Thursday, September 1, 2011

First weeks blog about what society values

 I thought the "abandon ship" assignment we did earlier this week was really insightful in showing what society places value in. By placing 16 different stereotypical people on a ship and having to choose to "kill off" 7 people it quickly showed what our class finds value in. For example, it was obvious our class thinks youth is a necessary trait in survival since some of the first people to be killed off were the elderly couple while the younger characters such as the football player and cheerleader got to stay. Other values that our class took into consideration was intelligence (particularly to science over arts), usefulness, patriotism, morality, individuality, and control. I think our class might be somewhat biased, since its a room full of teenagers, therefore we'd favor certain traits such as youth over experience or wisdom. However, i feel like the traits that our class found important would still reflect a common americans perspective. We put much more value into strength, youth, and a person's ability to survive or usefulness in a deadly situation. This connects to my own life because i have family members that are disabled and elderly and it makes me wonder what i would do if i was in a situation in which i had to kill off one of my own family members. Even though they might not be young and in "full health" i would still be able to find value in my relatives and wouldn't be able to justify kicking them off the ship. I really enjoyed the ship activity because it made me aware of my own values and made me question what i would do if i was in that situation. I would probably follow the common ideal that society values on youth and strength however i think i would feel guilty for kicking the "weaker" off of the ship.

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