Changing the World?

How can we make sense of changing the world? Do we start with reading “365 ways that YOU can change the world”? Do we start with separating our trash? Buying clothes that weren’t made in a sweatshop? These are the kinds of things that come to mind when we think about ‘changing the world’ yet we never really do anything too extreme. Today is Earth Day and it’s great that we have a day to celebrate the Earth and take to remember that we need to take care of it, but what about “Bolivian Cocaine Abuse Awareness Day?” Now that’s a day that I don’t think will be celebrated any time soon. Our nation takes time to appreciate the big picture, but in order to get to the next page that is clearer and better we need to start looking at the smaller details that make our world such a confusing and unbalanced place to live. I’m not saying that everyone on this planet doesn’t take time to appreciate each other or just writes off anything that is going on in the world, because there are some people that dedicate their lives to justice and winning equality for all. But, I am saying that most of us know what’s going on yet don’t do anything about it. I am guilty of that crime. When reading the article about the people who are getting pushed out of their culture just for trying to get by and pay for food and medicine, it made me realize how much I take for granted in my life. It’s hard to change the world when you’re only a sophomore at a private college in north east Iowa, but I would like to think that one day I could do something to help others.

We’ve always been asked growing up “how can you make a difference” and been told it’s easy as 1, 2, 3 to help someone in need and to help our culture as a whole. When talking about in class how a whole culture can be pushed out and the world culture be put in its place, it was interesting to see how often that happens and how blind our culture makes us to it. Sure we have the news, but when people watch it they usually just say “oh that’s awful” and then move on to making dinner in the kitchen. IT’s hard to be connected to people that are so far away and it makes it even more difficult when we can’t even comprehend their situation and what they’re going through.


To change the world is a difficult task to manage. We ask this at a beauty pageant to see if the woman who is competing is balanced in beauty, brains and body but their answers aren’t quite what we’re looking for. How can we make sense of changing the world? I don’t by any means have the definite answer to that question, but when thinking about the readings for this week, our nation and even our whole entire globe needs to take into consideration the culture that we’re pushing out while we’re trying to push something completely different in. Without culture, people lose who they are and are forced to become something they’re not. Who would want that? People try to survive and they try to thrive by being who they are and doing what they need to do in order to feed their families. With us pushing everything out of the way, it makes it difficult for the existing culture to survive and extinguishes any chance of hope.

Rituals

For this week’s readings, it’s been interesting to see how far some people will go in order to secure a “good day” or a “winning game”. The idea that people will go so far as to do the same thing at every game, makes you think that they live in a constant “Groundhog’s Day” where everything is the same and if there’s one slip up than the whole day will go down the drain. I know I’ve been faulted into doing the same thing because our culture works well with comfortable and will do anything the same again in order to reach that peak of ‘comfortableness’ if you will. As one article described, when people see how some of their reactions create a good outcome, they will continue to do that action until the outcome doesn’t turn out the way they wanted. I know as a performer, I have some rituals that I do in order to make me feel comfortable before I go out in front of an audience. I make sure not to wash my hands too close to performance time just because I feel like it washes off something that could help my performance. It sounds a little crazy now that I’m writing it out, but to me, it helps me get in the mind set of knowing that I have a performance to do and I need to do it well. From looking at things this week, I’ve realized that there are tons of rituals that go on everyday and most of them aren’t even accounted for. Sure Baseball is a great example of an American televised sport that has rituals left and right, but there are many other examples where rituals are used. This is where the idea of the rabbit’s foot and in the general, ‘lucky charm’ come into effect.

As Bradd Shore wrote in his article, “Rituals, on the other hand, bring the shared framework of forms and rules forward into consciousness… Often, however, a ritual is assumed to be more important than everyday behavior”, and that is definitely so. Rituals are more for the individual than they are for a group of people. Rituals are different for each person and everyone does theirs differently than everyone else. We now even have products called “Everyday Rituals” by Aveda that assure great hair every time you use them. Our culture is obsessed with rituals and the end products that result when they go well. The one thing I thought was funny though when reading about how baseball players will change their rituals when the last one doesn’t go so well was the fact that if one their ritual doesn’t work one time they will find a new one all of a sudden. In our culture, if things don’t go our way, we first blame something else for our misfortune and then after everything else has been crossed out, we blame ourselves. Rituals are a way of putting off the process of blaming ourselves in the end. Sure they may help us win a game, or perform well, but in the end we have to see that we must work hard at our paths in order to make the destination a little more worthwhile.