Seeing The Water...

The phrase, “water to a fish” is meant that fish swim in it, basically every single moment of their lives that it is invisible to them what it really is. The water that is surrounded in everyday American life is difficult to see, considering we live it to the point where it’s completely natural for us. For example, the use of cell phones. In mainly our generation, cell phones are completely necessary for us to communicate with everyone around us. And it is also safer for us to be able to commune instantly. Also, another ordinary habit in my life is learning every day, by getting an education and having responsibilities to complete assignments on time.
When people navigate what is the norm and ordinary around them, it is because they are comfortable with their surroundings and adjust themselves to the point where they are comfortable with their environment. Most people everyday use the internet to find out information, but rarely you find people looking up info. in libraries. It all has to do with how they were brought up and what is most secure for their natural habits and boundaries. Many elders that I know of prefer not to use recent technology because it is unfamiliar with them and they don’t find the need to live their life in an updated state.
The American values that are most significant to me today are being able to have a choice in education and in general my individual freedom. With my individual freedom, I get to choose who I hang out with, what I do for fun, like hobbies and such. Adjusting my values in my life now to what I think is morally right is basically just doing what I am comfortable with and knowing what is best for myself in the long run, towards the future.

Culture

Last week, we had an assignment to present to the class, given different topics. Our presentation was based on values, norms, and sanctions. We demonstrated these three subjects into skits. Basically, on values we created a bathroom scene, where one person goes to a stall, and it is a hidden rule to not go to the stall right next to theirs. For norms, we had two people eating a banana, except one of the was eating it upside-down (which not many people do). And lastly, for sanctions we made the roles of a teacher and a student, and when the student received an A+, the teacher did the appropriate act and high-fived him (rather than hitting the rear-end like in football (-_-)’. The other presentations that my fellow classmates did were based on culture, material culture, nonmaterial culture, culture shock, culture relativism, etc. But the one that sparked my interest the most was ‘culture shock’. Culture shock is basically when there is intellectual discomfort when encountering a different environment. So let’s say you go into another country, and there is a different way to do many activities. It creates such an impact on you that you’re perplexed on how to act.