Values, and Boys Who are Lost...and from Sudan

        Values are funny things. I don't know if we will ever know for sure why they vary from culture to culture, but as of now I am all in favor of the environment plus needs theory. Either way I thoroughly enjoyed going over the different American values in class. Two off of Robin Williams list startled me when I read them.         The first one is external conformity. At first I thought that I had misread something, then I thought that I misinterpreted something, then I laughed at the irony. For a long time I genuinely thought that uniquity was an American value. We place a strong emphasis on being one's own person, and taking personal responsibility, but typically we do discriminate against anything which is not mainstream. I've heard the phrase "be a leader, not a follower" so many times that I truly began to believe in it. It was almost my dogma at one point, but reflecting on society I realize that questioning and going against behavior is not something that we value at all. How pathetic.
       The second one did not necessarily surprise me, I just found it hilarious. Racism and group-superiority is much a lesser know yet extremely important value in our culture today. It creates things like violence, debate, and even change in many instances. I went through a day one time counting the amount of times that my peers, friends, and aquaintances used derrogatory racial slurs, and found that the number was to large to count without writing it down. This value is especially amusing because of the other value that it seemingly negates: equality. When one really thinks about it, it's actually not that surprising. It's not that we are naturally discriminatory creatures and think we are superior, it's just a burden to live under the opposite assumption. Darwinism one, society zero.
        The final thing that I would like to make a note of was the Sudan Lost Boys. I nearly died laughing at certain parts in the video. One of those parts was when the boys talked about American food, another was when Santino was fined for driving without a license, a third was when Peter didn't make the basketball team, and the last was after the video ended and I was on my way to eighth hour. When I thought back to the video and sort of ran through it in my head I had a realization that I found hilarious. I thought about who did better in the new society: Peter, or Satino. Now obviously one would have to be an imbecile not to say tha Peter did. He made friends, graduated high school, and had little difficulty supporting himself. Santino on the other hand, almost lost his house for not paying rent, almost lost it again because of the court fines he had to pay, and repeatedly stated that he was very lonely. Now the part that I found funny, was that they came from a village in which everyone was connected. Everyone had their place in the community, and aided each other in their struggles. Once Peter got to America all of that changed. His communal philanthropy became personal responsibility, his unscheduled life became a tight regime, and the funniest of all his ideas about remembering and aiding his culture back at his homeland became assimilation and greed. When his sister revealed that he hadn't sent any money home in a long time you really realized how self-centered and American that Peter had become.
        Moral of the story....Conformity is key
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/10/can_we_please_define_racism.html