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Another interesting takeaway from this class was when I learned about the United States Wealth distribution. After examining the chart on the slideshow presentation I was astonished by the greed of the 1%. Although I come from an affluent area in Massachusetts, my parents have always taught me the value of money. I have worked hard for many of the nice things that I have and am grateful that my parents have taught me these values. In general my family has money and a few of my close friends are in the 1%. I find it interesting that the political views of my friends in the 1% are not certain based on their wealth. One of my friends families are super left wing while the others are right. Interestingly the democratic views fall with the ultra rich family. They have 4 Mercedes and a Porsche, eat out constantly, and wear designer clothing. If they understood the impact that sacrificing a small portion of their wealth would have on families in need, they may just change their actions. Once again I was able to ask Rita about her opinion on the subject. I was glad to hear that she believed money does not define a person and that she didn’t associate political views with a persons wealth. We both strongly agreed that the problem lies where people are given their wealth instead of it being earned. It is hard for a person to empathize with a low wage worker if they have been handed money their whole live. Sometimes this conversation comes up with greedy people and you can recognize the irony of their arguments as they complain about first world problem or actively resent individuals with less money.  

In order to understand what it feels like to be an Ethnomethodologist I took the opportunity to act out of the norm in front of my friends JB. We were at NCB studying so it was not very hard to make a little scene. In an instant I made the decision to just stand up and start dancing the Macarena. JB was immediately embarrassed and started to hide his head slightly. I then began to gently hum the lyrics out loud. Although I did not see many people looking, JB was still very startled by my behavior. Of course, his next reaction was to pull out his cellphone and record me on snapchat. I was not super embarrassed, but I knew JB would be just because he was unaware that I was doing it intentionally. JB also has a very specific social rule book so he often feels embarrassed in situations where myself or others may not.

I believe that Robbie’s actions are a result of mostly the environment around him. Robbie clearly had a desire to find a purpose for himself, and at one point appeared to be making progress. The problem is that there was a lack of support around him. Although people like his step-mother and brother cared about his well being, he was too easily influenced by other factors in his environment that jeopardized his mental state. I believe that there were just too many negative things happening in his life like bullying, loosing his job, and an absence of relationship with his mother. It simply came down to not enough people in his life caring about his well being and happiness. It almost seems he could justify lashing out against his environment due to the fact that almost everything in his environment was causing him pain.

Although I believe Americans have many values, one in particular stands out to me as most prevalent throughout American society. I believe Individualism is desired and achieved by all Americans. Absolutely everybody is unique in their own ways and if you talk to somebody long enough you can always discover something unique about them. Americans take pride in their individualism and are motivated by the idea of following their own path. Even if somebody does not seem unique, there are many aspects of our personal life that we do not share with others that make us who we are. Some people even face mental struggle when attempting to identify what makes them unique, and others know what makes them unique but are not content with it.

I believe that the social conflict perspective is absolutely relevant in explaining todays society. This is strongly due to my belief that peoples tendencies to compete for resources is driven by greed and our natural instinct to survive. We see examples of social conflict constantly in society as powerful people struggle to maintain control of power and resources at the expense of others. We also examine motivated individuals competing for power and resources even when most disadvantaged. A fantastic aspect of our society to examine when considering social conflict may be politics. Political power is almost humanities own manifestation of the social conflict that we live in and are influenced by. The constant competition between people to control other people, their resources, and their values (although church is separate from state, politics still attempt to influence religion and values). I believe that an understanding of the power that super families in politics have over people at the opposite end of the spectrum is essential to realizing the constant competition over resources happening in society around us.