Chapter 12 question 2

I will address each of these premises seperately to make things clear for the post as well as myself. The rationalilty premise says that people are capable of discovering truth through logical analysis. I agree with this one for the most part. A person has to be smart enough to put together a logical thought process so this is only true if that person is relatively smart. This is a thought that put together the idea of having a trial by jury. The perfectability premise I do not agree with. I believe we are born pure and it is our surroundings and own actions that either leads us to sin or helps us live a good life. I do think that effort and control do play a part of this though. I believe our justice system is based on this premise. The mutability premise assumes that behavior is shaped by our environmental surroundings and that the way to improve humans is to imporve our physical and psychological circumstances. I believe this premise if environment includes culture and not just weather. This stems from the idea of a universal education. I think a universal education would be impossible if you have all cultures trying to implement thier history into it. If it only pertained to math I would agree with it.

Chapter 12 Question 1

After reading through the chapter I have to agree with anthropologist Ruth Benedict that we are "creatures of our culture". It makes a lot of sense that our habits, beliefs, and impossibilities are shaped by our culture. I feel that I am a creature of my culture because I know where I picked up my habits and beliefs and it was the environment I grew up in that helped develop my habits and beliefs. I am not sure if the anthropoligist thinks this is a bad thing because I feel in my case it has been positive for me to be a creature of my culture. I believe that twenty years ago it was a lot harder to break through the limits of our cultures but today it is quite simple. With the ability to google anything you want we are breaking through the limits of our cultures all of the time. We have the ability to access all types of information which has given us the ability to break through the limits of our culture quite easily. So in order to break the limits of our culture we need to educate ourselves. Whether it is through the google, books, youtube, or any other information hub it is very simple to not be bound by the limitations of our culture. Soon with the ease of getting information we are going to create a new universal culture that will have no limitations.

Chapter 5 Eye Behavior

Eye behavior is associated with the character traits of people. The reading says that people who make eye contact are viewed as more friendly and sincere. While the people who shift thier eyes are seen as defensive, cold, and submissive. I have a different take on what eye behavior means. I think that eyes can be the most commonly used nonverbal communicator. There are so many things that a person can tell you with thier eyes. You can tell if they are happy, sad, angry, hurt, and the list can go on. I remember I said something as a joke about a girlfriend of mine to try and be funny. I will never forget the look she gave me. She did not say anything and laughed it off, but I will never forget that look. It scared the crap out of me. I knew then that the eyes give the most insight into what a person is thinking. As far as eyes telling you about the character of a person I think they left out a few traits. A person that is looking around a lot could just be nervous or anxious.

Different Meanings of Nonverbal actions

I have not done any traveling outside of the country, but I have heard of an example of a non verbal action that has a different meaning. When my aunt was in Italy she was part of a tour group. In one city when she got off of the bus this guy went by her and grabbed her ass. My aunt was taken off guard by this. She did not get mad, but instead just brushed it off. Later that night during dinner she told her story. One of the tour guides explained to her that it was a compliment if a guy grabs her ass even if he doesnt know her. I think if she was in the states she would have thrown a fit, but since she was in Italy she let it go and found out the meaning behind it. As for regional differences in nonverbal communication I can think of an example when I was in Indianapolis. I was at breakfast with some friends and it was everyones first time in Indianapolis. We enjoyed our meal and were waiting for the check. We kept waiting and waiting. Then we finally asked for our check and the waitress gave it to us right then. Later I was told that restaurants dont give you the check until you ask for it. When I asked why they said that when a server leaves the check on the table it means it is time for you to go. Since they see that as rude they just wait for you to ask for the check. Here it is not considered rude when a server leaves the check on the table before you ask for it, it is just how things work.

Nonverbal Communication Question #1

There have been many instances in my life where nonverbal messages have been misinerpeted. I have two occasions where this has happened recently, one occasion involving me giving the nonverbal message and one of me misinterpeting the nonverbal message. When I was president of my fraternity one of the guys asked me if they could have a party on a Tuesday. I replied nonverbally by raising my eyebrows and shaking my head up and down sarcastically. Sure enough when Tuesday came around I got back from work to find that a party was going on. When I confronted the guy who was throwing the party he said that I told him it was cool to have a party. He had misunderstood my nonverbal sarcasm and thought I was fine with it. I felt responsible for the miscommunication and enjoyed the party! The second instance involves my boss and I. We had done some painting in our office and I was in charge of re-hanging all of the pictures. My boss told me that he wanted to move some around. When I went to discuss this with him he was on his cell phone. When I pointed to one of the pictures he made a nonverbal action with his hand brushing it away. So I took that to mean that he didnt want the picture in his office anymore. So I threw it in the dumpster. A few hours later my boss asked me where the picture was. I told him I threw it away, and he got pissed off. I told him what happened to make me throw it away and he told me that he meant for me to get out of his office. Needless to say I ended up in the dumpster to retrieve the painting. Misinterpreting nonverbal communication is something that is common and sometime has bad results.

Is it possible

I do think it is possible to percieve others without judging or catergorizing them. I just believe you have to be one very special person to pull it off. For instance when a person in front of Seven Eleven approaches me and is dressed in ragged clothing I automatically assume three things. The three things that I assume are that this person is homeless, a drunk/drug addict, and is going to ask me for money. I do not think that makes me a bad person just a person using my past experiences to predict what is going to happen. I do think that we can make better judgements about people more fair. I have started to try and do this in my everyday life. I am in a fraternity and every semester we try and recruit new members to join. We have events and then offer bids to join the fraternity to guys who show interest. Every semester the guys in my fraternity will start making judgements about the new guys based on only seeing them once or twice. I have been spending this semester to try and take the negative judgements some of the guys make into positive judgements. One guy was catergorized as being annoying and I flipped it around and started saying I like how much of an effort he is making to meet new people. I noticed that after I said that the judgements about him being annoying stopped. I do think that a few people making positive judgements about someone can change how others percieve them. If I have never met someone and everyone says she is a real mean person I automatically go into the meeting with a negative judgement about her. If I instead heard that she is a cool laid back person I am more likely to have a positive perception of this person. So in order to combat negative judgements we should all just make positive judgements.

Different Uses of Language

I do agree that men and women use language differently. I feel that we use language differently in a lot of aspects of life. The difference in use of language is very clear to me in a few aspects of my life. At work when a female co-worker asks me to do something it is more of a polite request compared to my male co-workers who are telling me what to do oppossed to simply asking me. The difference also is brought to my attention when using language to make plans. When I am making plans with a girl it takes a ten minute conversation to figure everything out as oppossed to making plans with my buddies can take a ten second phone call. For example my buddy called my yesterday and said, "Peanuts Noon we are drinking." That was the whole conversation, but I still know all of the details of the plan. I can not do that with my friends that are girls. I also notice a difference in the use of language by men and women when talking with my parents. When I am doing something wrong or acting a certain way my Mom will talk gently and suggest that I do something differently. If my Dad sees something I am doing and does not like it he will pull me aside and tell me that I am fucking up and to fix it before he does! These are just a few examples of how men and women use language differently.