post 3

I found the concept on cultures being interesting. Specifically the concept about cultures being shared. According to Trenholm, "Cultures are group understandings rather than individual ones, and belonging to a culture means acting according to group norms" (p. 344). I consider my group of friends a particular sub-culture. We all call our group "The Burn-outs". Whatever we do, we do it hard and end up passing out everywhere. We are all always trying to recover from something we did the night before. We have even made jokes about documenting our burned out lives. I adore my culture with my friends. But I am also apart of another culture that I don't necessarily agree with. The culture of America. The pressure to be pretty, to make money, to go to school and get good grades, and the pressure to please others. According to Trenholm, "Indeed, we spend a good deal of time proving who we are and living up to the expectations of others"(p. 344). This is a sad but true notion in a lot of cultures. If one does something wrong that isn't considered culturally acceptable, they get reprimanded for it. It makes me question how free we really are in America.

Question 2

I don't know if I agree that we are all bale to make rational decisions. I believe that we have capability to do so but only of you are taught how. A lot of people are not taught how to make rational decisions so I would say we definitely have a world where we don't know what we are doing half of the time. I don't believe we are perfect at all nor should we ever try to be. I am not religious ins any way and so I do not agree with the idea that we are born in sin but can achieve good. I believe we are who we are and that's good enough. I do agree with the mutability premise. I have seen this to be true in my own life. Anytime I have a problem I look at whats going on around me and whats going on inside of me. This will usually lead to an answer of some sort that solves what is going on.
The first social institution that practices these beliefs are the Church. The church believes that we are born in sin, but can be close to perfect if we live a certain way. To me, it sounds like a manipulative plan to get people to act a certain way, instead of letting them figure it out on their own. Another institution would be our schools. They believe that we need to be educated enough to make certain decisions. We also hope to educated enough to get a high paying job.

Question 1

I definitely agree with Ruth Benedict that we are "creatures of our culture". Before a child is even born we can now determine the gender of the baby. Many people decorate the rooms in stereotypical gender like colors. Everyone knows that boys get blue things and girls get pink things. This is something that is apart of cour culture creates our beliefs about boys being more masculine and girls being more feminine. In other cultures the gender is important as well, but they don't have a sense of masculinity or femininity. As we get older we all learn what is considered culturally right and what is considered culturally wrong. I partake in a lot of things in my culture that are considered normal, but I also have this sense of rebellion against my culture. For example in the California culture there is a so much pressure to be skinny, pretty and tan. I tend to do little things to rebel against this part of our culture because I don't agree with the pressure to be attractive to other men. It seems like in our culture personality comes last and the pressure to be cute matters more. This is just one of the many ways we can break the cultural patterns. A lot of people are to scared to break cultural norms because our culture makes it scary. If one doesn't conform, they could risk being made fun of or getting a certain job.

post 3

One thing I found interesting about this chapter was the part about lying and non-verbal communication. I am a really bad liar and that's because I know its wrong to lie. So when I do lie I think my body shows it. One time my friends asked me a question and all I kept doing was shaking my head no. It was weird. I was trying so hard to lie but all I could do was shake my head. My body wouldn't let me lie, it was almost kind of funny. I think non-verbal communication is key to getting to know someone. When I meet someone new, I am more focused on their non-verbal behaviors than anything they tell me. For example, I will ask a particular question but instead of listening to the answer I tend to watch their body and eyes. If someones eye's dart around the room a lot, I don't think that they are trust worthy people because they are non-verbally communicating a sense that they are not comfortable with themselves and seem ashamed of something. Non-verbal communication plays a bigger role than we think. I wish they educated children more on non-verbal communication so we could possibly judge people in a more fair way than we do now and we could possibly avoid being around bad people this way.

question 2

In different cultures, different things are considered sexy on a woman. In India for example, thee eyes are considered sexy. So women cover their entire bodies from head to toe except for their eyes that show. This is a non-verbal message that communicates beauty or sex appeal in the Indian culture. In Indian tribes, the Indians wanted to show respect to an animal. They would do this in a non-verbal way by taking the bones in the animal and pierce their own skin with them and wear them as a piercing. This is to communicate respect of the animal in all ways. In America, piercing anything communicates a sense of rebellion and also a sens of disrespect to ones body.
I lived in Mexico for 19 months of my teen years. I was put into a boarding school there. We actually weren't aloud to talk. This was because they wanted us to think about all our actions instead of talking our way out of them. They wanted us to be on whats called "code silence". Because of this me and all the other people came up with a lot of different non-verbal ways to communicate. For example when we wanted something, we would point for it and that person would give it to you.

Question 1

I have most definitely been wrong about a persons non-verbal behavior. I feel like half the reason I am wrong at times is because of what I have been through before. I tend to hold onto assumptions to protect myself from things happening again. An example of this is when I saw my best friend roll her eyes at me. I made the assumption when she did that, that it was directed at me. I was talking to a bunch of our friends and when I saw her role her eyes I got extremely upset. I thought she was rolling her eyes because she was annoyed with me and wanted me to shut up. The whole night we were all partying and I made sure I avoided her. Then at the end of the night she came up to me and was hugging me and told she loved me and how she missed me because we didn't even hang out the entire night. I asked her if that were true than why did she roll her eyes at me while I was talking. She smiled and said she wasn't rolling her eyes at me, but she was rolling her eyes at this girl that was flirting with her boyfriend. Of course I immediately went "ohhhhh". I feel that the number one way to increase the way we interpret non-verbal messages is to not make assumptions. We need to heal form our past experiences so that they do not run our lives. This would stop people from assuming about peoples non-verbal behaviors.

post 3

The concept I found to be interesting was about the CMM theory. CMM stands for Coordinated Management of Meaning theory. This theory caught my attention because it facilitates good communication. It is one of the only theories that I agree works and that I try and practice in my life. It has an episode which is the event that two people are in. It has a relationship which “refers to the role obligations that we feel toward one another” (Trenholm, p.83). A life script which means our other identities that we play in the world and a cultural pattern which consists of the cultural norms were all supposed to follow. The CMM theory is a way of knowing the person you talk to through and through. So, if you know them well you make the right connections as they speak and you guys have a “flow” life conversation where you guys understand one another.

post 2 question 2

I agree that men and women use language differently. Men and Women are different because they are raised to be think that they are different. For example boys when they are born get everything in blue and girls get everything in pink. If you ask me, it is something that needs to change. I was actually in Vegas this weekend with 2 men. They way they spoke to each other and the way they spoke to me was definitely different. When they spoke to each other they used a deeper tone of voice. All they talked about was either getting "messed up" or they talked about how hot the girls were that walked by. Women on the other hand use high-pitch tones usually to communicate. And women speak about a variety of things from make-up to clothes to cute boys to the t.v. shows they watched that day. My observation shows that women use language to communicate while men use language to brag or express dominance over other things. I think our English language serves men more than it does women. This is because men are the ones who created the English dictionary. If a woman created some of the language, things would probably be more equal.

question 1 discussion 6

I do not think it is possible to perceive others without judging or categorizing them. I think this is because we has humans want to protect ourselves if we can and so judging and categorizing helps us do that at times. I do think however that you do not have to change yourself, just because of a judgement you have made or a category you put someone in. For example, lets say I met a girl who was blond, had a high pitch voice and dressed like she was looking for some attention. My judgement might be to not trust this girl because I would be assuming her to be a bimbo of some sort. Because there is no real way of telling if someone is good or bad forever, then I believe we shouldn't be waisting our time being a jerk to people based off of our own judgements. Even if the girl is a bimbo or isn't one, why should it matter to me? She has the right to live her life just as I have the right to live my own, so just because I judge her doesn't mean I need to change myself when I am around her. I call that giving someone your power. Why am I going to give someone I don't truly know or have any deep relationship with my good time? I think that is the message we are missing in this world. It is OK to judge and categorize to be aware of things, but don't ruin what your about just because of who they are.