1. Chapter 1 How can learning about other cultures and societies teach us more about ourselves?

What specific experiences have you had that reinforce this idea?

The textbook defined Culture Shock as one not interpreting and understanding the

symbols of another culture. I dont know if that is 100% accurate, unless symbols is being

used extremely loosely. I can remember my first time experiencing culture shock, it was on my

first missions trip. I had just turned 16, and had only been a Christian for a little over a year, and

I was in a bus full of other youths as we headed down to Matamoros Mexico. The border patrol

let our bus go without doing any search, so we moved pretty quickly through the border. About a

minute later, the bus came to a stoplight. As the stoplight was red, I saw these two boys, maybe

between the ages of 11-14, cross the road in a cart being pulled a single mule. The boys were

both dressed in torn clothing and you can tell they were impoverished. This was my first

experience of culture shock, as literally 10 minutes earlier, on Texas side of the border, we had

driven past large parking lots full of cars at Walmart, and long lines at McDonalds, and literally,

10 minutes away by bus, children are crossing streets on mules. It was my first real encounter

with poverty. Yes, in Mexico it is common for some families to own mules, and there are lot of

people who live in poverty, and that is normal for them, but I dont feel that my shock was

coming from me misunderstanding and interpreting symbols. Now living in China, there is lot of

culture shock and misunderstanding of symbols on a daily basis, I will grant that, but Ive lived

here for 3 years now, and just yesterday alone, I rode past the campus track where some

elementary school girls were standing outside with their mothers, talking, and when they saw

me ride by, they all looked up at me in terror, and as I rode past they all let out a few screams

and then laughed. Or when I went to go grab dinner an hour ago, I walked out of the teacher

flatts, only to be extensively stared at by two post graduate college boys who were walking

down the sidewalk. Ive lived here for 3 years, and everyday I still get bothered by this. So

again, I dont see how Im misunderstanding symbols, as I feel if I stared at chinese person for

five minutes, they too would feel uncomfortable.

 Anyway that is all to say that I have been to other countries and have had a lot of

opportunities travel to and experience other cultures. But that first summer, in Mexico when I

was 16, that one still sticks out at the most significant. A hurricane had hit them a few weeks

earlier and many of their houses got blown down or wrecked. They were too poor to repair

them, and the ministry I was with was going to rebuild and repair their houses for free. There is

lots of images impressed on my memory, but one that really stands out is when we had just got

done praying for a family, two significant things took place during that prayer, and I was still

pretty in awe as we were walking back to the house my team was building. Some children ran

out and started squirting us with squirt guns and laughing. After playing with them for about a

minute, one the children, a young girl, maybe 8, pointed at my eyes. I felt up, it was my

sunglasses. She must want to wear my sunglasses, I thought. So took them off and handed it to

her, and Ill never forget what she did next. She took her shirt and began wipe off water droplets

that had gotten on them from the boys water guns. Then she handed them back to me. She

didnt want to wear them. She didnt want to keep them. She wanted to serve me. I was filled

with tears of meekness, and looked up to see the house we were building, and thought, if this is

what it feels like to have your sunglasses cleaned off, imagine how that grandmother and her

grandchildren must feel that we are giving them a house. I was completely unable to reconcile

what that must feel like.

I was surrounded by poverty on all sides, but along that muddy grey road, that concrete

church without a roof and walls, and the tin and plywood houses, I got to see lots of examples of

servanthood, humility, and a giving hearts. Needless to say when I returned back to my own

culture, a week later, going back to the high fences weve built to hide our neighbors and a

culture that enjoys personal bubbles over a hurting world or families growing further and further

apart, I was forever changed in how I viewed my own culture and how I viewed the world.

2.Social problem: Baby boomers are aging and retiring in large numbers. This has put a strain
on many institutions and programs including social security and Medicare. Develop a policy to

fix the problem, and identify the manifest function. In addition, brainstorm what might be latent

functions and latent dysfunctions of the proposal.

Sophomore year I got to sit at a meeting table with the then current president of Sterling

college, it was chance for some students to ask the president about important questions they

had. One of the hose questions was why tuition rates are going up. The President explained

that that year was the last year that Baby Boomer Generation had sent children to college,

meaning that all future influx of college students in future years would be children born from

generations that were post Baby Boomer generation. In short, there would be less students

going to college, and therefore college rates would need to go up to pay for institutes. Which

meant, college rates would continue to go up. This is an example of institution strain. Now 6

years later I have no idea what Sterling tuition rate is, but I bet it has increased maybe by 4000

dollars since I entered Freshman year? As we can see in the election year with Berie Sanders

campagn, college students are fed up with high tuition rates of colleges, what is more, there is a

counter-cultural movement taking place that is about getting a high end career without earning a

college degree. Obviously going back to the Social Security crisis, we college grads are going to

need to earn money to pay off the social security payments of the senior citizen populace,

however, if students are in too much debt due to their college education, then I can foresee both

institutions collapsing in and on themselves.

Since the 20th century, it has been stressed and pushed, as our text showed on the

graph that showed differences between baby boomers in college versus millennials, that one of

the main reasons to go college is for a career. Its not going to take long, though, for careers to

bypass the requirement for college education. I need workers to make my products, I will hire

you to not go to college. Instead, you will sign a 10 year commitment contract to me and my

company. For 1 and half years or 2 years, I will give you onsight training and you will learn all

the technical skills required to work in my company. Essentially something like private
businesses becoming their own technical colleges, something along those lines. This is very

much possible, because it was the workforce that got into college institutions at the start the

20th century that created and sowed in that idea of needing a college education to get a good

job. That wasnt a message promoted by academia, that was a message promoted by the Ford

and the workforce. College has almost become synonymous for career, not academic learning.

So I feel that at the moment the only system they have is for the younger generations to

keep paying for Social Security of the elderly, but more and more problems are going to be

created, and foresee one of the difficulties that is going really put a lot of pressure on the

knotted water hose is college debt continuing to increase with higher tuition rates. Another thing

is that we cant trust our Government. They grabbed money out of the cookie jar, perhaps even

as far back as the 70s, and I dont think we can trust our government with our own money,

regardless what they say about our ability to save income. Many have critiqued that by

implementing social security it babyd Americans, and now so many of the younger generations

have problems with saving money. Im still paying for college, and Ive been going through

college now for about 8 years, as Ive been trying to work on my second degree in Education.

Im debt free, but I highly doubt by the time I graduate with my degree Ill barely having any

money left in my savings. What is more, the average salary of a teacher is in the early numbers

after 30 grand a year. And I dont really see how the Government will fix this problem within a

decade or so.

Some would propose raising the minimum wage, this would only work if the minimal

wage was raised for adults, in my opinion, and waiters and waitresses were paid the minimum

wage and they removed tips from restaurants. You cant trust kids with 12 bucks an hour, unless

they are helping to support their family, or they were investing that money into their college fund.

Otherwise I see no reason why a 15 year old should be given an extra few dollars so that he or

she could buy some extra yoyos, fruit rollups and Kool CDs. Because if minimum wage goes

up, then produce will go up and most likely gas will, as well. Which essentially means that
financial burdens and strains will be put on families who are not earning minimum wage, unless

every job payed above 12 dollars an hour. Last time I checked when I was applying for jobs, a

para-teacher made, in my district, between 9-11 dollars an hour. But I still think business would

raise prices even higher. At the moment I can only see how if wages went up, the government

would need to stop business from raising their prices, and on top of that, would need to require

more money to be taxed out of that 12 dollars an hour if we go to minimal wage. Again going

back to the idea that it would need to be money from business, themselves, that get us out of

the hole of social security, and not individuals. I dont think business would be allowed to be

forced to do this. But something like what I said earlier, colleges being cut out of the step when

it comes to earning a good job could take the place of that. People would be less in debt, and

then we could continue to pay for social security. If the jobs that require college education can

not be filled, due to students not being able to afford those degrees, then businesses will come

right in and reroute the process in which they are getting employees, as they need those jobs

filled.

Im not saying this is a good solution, Im just trying to point out how higher college

tuition and increased debt in younger generations is not helping solve the problem paying social

security. The image that comes to mind is Jango. Your top part of your Jango tower, social

security, cannot be solved if you continue to pull from blocks the lower end of your Jango tower,

taking more money out of the pocket of those who are in large college debt. Eventually, both will

collapse.

3,Chapter 2 Think of your own experience and describe a situation or a few situations where

you have engaged in ethnocentric thinking. How did your ethnocentrism affect how you

responded to the situation and the people involved?

An interesting example comes to mind when I went to St. Lucia during one summer as a

Sterling Missions trip. The whole country/Island comes from African decent, English is their first
language, however, their culture is Creole. I remember one day we a free day and the local

church took us to a resort to do snorkeling, because someone at the church worked there and if

we just went up to gate, unannounced, and said, hey, we know so and so, they would just let us

in free. That is sort of how everything worked in that city, which was also a major tourist city.

Inside the premise of the fantastic resort, I remember talking to a man, though I cant recall if he

was a member of the church or just a complete stranger who wanted to talk with me. For some

reason I brought up the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, maybe he

had asked me about American culture? Anyway, I was trying to use that as an example, when a

blank look came over the mans face. Now this man was somewhere in his 40s to 50s, but he

had had no idea what Abraham Lincoln, the US President, was known for, nor had he had any

idea that America was ever in a Civil War with itself. Now put this into perspective, we are at a

very nice resort, high end most likely, this man was educated, he wasnt an ignorant person,

and his skin color was black. I was completely caught off guard, and thought it was the most

ironic thing in the world: Im a white college student having to explain civil war and slavery who

Abraham Lincoln was to a man of African descent at an extremely beautiful tropical resort.

So in a way, I was the one who got affected by my own Ethnocentrism. From that

conversation, and the rest of the trip, I finally realized something that I had felt for two weeks but

couldnt put my finger on it. I finally realized that I was in a culture removed, completely, from

white and black racism. It finally dawned on me, the people of this country did not see me as a

white person, just an American or foreigner. And they had absolutely no bitterness or any type

of resentment against a certain skin color. It was like the twilight zone, because from that

moment and the next few days, it felt like was breathing pure air for the first time. I didnt realize

how ingrained judging others based off their skin color was still a problem in my culture, not until

I went to a culture that was basically devoid of any racism. And then when I returned back to my

own culture, in Iowa, I began to see more clearly how existent viewing other based off race still

was prevalent among whites and blacks. Therefore, I wasn't surprised in a least when in recent
times in our culture racism has gone back to the forefront of discussion and the reality that it

never went away.

4. Do you see any other emerging values for American culture other than those outlined in the

chapter? If not, can you think of an emerging value for one of the many subcultures present in

American society? What function do you think the emerging value holds?

I think one value that is very much being depleted is that of Tradition and traditional

culture. Were becoming a culture so individualistic that we are almost segregating any sense of

history or tradition from ourselves so that we can have our own individualistic self. Something

along the lines of, I am my own tradition, or I make up my own traditions. Similar to how the text

talked about the 6th key value: Progress. Living in a culture where tradition is a huge part of

daily living, has made me think a lot about what is Traditional American culture and values?

What is more, Im in a culture that really have that large of a grasp what is Western culture,

except for materialistic things and the idea of Freedom and Individuality. So it has made think a

lot about, as well, what is Western culture, and how does it differ from Asian/Eastern

culture? The conclusion that I have made is that traditional American culture is a culture

founded upon values presented from Bible. And that current American culture is a culture that is

one that is second to third hand-me-down generations raised off those values. For example, not

many Americans really hold to the Christian faith, even though they say are Christian, but they

may have been raised in a Christian home, or had Christian Grandparents. So even though they

are not practicing values from the Bible, they are in fact living and practicing values that are

second or third generation values based off Biblical ones. For example, lying, many Americans

would hold that lying is not a good thing (whereas in China lying is a compliment, to save face).

Respect for women. I dont want to get into a large large list, but I basically would contend for

evidence that would support this values not being supported and instilled outside of a Biblical
culture. Moving on would be emerging values and that would be having worldviews and values

that sort of reject traditional values. For example, views of gender and sexual orientation, just to

name a few examples.

I believe that a lot of our traditional values do come from a background of a culture that

held to values pulled from the Bible. I think if there are people who argue otherwise, they have

listened too much to modern cultures attempt to sort of rewrite our views of traditional culture.

For example, the idea the founding fathers and their faith and how that impacted them. So I

would say that I come from a subculture that is Christian and that I get my values from the Bible.

I would also say an emerging value that I can see within my subculture is the idea of wanting to

hold onto traditional values and for our current culture to not become ignorant of that traditional

culture and how many values originate from Biblical values. So that is an emerging value that I

see that i have, one that doesnt per say want to impose my values on others, but that modern

culture and society doesnt become ignorant of our traditional past and that this sort of stink-eye

that exists that says anything from the Bible or Christian is problematic when it comes to values

that modern culture wants to have. I would also say that I really dont want to see Traditional

culture go away and that we become a society that is so progressed that we become blind

from where we come from.

Here is an example, the Pilgrims believed in Freedom as a value and ideal, but they also

believed that the foundational value of Freedom is the Freedom of Religion. This is maintained

in our constation where the first amendment is about Freedom of Speech and Religion. The

Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers were firm about that, Freedom is important, but the

foundational freedom is between the individual and God. I live in a culture where the individual

does not have personal freedom, and one of the number one freedoms that Government of

China does interfere with is, religion. For the most part, everyone here is atheist. I just think it

would be very sad if American culture would forget the importance of Freedom of Religion and

to the point that that freedom would be oppressed that it could affect other freedoms. I think that
is why the Pilgrims thought it was so foundational, all other freedoms are built off of this one

freedom, and if you attack it, remove it, and not protect it, Im curious and worried what would

happen to other freedoms and rights.

Im trying to speak just very general and not trying to be too philosophical, but Im just

trying to state that living 3 years in a culture that is completely opposite of a culture who has

traditionally gotten its values from the Bible, really has gotten me to see just how much our

traditional values originate from the Bible, itself. And I dont to see a culture that is either very

ignorant of that, lethargic to it, or that is very antagonistic to it.