School Violence

I was really surprised to learn in both the Kimmel article and the Tough Guise video that all the recent random school shootings have been carried out by white suburban boys that felt less manly because of the way their classmates treated them. When you think of violence in schools, you would probably first guess that most acts are done in inter-city schools. It's easier to think this way - atleast for me because I go to a upper-middle class suburban school filled with white boys. I would like to think that violence could never happen at my school and at first glance you wouldn't think it could happen. But the truth is, I hear boys being put down all the time. No, I don't think it's to the extent that the boys that become shooters had to endure, but it's still present. The media has a lot to do with boys not feeling like "real men". It sucks but it's reality and the best thing we can do to prevent violence in our school is to not call people offensive names and instead include them.

Consuming Children - It's not about Cannibalism

I was completely shocked when we watched the movie Consuming Children earlier this week. I mean I always knew the media was a big part of our society but I didn't realize it was to this extent. I couldn't believe marketers would go as far as going after tiny children in order to "get them for life". The research methods that they use are crazy! MRIs, blinking tests, and even observing children in the shower! I get that children are a huge source of revenue but the marketers' studies makes it seem like they're curing cancer or atleast something so important that it will atleast benefit us. There was something else in the video that struck me: the use of brands on products like bed sheets, snacks, etc. The day we watched the movie I happened to have Scooby Doo fruit snacks in my back pack. No I don't watch Scooby Doo now, but I have loved these snacks since I was 5 or 6. This made me realize that this was probably the media at work; I never realized it before. As a child I'm sure I chose these snacks from the dozens of other fruit snacks because it contained the Scooby Doo brand. Who wants the fruit snacks shaped like fruit anyway? These were much cooler! Not only did the media persuade me to buy these particular snacks, they also got me from the cradle to (maybe) the grave or at least to my teens.

Love vs. Genetics

Watching the case of Danielle on Oprah this week was both heart-breaking and fascinating at the same time. I couldn't believe that extreme neglect could cause such a huge physical impact on a person. I had always thought that a person would be able to develop fairly normally as long as he wasn't born with a condition like autism or down syndrome. Sure, I expected Danielle to be depressed and lacking social skills but I could never have imagined her development would be lacking to this degree. I used to volunteer at a summer camp where volunteers were paired  one-on-one with a child that had some sort of mental disability. One day I was assigned to a little girl named Julia, who like Danielle, was around 8 or 9 years old but behaved like an infant. She couldn't walk upright, she couldn't feed herself, she couldn't speak and on the play ground she had to be pushed in a baby swing. Let me just say this was one of the hardest days of my life. Julia's severe mental handicap was the reason she could not function like a normal child, but if you didn't know, it would hard to tell the difference between Julia's condition and Danielle's condition. I found it very interesting that the lack of love, attention and social interaction that Danielle received could be as costing to her brain development as the genetics in Julia.

Are Americans Afraid of Death?

Yes! We can't even seem to say it. We use phrases like "she passed away", "he's passed on" or "she's in a better place now". People never say "Oh she died" because that's considered morbid which is unacceptable to discuss in American culture. Oddly enough, some of my friends and I were talking about funerals and people that we know that have died today at lunch. All the sudden someone realized what we were talking about and said, "Okay let's stop, this is too depressing" and everyone agreed and the conversation immediately ended. I don't think the subject is taboo, but it definitely makes us uncomfortable. I think this is the case because our American values, such as valuing youth. We all want to be young and even if you are not young, there's plastic surgery, botox, skin treatments, hair dye, etc. to make us look younger. The elderly on the other hand are more of a burden according to our culture. Many of don't take of our parents or grandparents when they can no longer take care of themselves, we put them in nursing homes for others to deal with. Aging, of course, is associated with dying and for this reason we look at death as an off-limits subject. Our material culture also probably plays a part in this. We are so obsessed with material things which obviously won't trenscend after death so we worry what will be left of us after we die. No one will remember us for the things we owned and that scares us because some people don't have anything else to show for their lives.