No lengthy introduction this time. I am going to get right to the points of interest. This week in class we talked about euthanasia. I have no idea why we did this. I initially tried to contemplate the purpose of the activity, but ultimately failed and gave up. My first thoughts were that the class was discerning the ways in which different cultures debate of deliberate over issues, but we were only given one set of libertarian and democratic ideals to abide to, so there was no comparison between two cultures or views. Were we studying the way in which normative Americans are encouraged to deliberate ideas and opinions? I don't know for sure, but I think that may have played some kind of part.
The next thought I had was better founded. It was that we enacted the debate in order to attain a sense of how different we all are from one another, by observing the way in which we individually and cooperatively expressed our contrary beliefs. Thus giving us insight into the lives, views, and beliefs that arise from experience and individual differences.
This would have made more sense had this been done in my psychology class rather than my sociology one. I may never know or understand the answer but it was interesting to say the least. I obviously took a stand advocating the institution, because I believe that no matter who you are or what your situation, be it terminal or not, you should have the right to end your own life. If we are denied the right to end our own lives should we choose to do so, then it is a life to which we are enslaved.
After the debate, we watched part of a documentary entitled "Do You Speak American". They only interesting idea I pulled from the narrators dull rhetoric, was the opposition between the prescriptivism and descriptivism. The way in which I understand it is that the prescriptivism believes that we should have a strong language foundation, a base that is universally understood by all Anglo/American speakers. Descriptivism advocates the idea that as the national culture and values change the language should with it.
I take an eclectic stand. As the nation, culture, and the world grow, expand, and evolve we will find it increasingly difficult to accommodate new ideas into preexisting words and phrases, therefore new terms are inevitable. What I don't agree with is the formation of novel terms to represent preexisting ideas and denotations: slang. Different dialects breeds disharmony, superior-ism, and discrimination. Have you ever heard someone make fun of a southern drawl, or a New York accent? I know that I have. I have seen and heard Chinese persons exhibit a disconnected sense of shared culture because one spoke Mandarin, while the other spoke Cantonese. The slang that originates from hip-hop and rap music has come to embody something almost criminal by the preceding generation (the employing generation) while it is a integral part of most of my generations daily lives (the future work force).
The final thing that I am required to blog about in order to receive full credit is an passage we read that pertained to food. Just like the euthanasia debate, I found the article to be much more psychological than sociological. It was even written by a psychologist, and talked about particular psychological perspectives on the topic. It basically spoke of human food habits, how they originate and develop, and the use of etiquette and food preference to discern ourselves socially, stating that people eat specific foods to appear expensive, cultured, tasteful, and to demonstrate their social class. The one thing that I thought appealing was the idea of ethnocentric cuisine. It spoke our our natural tendency to attach inferior connotations to unfamiliar foods. At first I thought of my own tendency to partake in the enjoyment of any and all cuisine, but when the passage began to talk about racial jokes and slurs that originate from food differences, I had an "ah ha" moment. I thought about the reference to blacks and fried chicken, I read the part about "beaners" and "krauts", and I even remembered SWIM saying I smell curry as an Indian individual entered the room. I find it funny, as I always do, that we attempt to avoid ethnocentrism at any given opportunity. It plays such an important part in our lives and who we are that it even extends to our cuisine. If it has existed in nature, untouched for thousands of years, who is mankind to dismantle it?
Ethnic cuisine in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
