Ethnocentric

In general, I believe that I am fairly open to other ways of different societies. There have been a couple of times that I have been ethnocentric and one of the times was when I went on vacation to Mexico and almost all of the little kids on the beach were clothes less. I thought that this was totally unacceptable and almost barbaric. I later realized that I thought this solely because I was being ethnocentric and that there was nothing wrong with little kids splashing around in the water without clothes for two reasons. First of all they are kids (they are not trying to be unrespectable or embarrassing) and secondly that not everyone can afford a bathing suit so its just nice that they can still enjoy themselves. The reason I thought this was so weird was because all my life I have been told that nudity is bad and that I should always be wearing clothes in public and so I assumed that these rules applied everywhere, but they don't. This could even go back to the Adam and Eve discussion that they had no problem having no clothes on until they became shameful. If I had been raised in Mexico, I wouldn't have thought anything of the nude children, so therefore it is solely me be ethnocentric.

Overboard

This week we played a game (or scenario) where there are people on a boat and we must get rid of people. What has our society come to where people have no problem killing people for their own survival? Are we more selfish? Are we more conserned about the effects on the society? In the game there were a couple of people that tried to take control but in the end it was voting that made the decisions. If people were really being killed would these people still try to take control? Power is a great thing but it ussually ends up in abuse or rebellion. People in the game were unhappy when classmates tried to dictate decisions, but this would probably be different in a real life scenario, as many people could not bring the burden of the responsibility of someone's death upon themselves.

Silence is Golden

When we think of silence we think of the absence of sound. What about thinking of sound as the absence of silence? We rarely see things in the same way all of the time. If their is a lot of sound when you want silence then you only hear the noise and not everything that does not. When our teacher didn't talk on the first day of school everyone found it awkward and figured something was going wrong (whether we were too loud or not following some sort of directions). After years of experience, we have been able to guess when someone or thing is supposed to make noise and when it's not. In general people are more quiet throughout the day than making noise but we seem to have very high expectations for noise at certain times when most of our lives we are quiet. Silence gives time for inner reflection but other people would rather have their minds busy with other things than have time to just sit and think. Today time to relax and reflect is considered wasted time, every seconds of our lives are devoted to become the best we can be solely for the material gain and not the emotional. Next time that you have a free time, take some time and listen to the sweet sound of silence.