People like us

In class we watched a movie called people like us about the perception of different social classes in society. This video really irritated me. Everyone ahs strived for so many years to be equal and not have money matter and look where it got us? Snobby rich guys wondering how "these people got in"! Honestly? This is kind of ridiculous! People separate themselves based on everything these days. They try to live in a community that is primarily of similar people, my own family when moving here wanted to live in a mainly Jewish community. If it’s not race, its religion, if it’s not religion its culture, if not culture then what? Money? Of course richer people are going to want bigger houses and such, but this movie just made it seem like they are so distraught at being around even the middle section middle class, as if they aren’t as good as them. The lady that married wealthy and decided to teach others to be wealthy, or act it at least kind of bothered me too. She was trying to hard to fit into another social circle even though her husband obviously didn’t care that she wasn’t from the upper middle class. Everyone puts so much more pressure on themselves then they really have to. I remember a year ago, I went out with this guy and his family to a French restaurant. I felt so out of place because it was really fancy and had a million and one forks and such. His mom kept trying to help me but it made me feel as if I wasn’t good enough. I admit I should've been calmer about it because in worrying I turned into yet another person that thinks its ok to think of people in terms of their social class.

Extreme Deviance

We watched a video where a man spent thirty days, well actually only 25, in jail being treated like any other inmate. The jail itself really surprised me. It was absolutely dehumanizing. Some of there prisoners didn't have a thing coming out of the wall to sleep on, they had to shower in front of everyone and they weren't even allowed to go outside. These men were living an absolutely non-human existence and some of them even had bigger needs that should have been addressed. There was one man in there with a heroine addiction going through withdrawal, he needed actual help but it wasn’t until he got to the other prison that he got it. Another thing that really struck me was that after release two prisoners, the heroine guy and the old respected guy ended up back in jail. The had seemed so promising and I thought their freedom was a sure thing but I was wrong. They don’t really rehabilitate them in normal jails, which I believe is a mistake because how are they supposed to go back and interact with normal society after that if they’re treated as less then people and get nothing out of it. Another aspect of this video that really scared me was the guy going through heroic withdrawal; I have a friend that used to do drugs and it got pretty bad but they're clean now and have been for a few years. It was one of my friends from back in Ukraine. After seeing the heroic guy go through withdrawal, I called my friend and basically threatened him if he ever gets back on drugs.

Saints and Roughnecks

So a major topic discussed in our short week was the reading Saints and Roughnecks, where students were treated differently for doing the same thing because of the way they went about it. The "Saints" were upper middle class kids with good grades who would ditch class regularly but do it in such a way that they only seemed better as students. The "Roughnecks’" were just as deviant but they didn’t have as good a reputation and weren’t as creative about it. So they were labeled as "the bad kids". The sad thing about this story is that it applies to real life too. If you're labeled a "good kid" by society (because of who you are or how you act) you do tend to get the benefit of the doubt more often and often times are treated better. People expect more from you so a mistake is a mistake, while for other kids their mistakes may be seen as life choices. I'm not sure why but this bothers me. I've known this stuff for a long time, but seeing it in black and white just made me feel horrible about society. Money and grades shouldn’t mean everything about a person. What you were born into shouldn’t determine how society looks at you, but this is a fact of life. You judge a person twelve seconds after meeting them, you look at: hair, clothes and manners. It’s a human trait and it is how it’s always been. The reason these boys were treated differently was only skin deep, but it changed them for the rest of their lives because they learned that society will never expect anything different from them. So the "Saints" were successful and the "Roughnecks" were not. I realize of course that we all do this. I've had circumstances where I had to go talk to a teacher and ask for a favor, and I knew I would get it because I’m usually quiet and don’t disturb the class. My friends say that teachers like that because they do all there homework and don’t make much noise. It’s a fact of life; we are all stereotyped by how we act. And due to that we know what we can get away with and what is expected of us. It’s not fair but it’s true. I had a friend who was failing a class and her teacher hated giving extra credit. But she sat in the front, did all her homework and never disturbed the class. So when she went in and asked fro extra credit the teacher gave it to her, but no one else in the class. Because she was deemed the "good kid" that tried hard and deserved it. But she never studied, so technically this stereotype was false. But the teacher would never have known it.

Aikido

So in class this week one of the topics that stuck out to me was the concept of Aikido; fighting by simply defending yourself but not bringing harm to another person. It was strange because we have been trained since birth that fighting is both parties equally trying to harm each other. So the concept of standing there and defending but not advancing isn't something you would normally think of. Especially me because I'm a Krav Maga fighter, one of our main goals is to defend and advance at the same time (aka block and punch), because we are taught that you cant risk the person coming back to try and hurt you again. That's why when we were talking about Aikido i kind of didn't fully understand it. If you don't punch back, like i was taught to do, how can you inflict harm on the person so they don't hurt you again? But the idea of Aikido is that you don't want to inflict harm, because then both parties are angry and the fight will go on or your attacker will pick another victim. The idea is to show him or her that you can hurt them if you need to, but you don't want to. That way they'll walk away peacefully. This just keeps making em think of what I've been taught, my dad has been telling me since birth that if someone tries to hurt me i should hurt them back and worse so they know not to mess with me. It always made sense to me, but i never looked at it as perpetuating the violence, i just looked at it as self defense. But with the concept of Aikido self defense means nothing more then defend yourself, which is interesting.