Analyzing My Own Assumptions

In this blog I will be addressing a set of questions on culture presented in Writing Public Lives about the text I have selected for my second project.

1. What cultural or social values, beliefs, etc., do we share with society or culture in which the text was written?  Why have they endured?

This article was written within a newsgroup that writes on environmental issues.  The general population of America tends to pity those involved due to great weather related catastrophes, accidents, or attacks.  When the public is presented with an issue that occurs due to human pollution or production, we all share the value of wanting to place the blame.  Who is directly responsible and can immediately be held responsible for fixing the situation?  This value has endured because it is the easiest and most surface level of involvement for those physically distanced from the event.  People can pray and contribute a few dollars for the victims, maybe fix up a house if they are feeling generous.  When they become part of the problem, suddenly everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else.  Why would we want a field of confused information with a variety of problematic organizations and individuals when we can be united in placing the blame and moving on with our lives?

2. What cultural or social values, beliefs, etc., do we not share?  Why not?

All of America does not share the same importance of addressing human impact and overuse of resources.  Once again, that would mean that a massive effort and legitimate thought and energy would have to be developed and put into an effort to change our culture.  This seems simply too complicated.  Politicians don't gain votes by finding problems and asking for hard-work and funding.  They gain votes by presenting plans and solutions.  Climate change, human production processes, and controlling our waste do not have easy solutions.  Why would a politician want to highlight an issue they know little about and have no solution to?  This transfers to the general population through an overwhelming amount of antipathy for anything climate related.  It's easier to hate the word global warming than to research the complicated technology and scientific research trying to qualify and solve the problems created by humans and subsequent climate change.

Ben_Kerckx "Compost" acquired via Pixabay
Uploaded June 2015 CC0 Public Domain

3. If the test is written in a culture distant or different from our own, what social values beliefs, etc., connect to or relfect our own culture?  What social values, beliefs, etc., can we not see in our own culture?

This text, especially after the Pope's speech, connects to our moral, ethical, religious, political, economical, and humanitarian values.  A religious person's beliefs now depend on their opinion to agree or disagree with the Pope.  Our moral, ethical, and overall humanitarian beliefs depend on whether or not we choose to reduce the impact of climate change, pollution, and overuse of resources on the population.  A conservative has to choose whether or not environmental issues have to be hated just because their party is the champion of denial on the topic.  Most importantly, those in a lower economic standing, who are likely to take the worst of the environmental changes in the future, have to find a way to make those of higher economic standing realize the true value of addressing climate change.

4. If the text is written in our culture but in a different historical time, how have the social values, beliefs, etc., developed or changed over time?

This is the best possible time for the Pope to address climate change.  His encyclical was released at almost exactly the same time as gay marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court.  This landmark decision easily covered up the news on the encyclical.  In the current day, with the UN conference in Paris in the very near future, the ever growing piles of information on resource misuse and sketchy green washing (ex. Volkswagen), the public is even more aware of how large scale of an issue this is becoming.  The public is being forced to adapt at an exponential rate, and although this might result in a very chaotic cultural shift, this might counter years of stalled action from across the board.


REFLECTION:

After reading Chelsea's and Isaak's blogs, I found that bias will definitely be an issue in writing the final project.  I am not doing a fantastic job of separating my own bias from my blog writing, but I suppose I have to get it all out of my system now so I can avoid it in the final project later.  Chelsea and Isaak are doing a great job keeping it simple and writing about just the culture and author's bias.  While writing these blogs, I keep writing large blocks of text and realizing I am answering multiple questions at once under one bullet point.  I did find that I would have a bias on both of the topics I read about on the two blogs.  Chelsea's also relates to environmental science, so my opinions on her issue are almost identical to those I will express about my topic.  Isaak is writing about obesity and it's classification as a disease.  I agree with the idea that apathy is a problem when addressing obesity but I disagreed with the public reactions to diseases and syndromes.  If I were to write on this topic, my bias would likely lead to more rambling about this side of the issue rather than the classification of obesity.