In Response to Austin Bodzioch (3/27/2010)

Q:” If all parents disciplined and didn't spoil their children then do you think that the world would have better appreciated people rather than alot of spoiled, snotty and uncaring people?”

I believe that the answer to this question actually exposes a problem with your blog post; there are many other factors that cause children's behavior other than parenting. Children do not spend all their time with their parents, and parents are not the only way that children are influenced. I agree that parents are a major influence on their children, if not the greatest influence, but children do not develop into a certain type of adult just because of how their parents treated them.I feel that you draw too much significance to the effect that parenting styles have on children.

You say you “have heard of many instances where children are completely spoiled”, and that they act this way later in life, but I feel that this cannot be proven in any way. For as many instances as there are were spoiled children become spoiled adults, I feel there are also many situations were spoiled children mature into caring adults. I feel that it is just people’s assumption that all spoiled children become spoiled adults; people who make this assumption tend to forget the many factors that affect the way human’s act over their lifetime. Furthermore, I think the people who make these assumptions are at their own major fault because it seems that they are quick to make assumptions about people who they do not know.

Even though I do not agree with your blog post, I completely understand where you are coming from because parenting does have a major affect on society in general. For this reason, I find your question very interesting, but I feel my previous rant answers the question itself. Since there are many things that can affect a person over their lifetime, I do no think parenting by itself will make much of a difference in the people that make up our world. Things like schooling, reading, and the general media will have a huge affect on children as they become adults. However, I do feel that just like are schools, parenting in our society could be much improved. With that said, I feel we have more important issues than worrying about what type of people we have in our society, and I completely disagree that the world is made up of “a lot of spoiled, snotty and uncaring people.”

It is good to focus on the overall significance of parenting in our society, but I feel it is a major mistake to assume that adults develop into uncaring individuals just because of the way they were brought up. If parenting were to generally improve, I do think there would be more caring people in the world, but I feel that you are making this issue to simple; it is hard to define exactly what good parenting is, and parenting is definitely not the only factor that affect children’s development into adulthood.

Would parenting be improved within a Socialist Society? Why or Why not?

Do not forget we are talking about Human's.

At the beginning of today’s class, we discussed what might be the obvious issues with a socialist economy. I brought up my point that humans naturally want to be different from other people and so equal pay would not allow this. Alex then said that he felt equal pay could work if each person would be allowed to use their money however they wanted to. I think Alex brought up a great point, but I immediately responded that this would not make people feel equal because there would be too many problems that would arise. I explained that people would take advantage of the system in which the economy runs buy, and therefore people would not feel equal. Even though I got my basic point across, I was not able to back up my argument with actual evidence of what would go wrong in Alex’s plan.
I think that Alex’s idea is very good because people should feel different from others when they are allowed to spend money in their own way, but I feel that this idea would fail in other ways. This idea may fix the basic problem of individuality, but I feel it would be impossible to find a balance between being equal and having individuality in this system. Firstly, I am assuming that everyone receives equal wages. This would be problematic because people would need to be assigned to different jobs. People would complain that they had a more difficult job than a person making the same amount as them. I understand that people should be worrying about the whole and not themselves, but I believe that the creators of this type of economic system are forgetting that they are dealing with humans. I believe that socialism would work out perfectly for any type of high-function being that does not have a sense of self, but not humans. Humans constantly compare themselves with others; Alex’s idea covers the basics of the human need for individuality, but I feel that it forgets about the many other aspects of humanity. Human’s have a sense of self that constantly evaluates its own situation compared to others; I believe that this sense of self would cause the majority of the problems with this economic system. Lets first look at what this type of government expects: everyone to do his or her job. In most jobs, not everyone does perform as well as each other. It seems like someone who performs well would be frustrated if someone else, who performed poorly, was being rewarded the same amount as them. I do not even have to be talking about money when I use this example. Maybe the person performing proficiently is not even being acknowledged for their good work; it does not seem like this person would want to work hard any longer.
The main problem with Alex’s idea of letting people spend their money how they want would be people’s ability to take advantage of the system. It seems like people in this society could have trouble with spending too much of their money; if someone did not have enough money to survive because they spent it all then it would be interesting to see what would happen next. It seems like the government would have to step in and give aid to the people who need help, because if they did not, these people would want to rebel against the government. If the government does provide aid, then other people would feel like it was unfair and ask for aid themselves. I feel that they are too many situations like this for this type of government to succeed. People always find some way that the government system was unfair to them which would cause them to rebel.
It seems like this type of economic system could only work if the individuals of a society cared more about the whole of the society than they cared about themselves; since I do not see this as possible, I feel that a socialist government would inevitability fail.

Do you think that the human sense of self causes problems within society?

In Response to Megan Cooney (3/25/2010)

Q: “We idolize actors and athletes, but we search so hard for a scandal to bring them down. By doing so, are we just trying to bring down the people we have idolized so high?”

I do not believe that the search to bring actors and athletes down is as common as some people may think. There is clearly and obsession about scandals involving actors and athletes, but I believe this obsession is created from something different then people wanting to bring these actors or athletes down; this obsession relates more to the general interest people have in these actors and athletes. With that said, I feel that the people who want to bring these celebrities down are not the ones who idolize them.

I feel that to understand the obsession about scandals involving actors and athletes, we must first understand the general interest that people have of celebrities. Pop culture is interested in actors and athletes because most people are interested in anyone else who is more famous than they are. People in our society become interested in people who are famous because they are trying to escape from their own life. The obsession with celebrities is very similar to the purpose of reading a novel or drinking alcohol in many ways; people are just using these things as means to stop thinking about the stressors in their daily lives. If I read that some famous celebrity cheated on their spouse, I am interested not because I have always had interest in that celebrity, but because their drama-filled life is currently interesting, and I am trying to avoid thinking about my own life. Following celebrities is often the most interesting form of entertainment because the events are extremely dramatic, but it is all real.

I would not agree that we necessarily “search so hard” for scandals that will bring actors and athletes down. I think that people are extremely interested in these scandals, but I do not believe they go out of their way to look for one about their favorite actor or athlete. I understand that people buy celebrity magazines and read websites to find scandals, but I do not believe this is because people want to bring down a specific celebrity; people are just looking for a new story that will distract them from their own problems. With that said, people do exist who will try to bring down a certain celebrity, but I feel that these people are rare compared with the general population.

Many people do make negative comments about celebrities during scandals, and that is why I understand where your idea about bringing down actors and athletes is coming from, but I do not feel that this negativity is related to people wanting to bring their idols down. In general, the people who idolize someone that is in a scandal are interested in the scandal, but they do not want the person they idolize to go down. Sometimes these people will make a comment about a famous actor’s or athletes problems, saying that the famous person made a stupid mistake and is an idiot, but this relates to people trying to feed their own egos. People who idol a certain athlete or actor do not suddenly want their idol to have major problems; they are only interested in what is going on with their idol. Occasionally, these people will be angry at their idol, and they will tell others that they hope their idol has problems because they deserve it, but I do not believe that these people truly want their idol to struggle.

There are people who idolize athletes and actors, but I feel that you confused the people who truly idolize with the people who are generally obsessed with celebrities. If someone truly idolizes an actor or athlete who gets involved in a scandal, he or she will be interested in the scandal, but they are not trying to bring down their idol. The people who want to bring down celebrities are usually the ones who are obsessed with pop culture, and they never truly idolized the specific person that they want to bring down.

What do you think the obsession with celebrities says about our society as a whole?

In Response to Israel Diaz (3/14/2010)

Q:"What if humans were radically compassionate? Would that be dangerous?"

I honestly have trouble thinking of ways that radical compassion could be troublesome for the human race. If each human only cared about others completely then things could only improve for the human race from where things stand now.Many of the major problems with humans relates to our tendency to make egotistical decisions. Many of the rich seem to only care about getting richer; they do not have intrest in helping people below them in socio-econmic staus. An example of this would be the Walton family,the owners of Walmart.Each member of the family owns billions of dollars, but as a family, they have donated less than 1% of their wealth. It seems that our society could greatly benefit from more compassion no matter how radical it is. The only major problem that radical compassion would create would be the results that decision making would have on the people making them; if people only made decisions for others and they did not care at all about themselves it could be troublesome. Before a person learns to take care of others, they first need to be able to take care of themselves. If radical compassion involved people unable to take care of themselves then I believe it would be extremely dangerous, but if people could be radically compassionate while still engaging in personal care, this type of compassion would have no problems. I actually think that our society as whole needs to have a lot more compassion, and to question whether compassion could cause problems is ludicrous. I understand that it is scary to imagine if there were no egotistical values in our society, but it is hard to find any problems that more compassion would create. With that said, it seems that like the Walton family, many people in our society do not have a large amount of compassion. This is why I am wondering whether our society encourages compassion or discourages it.

Do you think our society encourages compassion for others? (Why or Why Not)