House of Flavors

Response: Fifteen Years on the Bottom Rung

This Essay is focused on the personal stories of two immigrants to the United States, John Zannikos and Juan Peralta. These tow men have many similarities. They both migrated to the United States with very little money and virtually no knowledge of the English language. They came to the same part of New York City and took several odd jobs in hopes of advancing their stock and creating more opportunities for themselves and their children then were available back home. Despite the similarities, these immigrants have had very different experiences. Zannikos was a Greek emigrant who came to the U.S. in the early 1950’s. Peralta came from an impoverished Mexican village in the early 1990’s. Depalma, the journalist who authored this essay uses the fates of Zannikos and Peralta to explain his point that economic and trends and changing social views of immigrants have made life for immigrants more difficult.

DePalma uses interesting personal stories and his writing style makes this a dynamic and readable essay. His point comes off clear by fallowing the personal stories. Within fifteen years of arriving here in America, Zannikos was well on his way to becoming a middle class citizen while after fifteen years here, Peralta still has a long way to go. He does have a job that pays about $30,000 a year which approaches the barriers of the lower middle class. Yet Peralta and his family are still illegal residents. They are hindered by the disadvantages that comes with that and by the fact that Peraltas feels obligated to send money to his family back home.

While the author makes good use of personal stories to make his point, one is left wondering how much of an effect is made by the differences in spending habits on the part of Zannikos and Peralta. DePalma mentions that Peraltas goes out drinking every now and then. He also explainshow their illegal status also contributes to the expenses they incur. Peralta’s landlord takes advantage of his tennants’ illegal status by stuffing them all in a crampedapartment complex with one bathroom and one kitchen. Despite the poor accomodations, the landlord charges a dispraportionate rent. Moreover, because the Peraltas rarely have access to their kitchen, they are reduced to eating out for most meals, which becomes expensive over time.

Response: Finding a Coach in the Land of OZ

Barbra Ehrenreich is a journalist who specializes in examining the job market. She has written books and articles on low-wage jobs and the job market. She often goes undercover to find research for her reports. For this essay, Ehrenreich poses as a white-collar worker with managerial experience. She employs the services of two job coaches to make her point that  using such services is often a waste of time as well as irrelevant to the nuts and bolts of finding an appropriate job.

The two job coaches Ehrenreich examines both use unusual methods that they believe will help their clients find a job that is right for them. The first coach meets Ehrenreich at a Starbucks and then again at his own home. This man instructs Ehrenreich to complete a bewildering personality test that asksher to rate her self on nouns such as “maneging.” He then uses large dolls from The Wizard of Oz story to illustrate the lacking in people that would otherwise allow them to get their perfect job. Ehrenreich found this job coach to be abstruse in his methods and irrelevant in their outcomes.

The second job coach that Ehrenreich employed is an Internet based personality profile tester. Ehrenreich found this coach to be slightly more useful than the first job coach but she was, nonetheless, also misguided in thinking that a personality test would help her clients find a real job. The implied conclusion of Ehrenreich’s finding is that it is difficult to find good job coaches. People who are searching for a new job test and coach themselves if they are to find a job that is right for them.

I personally feel that Ehrenreich’s conclusions may be correct in some cases but on the whole, I think the job-search industry is more effective than she makes it out to be. The coaches she hired did indeed use abstruse and irrelevant methods but I think she was searching out coaches who would do so to emphasizeher point. I believe most of the coaches in the job-search are not so hopelessly misguided. I do agree with Ehrenreich’s conclusion that ultimately, finding the perfect job is up to the individual looking for the job. There is no infallible formula that will direct seekers to their ideal jobs. Personality profiles and the like may be useful in pointing out certain tendencies, but hey are not perfect. Finding the perfect job probably requires trial and error for most people. This may be a more difficult way of finding a job but it would ultimately prove more accurate than anything a coach could provide.

Response: Watch Me!

Webcamming has become a favorite past time of modern Americans. The trend in American culture is the more real it is the better. Knight has a positivereaction to webcamming. He claims that webcamming allows anyone with a computer to become a celebrity. He even suggests that webcamming is a new art form because the creator controls the place and the means of production. He remarks that the majority of webcam users are young women. He implies that web-cams are the ultimate tool of the uber extrovert.

Web-cams are not something that merit an opinion out side that of the implied free will. If you like webcamming, you can do it. If you do not like it, that is okay, you don’t have to put yourself out there. I certainly don’t think that there should be any legal sanctions against webcamming. But this profound tool merits some analysis in determining its implications.

Repsonse: Women and the Rise of Runch Culture

In a short essay, Ariel Levy examines an increasing tendency of women to be morally loose by willfully exposing themselves to the world. She wonders weather this shows the progress made by the feminist movement or if it shows that women are still thought of as unequal to men.

In my opinion, the indecent exposure of women revives the mindset before the feminist movement all the way to the middle ages. In the mindset of medieval chroniclers, it was women that had the greatest impulse of sex, not men. Of course science, and logic explains to us that men have the greater sex drive based on their greater production of testosterone. Nevertheless,modern women have opened themselves to the questioning of their own sexual impulses. Perhaps the rampant over-exposure proves that women now-a-days have a desire for sex that matches men’s.

Levy does not answer why she thinks women have the tendency to expose themselves. She only makes it known that she disapproves of all the willing self-degradation. In my opinion, the fact that women are more willing to make themselves explicit is not evidence that women’s sex drives have indeed swelled to the size of mens’. Women are still less willing to actually have sex than men. But women no longer feel the need to keep their sexuality under lock and key. They can have as much fun with flirtation and sex exposure as men do. For the feminist movement was a backlash of the customs that emerged in the Victorian era. The philosophy of  women’s roles in terms of sexuality was that female sexuality was a private and shameful emotion that could only be expressed with one’s husband in private. Early in the Victorian, these rules applied to men as well. Respectable men were not supposed to talk about their sexuality and they were supposed to remain faithful to their wives on pain of ostracizing.

In the first half of the the twentieth century, men argued that Victorian social customs were unjustified by nature which showed that males were supposed to be open, even ostentatious about their sexuality. Men’s sexual chains were loosened but women’s chains remained. So by the 1960’s women recodnized that men and women were on different plains in terms of sexuality. They saw this as an injustice and sought to remove the sexual boundaries that kept women subordinate to men.  

So if women are exposing themselves today, it is a mark of the succsses of the feminist movement in terms of sexually liberating women. If feminists today are ranting that the loosening of women’s standards is deplorable, they must not have considered the implications of the ideas they so enthusiastically espoused in the 1960’s. By a cruel and stunning twist, the liberals of the 1960’s have become the greatest prunes of the twenty first century.

Response: “Unspeakable Conversations”

Harriet Johnson is a severely disabled lawyer from South Carolina. She was invited to speak at Princeton university on the rights of disabled infants. Opposing her was the formidable ethicist and animal rights activist Peter Singer. Singer believes that the parents of severely disabled children should be given the choice of euthanizing the child out of avoiding the pain and suffering the child will experience in life as well as the difficulty of dealing with a disabled child on the part of the parents. As an active member of a group called “I’m not Dead Yet,” Johnson was a self described token of Singer’s opposition. In the course of the essay, difficult points were raised and the odd relationship between Johnson and Singer was examined.

Being an atheist, Johnson did not argue the rights of the disabled on the grounds of the sanctity of human life. She argued that no one can assume that all disabled peoplelive hopless and misarable lives, which was a key point of Singer’s argument. Johnson demonstrated great personal courage by coming before Singer’s students at Princeton to state her position. During the course of the preparations, Johnson had to revel to Singer just how disabled she was.

Although her courage and integrity are admirable, her years of being disabled have clearly left their mark on Johnson’s personality. She is facetious and short-tempered when dealing with those who react to her appearance. She is atheist in more than a matter of fact temperment, she seems to be an immbittered atheist. She does not tolerate the pity of others and becomes fed up and angry with those who assume she lives a difficult and miserable life. But who can blame her? Anyone would become embittered after hearing the “compliments” paid to her day after day. Johnson, like many disabled people, despises the pity of others. But who could turn around and blame society either? We live in a society that has not been accustomed to interacting with the disabled. The disabled have only really entered into public life in the last fifty years. The bulk of able-bodiedpeople are simply ignorant of a way to give respect to disabled people without inadvertently offending them. But as the generations progress, younger people have been learning to interact with disabled people more frequently and in a way that both parties feel comfortable. If Singer’s ideas were actually fallowed, all of this progress would be lost. Even those who are not severely disabled enough to have evaded euthanasia would feel the sting of steryotypes and be consumatly avoided. The fact that most peolpe respond negetivly to Singer’s arguments has shown how far we have come as a society in a short amount of time.

Response: “People Like Us”

        In this persuasive essay, a social commentator David Brooks examines the lack of diversityin neighborhoods and workplaces across America. He states that while America as a whole is a very diverse nation, people of different religions, races, cultures and socio-economic positions generally don’t hang together. This allows neighborhoods across America top be give a very specific label. Brooks does an excellent job of describing the problem of diversity, but he doesn’t state his own opinion on the matter. He doesn’t explain why it is such a bad thing.

Response: “I Do:Not”

           In this short essay, the self described feminist Catherine Newman. Takes a hard-lined view at the long established institution of marriage. She argues that marriage is a tool used to deprive women of their freedoms and subject them to a society dominated by men. That it is not an ideal end to a commited relationship because it limits the romantic options of both partners. And finally because it is not fair that heterosexual couples are allowed to be married and homosexual couples are denied that right.

               In my view, marriage is a more shaky question that most of society would be willing to admit. But Newman’s arguments are shallow and contradictory. On the one hand, she staunchly denies the ceremonialaspects of a marriage as a symbol of the transfer of a woman from her father to her husband, as if she were a piece of property. But in her own relationship, she wanted to have a wedding ceremony on the seventh anniversary of their relationship complete with vows and rings. In another instance, she emphasizes the need for women to be given a choice in their romantic life, but she admits that she almost wishes her partner would force her to marry him.

         However dodgey and contraditry Newman’s arguments against marriage are, I agree with her that the institution of marriage needs a close examination after  of unbroken practice. In this blog, I will focus on the Christian institution of marriage because it is this faith’s doctrine of marriage that I am most framiliar with and if were ever to get married myself, it would be under the jurisdiction of marriage. I who would describe myself as a faithful Christian have my own questions (dare I say doubts) about the religious role of marriage. Lets start with the belief that marriage is a sacrament, where the love between a man and his wife is a worldly sign of God’s love for his children. I am not a believer in this doctrine. I think that the relationship between a man and wife doesn’t come close to resembling the love between God and his children. But what about the belif held by the majority of Christianity? The beliefthat the union between two partners is a sacred bond ordanied by God and kept through the fulfilment of oaths to eachother. (I move from describing the members of marriage as man and wife to partners because some christian denominations are comfortable with granting a sacred union to a homosexual couple. Denominations that accept marriage as a sacrament do not grant such unions.) I am willing to accept this belief, but how are Christians to interperate the fact that the prohets and Jesus himself never mentioned the Father’s wishes for the doctrine of union? Is this because marriage is a purely secular institution? Or is it because the Father had no problems with the way the Jews practiced their unions? I am not sure I believe in either of these interpretations. What I do believe is that the kind of relationship that will produce the greatest potential love in a couple is the kind of relationship God would be most pleased with. For God’s greatest commandments are to Love Him and to love one another. I belive both can be accomplished with a successful marriage. For God Will be loved and glorified with the knowledge that fellow Christians love eachother. What ever kind of relationship accomplishes this is acceptable to me. Wether it be a celebate marriage, a sexually impassioned one, a homosexual one or even Catherine Newman’s unorthodox situation.

Response: “All Consuming Patriotism”

         I would define patriotism as active, rather than passive obedience to one’s nation. Passive obedience describes outward obedience to the laws of the government, recodnition of its sovereignty and legitimacy as well as the admission that the government of one’s nation does more good than harm. I believe every citizen should have the will to be at least a passive subject of their government. If they are not, they really do not belong there. Citzens that become so dismayed with their governments that they no longer feel comfortable being passive subjects to it would be advised to give up their citizenship and move or, if they are passionate enough, could make necessary changes to the government’s decrees and administrators.

          Assuming the United States government still fallows the principles of John Locke and the social contract theory, such “rebellions” designed at changing the government would not even be illegal. For it says plainly in the founding document of this nation that,

           “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

       The troubling fact of the matter is that many Americans  no longer describe themselves as passive citizens of the United States. Many refuse to say the pledge of allegiance. Many only take heed of the laws if they feel they are in danger of getting caught disobeying it. Many believe that the world be a better place if the government were to be destroyed. If this is true, if the United States government has truly schismed intractably from will of the American people, than two things should happen. First the people should rise up collectively and see to it that the laws and or administrators of the government are altered. Second, the government should actually cooperate with its own demise. The army and police force should not fight against the common rebels but with them together with the leaders of the government who agree with the people. This united force should depose the leaders who subvert the will of the people.

             Now I want to take a step back. I don’t believe the relationship between the United States government has reached a crisis point. Most Americans are well pleased with the current constitutional situation and recodnize the benifit of the United States government even if they are not enchanted with the policies of the current administration. But never the less, we are currently in a situation where the government needs to watch its step or it will slip away from fulfilling the will of the people and indeed, evolving away from a democracy. If the government’s policies fall intractably away from the people’swill, it will lose the basis of its existance, its democratice nature and hence its own legitimacy. Than according to the rights of the people as the ultimate judge and sovereignpower in the United States, rebellion against the government will be necessary.

 

Response: “Two Cheers for Materialism”

           I agree with Twitchell that materialism is a twentieth century development, and probably the most vain and unwelcome of them all. I would define materialism as the desire to posses things for sake of mearly having a possession. Twitchell describes the proceess of materliasm this way, “most of the world  most of the time spends most of its energy  consuming more and more stuff.” The writer uses the repetition of the word more to greater than it was in the past and that it continues to grow today and probably will continue to grow in the near future.

                   The writer explains the process of how the individual looks at the materialist pool before himself or herself and therefore decides they must process more items to appear to be a prosperous member of society. Therefore they work harder, adding more goods and services into the pool and allowing themselves to purchase more goods or services. There heightened social standing convinces others that they must fallow the same path in order to catch up, keep up or get ahead of everybody else. In this way, we are building a society in which the raw amount of items one posses determines their social standing, not land or even money which use to decipher wealth.