Social classes

"People Like Us: Social Class in America"

http://www.pbs.org/peoplelikeus/

I wish I could watch the documentary movie (which was not available online for free), then I would have a much better approach to interpret my understanding of this website. I tried playing one of the games and it didn’t attract me because the questions where not designed properly so not everybody would find an answer close to her/his situation. I red the stories and it seems they all say if you change your class, it does not matter higher or lower; it creates issues for your relationship with your family if they are still in your old class. Val was gone to new money social class through her husband status, Charles left the luxury life that his parents had and went to working social class, Roberta changed her class by getting married to Ben, and it caused problems on their relationships with their families or it was even worse for Charles who lost his relationship with his parents. In real world based on my experience, I have seen people who changed their social class by having higher education or developing a successful business with much higher income and also helping their family and changing their social class gradually. But it does not happen for everybody and some people have to disconnect from their old world to be in a different level of society. I think inequality has been a natural part of the human society forever and some people happen to be lucky by having proper role models and take themselves out of a lower class toward higher classes away from poverty and crime. It usually happens very gradually and to help the process to speed up, society needs to help people to get higher education more easily and facilitate more encouraging tools to help people recognize their potentials. Human being can be positive and creative when they are able to identify and use their abilities. In the other side new money class ad even old money class needs be educated to accept people because of their capabilities not because of their social class. That makes the path much smoother for people from lower class to move from poverty. Human has had good progress but we still have a long journey from inequality to equality and have a happy peaceful society.

Do you think Americans today are more isolated due to technology?

Do you think Americans today are more isolated due to technology? Explain why or why not, and whether you think this issue is something we should be concerned about now or in the future.

Since industrialization made a line between home and work, I think there are two different approaches for this analysis.
Nowadays Americans are more isolated in their personal relationships. When we look at the statistics, the number of single and divorced people has been increasing because people are more isolated today. It is not easy for them to be in a Dyad because they have a lot of personal goals and issues that are not easy to match with another person’s. If we look at that issue more closely, it is mostly worsened by technology. Owning brand new stuff with the latest technology is part of these personal goals that takes a person far from loved ones and from sharing his/her life with them. Internet can connect people across the world on a daily basis but at the same time people living under one roof are busy with their own computers, talking to others and not even paying attention to their partner next to them. Broadcasting technology sometimes distracts people too much as well. Some internet networks like E-Harmony try to help match people but this tool and similar tools do not seem to be working very well. In my opinion, they don’t work perfectly because they can not know what an actual human soul needs in order to find a soul mate. The concern is there is not enough training during childhood and teen ages to help people to know their own intimacy needs so they can find a partner to satisfy their soul needs without technology.
On the other side people are very group and team oriented in society. People in a work environment now can build a rocket and send it to the moon because of great teamwork. Human beings have had great inventions during the past few decades just because of the better understanding of teamwork and team environment they have. People have been drawn to social groups such as Facebook and sub-groups that have been created in the Facebook virtual world, groups that are fans of music bands, demonstrations for human rights, and all kinds of different protests or walks to support cancer and other charitable research. Humankind has had “Great progress” through teamwork to make a lot of things better in this world.

Nature VS Nurture

Nature and nurture are complementary to each other. I believe if we understand the nature of humans (men, women, children, adult, etc) then we can establish good nurturing. Reading different theories such as Chodorow’s and Gilligan’s shows human beings have different nature but what’s important is to recognize what type of nurturing is proper to make the society happy?
Human beings have been through the self-discovery process for a long time. Learning more about our nature lets us understand our reactions to this nature and find out how to overcome wild reactions and make more peaceful society with higher quality of nurturing.
In older times, Family had a very big influence in a child’s life to teach socialization rules and values, but as we study in chapter 4 of the book about socialization and the life cycle, now there are many other things that have big influences in different stages of a person’s life. Family still has a big role but besides family, school, media, and peer relationships can have big roles on a person’s life development. These things provide different types of nurture for the person and create a variety of opportunities for better self discovery. Sometimes these potentials can be used peacefully, but sometimes they can be used in a very improper way.
Some examples of different groups in a society can make it clearer.
Now a days, there are a lot of societies that provide more opportunities for women through family, school, and multimedia. The picture on page 101 of the book shows how a Muslim woman becomes a doctor and takes an important role in the society despite of all the limitation for women. There is obviously less discrimination now compared to 30 or 40 years ago. It is an ongoing process but it has had good progress during past few decades. So it implies that nurturing can create more freedom within societies.
Another example is the variety of races that all work together in multicultural groups and are very active in society.
Let’s think about disabled people. They cannot change their nature much but special nurturing in society gives them opportunities of having their own sport teams, comparable education and professional jobs. Basically they can have important roles and live like a “normal” person.
So, nurturing can make a difference and create lots of options for people of all different levels of intelligence. However sometimes, societies/groups might go to extremes and end up having people with too much expectation because they have gotten excessive attention by too much nurturing.