Society Beleifs

Even though he's from Indiana, I told my boyfriend that he definitely needed to hire a personal injury attorney in Illinois, since that's where the car accident actually happened. The laws and regulations vary from state to state, and Indiana driving laws wouldn't apply to him if the incident took place in another state. He agreed with me, so we asked around to some family and friends if they knew of any good attorneys who would look at our case for us. We were recommended by my cousin to this one attorney who worked in a huge law firm. The firm itself had many different lawyers, and every floor was dedicated to a specific type of law. All the lawyers on that particular floor practiced the same kind of law. He seemed like he'd be a good match; he came highly recommended and I personally was fascinated by the way this law firm was set up. It turns out that the set-up was not as amazing and great as I had initially thought. We found this out when we started to realize that the lawyer was really disorganized, and he seemed to be much more interested in other clients where more money was at stake. I suppose she'd treated our friend better because she had actually known our cousin back in college. I was still surprised that she didn't want to come off better to us, but in the end it didn't matter. We dropped her and decided to keep looking, and this time we would find a lawyer with a private practice.

When I was doing research on the possibility of my having lasik eye surgery, the only two things that were important to me were safety and cost. I really wasn’t concerned about recovery time, pain, or anything else like that. The number one most important thing to me was how safe having this kind of surgery was. It’s very off-putting for me, as I’m sure it is for many others. I mean, the idea of having someone zapping me in my eyes with a laser for any reason is scary. But if the risks of having lasik don’t convince me to put it off, the cost of lasik surely will. You’re talking thousands of dollars out of pocket, unless you have some kind of health insurance that covers it. Luckily, my insurance does cover the costs of this kind of procedure if I want to have it, so except for the co-pay I don’t really have to worry about that. Even if I did have to worry about that, it wouldn’t even come close to being my top concern. If there ever comes a time where I actually have the courage to sincerely consider having this done, I will have a huge amount of questions.

I am shopping for any outfit to wear this weekend when I go to my family’s big cookout.  I don’t want anything too fancy, because I know this is going to turn into a lot of fun and games.  Specifically, tag football.  This store that I go to sometimes has all sorts of items for sale.  It’s really just a discount department store, where you can find a lot of things for cheap.  I figure I can find a T-shirt that I’m sure I’ll end up using as a scrub cloth after I’m done at Grandma’s.  This store even has a section with signs and suggestions showing what off-label use for hair loss will do.  Then there is an area that has supposedly name brand knockoffs — I strange if you were not really paying attention to what you were getting.  They say imitation is the best form of flattery, but I bet the people who own the real logos on some of these items wouldn’t think so.  I have found some good buys here in the past, but they are really few and far between.  I guess I am just a bargain hunter and I like to see what I can find.

A debate wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in my household. But this debate topped them all. My wife was dead set on buying a Kolcraft baby organizer.  Don’t get me wrong.  I think a Kolcraft baby organizer is a fine product and should help a great deal once little Daniel is born. I honestly don’t know the difference between that and other organizers. I swear sometimes she belongs in a Looney bin. I do love her, but she is crazy sometimes. Everything has to be just so and in her way or else it’s a catastrophe.  It helps when we’re doing our taxes or something like or it’s really funny when she points out all the not so obvious little historical inaccuracies of movies.  I know that she is just nervous about having our first baby but seriously, is it necessary to overreact this much about a baby organizer?!  We are starting a whole new life together, welcoming in a whole new life to this world. The last thing we should be arguing about is the maker of the organizer that we might use for our baby. If she were normal we would be arguing about the name of a baby, or even the color of the room. Instead, we are arguing about Kolcraft baby organizers.

Last week my father and I decided to go to a new BBQ place that we had heard about for lunch.  I told him I would pick him up at his store and that we would head over there.  When I got to the store, he was in his office going over some brochures.  I asked him what they were for, and he told me that they were for business security systems, because they needed a new alarm system for the store.  I helped him go through some of them, so we could get out of there and head to lunch sooner.  I was hungry then, and when we got to the restaurant and smelled all the delicious smells, I was downright famished.  My dad decided that he was going to get some ribs, and I opted for a BBQ beef sandwich.  Both of our meals came with fries and coleslaw, and we opted to have a beer or two with our meals.  The service was good, and our food came out pretty quickly.  Let me tell you, that food they have there is absolutely to die for.  Both of our meals were delicious, we were practically licking our plates.     

Society and culture play a huge role in determining how social norms are formed and enforced.  Social norms are rules that act as an informal social guide to regulate behavior and are commonly based on and enforced through social consent.  Social norms are at the root of social order, helping to maintain that people will follow what is considered proper conduct within their society.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Kurt Lewin was a pioneer in the study of social norms and looked at experimental research involving leadership and work ethic between school-aged children.  Lewin advocated that children’s environments were most important for learning and proposed that both inherent inclinations and life experiences play crucial roles in defining each person.

Talcott Parsons championed for sociology’s expansion in the academic community and also wanted to integrate all the social sciences into one theoretical framework based on a single theory that the assumption that human action is voluntary, intentional, and symbolic.  Parsons believed that people conformed with social norms because they truly wanted to acquiesce to what society dictates.  

On the other hand, Francesca Cancian, a sociology professor and author of books such as What Are Norms?, concluded that people conformed to norms to validate identity and to exhibit to themselves and others what kind of person they are.

Studies going back from the late 1950s through the present show that children and adolescents today are paying much less attention to social conventions than they did years ago.  General politeness and making good impressions seem to be less important to today’s children compared to earlier generations.  Public Agenda, a non-profit research group, discovered in a 2002 survey that only an astonishing nine percent of adults believe that children they see in public are “respectful towards adults.”

Changes in demography, law, social policy and family structure as well as globalization and marginalization along with several other elements are responsible for dictating social norms and reshaping people’s behaviors today.  Technological innovations such as television, media, cell phones, computers and the internet have also brought about major change not only in the way society communicates but in the barrage of information that we are faced with and process on a daily basis. 

These changes effect how children adapt in the world as adults and can also change the norms that are accepted in society.  But social norms are constantly being challenged and as society changes so does its consideration for what is socially acceptable.  As George Orwell once said, "society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice."

But it is ultimately up to parents and schoolteachers to teach children the proper values needed not just to adhere to social norms but to question them as well.  Teaching children to be skeptical of what they see and experience is giving them an opportunity for a balanced view of life so that the children of the world will not just fit into society and culture but excel in it.

When my grandfather was diagnosed with diabetes, one of the first things the doctor had to help him with was the knowledge of understanding sugar levels.  It was important for him to be able to know that based on what blood sugar tests he was doing, and under what circumstances, his sugar levels were at.  For many diabetes patients, it is imperative that they test their blood sugar several times per day.  For many, this means checking their sugar levels before each meal, a couple hours after each meal, and before going to bed.  It was also important for my grandfather to change his lifestyle in many ways.  First off, he needed to stop eating the way that he did.  When he grew up nobody had to worry about what his or her diet consisted of.  There was no such thing as Low Fat, Non-Fat or even the Atkins diet.  Another big change that he had to make was the amount of physical activity he was getting.  All his life he had worked a desk job, and he hadn’t picked up any activities like walking or golf since retirement.  With diet and exercise changes in his life, he had a much better chance of fighting the good fight.