.

My father owns his own small maintenance business and my mother is enjoying the benefits of unemployment. Though I have been noticing increasing concern in our socioeconomic stability, my father continues to support family expenses alone, and my mother does whatever she can to contribute to his, and the family’s cause. I should mention Lifestyle next. Dziagwa’s traditionally hold the belief that the lifestyle we must adopt within the moment for reasons of survival is somehow beneath us, and we can and should, even when acting beneath our worth, still strive to achieve what we as tax-paying red blooded Americans damn well deserve in this life. Lifestyle Choices are choices which we as individuals or a group make about how to live, which are heavily influenced by class affiliation, ideology, culture and status. One of the lifestyle choices of a Dziagwa is to continue to fight for better living. 

The Dziagwa Family that we have today comes from an anccenstor named Rasmus Nielssen of Denmark. Rasmus, a prominent man and a man who had inherited the true viking spirit of his ancestors, somehow made it from Denmark to the American South, where he established plantations down in the Florida area. In the true American Spirit, he exemplified the zeitgeist of rising Southern American industry and imported slaves from nearby sources. The Dziagwa line comes from the descendants of Nielsson and a steamy affair with a nondescript French Caribbean. Polish inductees to the family running bathub gin and other brewed liquors during prohibition have forsakenly turned our path toward the American Midwest from Florida - where my half-Polish mother introduced Irish Catholic and her conversion to Protestant heritage to our family. Her father may have also been Native American. I have not even realized until now that I am essentially a by-product of the American dream. We are consumed with the idea of The Land of Promise.

        My ancestry comes from immigrants moving here to pursue wealth through industry, immigrants moving to escape famine and national economic depravation, dejected illegitimate slave children on the pursuit of happiness, and people who had everything they were looking for and now are just fighting to remain as a culture. Unfortunately, our lifestyle choices have often been fighting for our very survival but there is promise: what were the lifestyle choices that the RumRunners in our family made differently? How did the slaves rise up even with the cards dealt to them? They must have realized something about class stratification. They must have realized ways to secure their status while still pimping the limitations and advantages of their status within society to make the ways of the world work for us. They were able to find the class that they wanted to be associated with and yet acquire the money of the classes that this status gave them access to and credibility with. We naturally love people and want to see the best for everyone. Everyone safe, everyone happy. But once a Dziagwa can accept that, much like the slave soldiers of the Civil War, we are "buffalo soldiers"- The world is theirs. I think this assignment is helping to awaken the starvation within me that my forefathers have used to fuel their disposition as World Eaters.

Week Three Blog Assignment Parts One and Two

In class we played the classic board game Monopoly with an interesting twist. In "Stratified Monopoly", players roll die to determine who will be the upper class, middle class, working class and lower class members of the game. The player who achieves the best roll essentially has the rules stacked disproportionately in their favor for the rest of the game. Since the rules continually work in the favor of one player, it is theoretically possible for other players to win, but extremely difficult and almost always requires some considerable streak of luck. In our class, none of the players who achieved inferior rolls were able to surpass the competition. This was enlightening on a few different levels.
The board game's true purpose was to illustrate the challenges faced in achieving economic stability for the different classes of income in America. Upper class players breezed through the game, as other players had increasingly difficult times trying to achieve similar levels of success.. all the way down until the lower-class players were generally better off breaking the rules of the game so they could be placed in jail - the lesson being that lower class players could actually experience a higher rate of financial success in the game by being placed in jail and ultimately removing themselves from play. Other players were then forced to pick up their expenses as they froze their assets. I was surprised to see exactly how easy it became for the upper class players to succeed. I represented the upper class player and I eventually got so bored with knowing how my turn would go that I paid for property without collecting the change I was owed, I let players land on my properties and let them just give what they could comfortably afford and sometimes I even let others purchase properties when I had the means, and every financial reason to take that initiative. I felt it was too easy and that victory had been handed to me but I was surprised to see that many of the losing players got so dejected at their loss and "failure" that they seemed to think their inability to overcome the incredible odds was an indication of weakness. they seemed to think that it was reasonable for them to overcome their peers with just the right amount of efforts invested. This was a disappointing concept for me.
We were asked to examine the different types of schools and how they prepare people for their entry into the professional world, and largely prepare them for financial and social stability throughout life.  The schools were Executive Elite schools, Affluent professional schools and Middle as well as Working Class schools. These schools successively have less opportunities and resources at the disposal of the students. Students placed in better equipped schools not only receive higher quality and more relevant educations, but have work assigned to them that they are more invested in and care about rather than standardized educations. Their instruction is essentially tailor-made, and students therefore also develop more personal and situationally appropriate relationships with their instructors. in the better schools that cultivate learning, they prepare students to go out and pursue their passions and interest in life opposed to schools that merely equip students with the skills they will need to be "cookie cutter" employees with a strong work ethic.
I went to a school that would be considered Middle or Lower class. We had standardized educations, and because our school was lacking in funds and appreciation, programs in the arts department as well as our French and German language offerings were disbarred while students such as myself enjoyed one of the most successful rates of education in automotive shop in the state of Illinois. We did not have a fancy or adequately equipped auto shop but students who had found themselves in the class only stuck around when they really felt called to it, as our instructor demanded the performance form us that any given automotive garage would require of employees. If I had gone to another school, I would have had an education that actually consisted of courses I cared about or could have seen myself working in. We had no audio or visual production classes, no design classes and nothing in advertising or marketing. On the other hand our home economics classes, parenting courses and photography as well as physical education departments were the areas with the highest concentration of students who excelled in their fields. Students did well because they loved having these options available to them and capitalized on these (non-graduation mandatory) offerings out of their own personal interest. If we had classes like astronomy and polo and lacrosse and other offerings like Roycemore School in Evanston, Illinois: students would have discovered and developed their passions into academic excitement as Roycemore or Saint Viator or other private education students appear to.