I neither dislike nor like the American Way of Life. I enjoy and resist different aspects because for one, I was taken here to America to live since I was little so it was not a choice that I made. However, growing up here had bought me more opportunities and freedom that may not be given in China. I cannot really make sense of the American way of Life because even though I have one, it seems to combine with the others that are living in the United States. It is not really my own but that it affects others as well. To almost fully understand my American Way of Life as well as the general American Way of Life, I learned a lot of topics that help me decide how clearly American Way of Life has been and will be affected in the future.
When I started learning about the economy system and the government, I was really surprise in hearing the positive and negative aspects of capitalism and the constitution. I’ve been hearing the good things about the positive points of the two since I was growing up and have not been thinking what was bad and that the two are becoming bad. As for the government system, even though many people thought of it as a fair document where we have freedom of speech, freedom to fight for what we want, and the American Dream added to it, which is work hard and you get succeed. But how much freedom and opportunities do we have as Americans? Or for the immigrants that came here? Many of us thought, including I that we have a larger percentage in democracy than having the government decide for us but that is particularly false. Many of the rules and regulations have to go through the House of Representatives, the Senate and the President. The Constitution, the preamble states "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosterity, do ordain and established this constitution for the United States of America." In the preamble, "we the people of the United States" would indicate you, me and each of the people living in the United States. Then they list all the things that would make the United Sates better and to protect the people of the United States. "We the people of the United States" is the most important phrase in the preamble, and where the government derives its power from the people to create an "orderly, stable and just society" (taken from the textbook). However, "We the people" does not really include us because the people that is living now did not decide on the constitution but the people in who made it, which back then, there was racism, white supremacy and segregation happening. There are still racism going on such as the Latinos, Hispanics and the African Americans are being paid very low and since the immigrants that are coming here might not know English, they cannot work for jobs that require speaking fluent English but those jobs are the ones that pays well.
In October 28, I wrote how the capitalism (positive), “‘The virtue of free enterprise capitalism is that it sets one businessman against another and it’s a most effective device for control’ (Brian Doherty, "Quotations From Chairman Milton"). Having the market to be control is a good thing using capitalism because it will keep the capitalists away from having too much power or else the smaller businesses would go down or bankrupt. This quote is agreeing how if businesses if fighting/competing against other businesses than in the end there won't be just one business that have a lot of powers.” There was also this article, Capitalism Saves,which talks about how capitalism can help people live longer and healthier. But looking now, that does not seem true because the gap between the rich and poor are increasing, so there would be many people that are going to go homeless (also because that the economy is going down) and that a lot of the middle class and the poor class are learning less than what they should. The boss is the one that are making the profits but only giving a little percentage of that profit to the workers but the workers cannot ask for more (more than the minimum wage) a lot of the times for a raise because if they do, they can get fired and that the boss can get other people to work for him/her. The foundation of capitalism is money and theworkers/laborers. For there ismoney, there will be people competing to get as much as they can by using as many of the raw materials and resources they can buy and sell it to the consumers. And having the workers, or the laborers work to get the material and making it to a product is a second stage that the capitalists need because they would not make the items themselves, they would get some people to make it for them but paying them as little as possible. I thought that was an unfair thing to do but that is how capitalism works. Because of one or more person's decision in competing with the others (and won) in the capitalism world, the others get affected like how the rich people (a lot of people) that can change the lives of the social classes underneath. If you look at the Danish system, where a class of Danish people has come to our school to talk with us about their economic system, it seems a rather good choice. For example, if the people do not have money to support themselves, the government would give them an amount monthly (or so) so they can have the strength to go find a job but still keeping themselves alive. Even though they have to pay 60-65% of tax, they get their college intuition free, which I think is a very good thing. The Danish guests also says that after 18 years old, they get paid every month from the government, the money is proportionate to how much their parents made/work. For the American economic system, and the government, we do not get that benefit but we have to hurry to find jobs because we cannot always rely on our parents if they do not enough money or more to give a big amount of money for us to be supported on.
As we started talking about birth, at first I enjoy seeing babies out on the street, in the carriages with their mothers. But then when I started thinking how the babies came out and through the whole topic, I ended up siding with resisting seeing how the mothers have to give birth using interventions which may lead or cause the body to suffer more. During February, when we started learning about the American Way of Birth, I did not know much difference between a natural birth and a normal birth.Today's normal childbirth uses medical tools and interventions but causing less pain to the mother than natural childbirth. The natural childbirth involves more screaming but when the mother waiting for the baby to come out using his/her way makes it seem more natural (February 13, 2008).Interventions that are used for the normal births in a hospital brings the period of time for the baby to come out to become longer, where the mother has all her time, waiting with her child to come out but importantly, the mother is in control and do not need to take drugs/interventions (American Way of Birth Paper, March 12, 2008).That is because the interventions help slow down the pain of the mother, which also means to tell the child to come out slower and that can affect the baby's breathing because there is a limited amount of time the baby can breathe using the mother's baby. The posture and the position the mother need to take when having the labor and when the baby comes out affect how the two of them too. However, I am siding with the natural births. The mothers can ask for a midwife to help them with the process of getting natural birth, and that the mothers can ask for a midwife. But "many people does not know what midwives are really is. The “mid” in midwife stands for “with” so midwife means with wife, or with the mother. Midwives have been used since a long time because the medical technology instruments have not be created or advanced, yet. However, as the medical instruments started to take place in the hospital, the mothers feel that it is much safer in the hospital than with the midwives at home if there is an error/emergency that would happen. Then, the businesses of midwives started to disappear for a period and the one who bought it back is Ina May Gaskin. She is the founder and direct of the Farm Midwifery Center (http://www.inamay.com/archive/biography.php) where the mothers can go there to give the birth with midwives there." Many mother gives birth because they want a family but having a newborn baby through the process of interventions and having the doctors and nurses are controlling the mother and telling the mother what to do, what the doctors and nurses think are right such as being strapped with a heart monitor around the mother’s belly. InMaggie's blog, which I agree , "In the video with Ina May, she described normal birth as “finger rape”. In normal births, the doctors induce the birth and one way to do it is to use their finger and push the hole open. Ina May refers to the uterus as a sphincter and describes it as shy so when the women is uncomfortable, the “shy sphincter” closes during normal birth." I think this is rather tragic for the mother that they have to become some kind of puppet for the doctors and nurses to control over even though they are the ones that is having the baby and might be in danger if something happen because of the interventions and the controlling doctors and nurses. Which is why, I recommend the mothers to do more research, get their birth process to be organized, be prepare and in the end, choose natural births so as to bond with the child more. Rather than having normal birth, which isolation between the mother and baby can happen because the interventions are interfering them. This might affect my future because it is hard to decide in the moment right before the baby starts kicking in and I would want to be screaming for something to stop the pain and they would be giving me interventions. However, if I have a midwife near me, it would be not so bad since I am getting support at home, and my husband being there (since in the hospital, the father usually is outside).
If the mothers and children/babies health might be in danger, then what about the rest of the people in the United States that does not get health care and cannot support themselves. "I think America should have free healthcare for all, especially for the middle and poor class" because "for the rich class, they have the money", so "there is nothing much they can complain about their health care system" (Free Healthcare in U.S.? April 25, 2009). After watching the movie SiCKO by Michael Moore, I thought I was a very lucky person to get a health care and insurance company because the group of 9/11 victims in the movie were not able to get it. Michael Moore bought them all the way to Cuba to get themselves treated to become better. Cuba is different than America because “the Cuban system emphasizes early intervention. Clinic visits are free, and the focus is on preventing disease rather than treating it… ‘Because they don’t have up-to-date cars, they tend to have to exercise more by walking… And they may not have a surfeit of food, which keeps them from problems like obesity, but they’re not starving, either’ (said b Dr. Robert N. Butler)”. There is also “more than 45 million Americans lack basic health insurance” while the Cubans “have at least minimal free access to doctors” in the article. If the insurance company were not that greedy in getting everything, even a penny in charging people with the treatments or finding anything wrong in the health documents that the people have so the insurance company can decline the treatment, then many of the people that are living in the street, homeless shelter or waiting to starve will be gone. This connects to capitalism and the government because insurance companies are one of the top companies in the capitalism in United States that are getting a lot of profit. If they deny a treatment, they do not waste their money but the government is not really helping out those people. Say, if the people that needs the treatment but can't afford but can't speak English, how are they able to get the government to help them. Additionally, when the class was shown with a list of all the programs such as food stamps, I was surprised that there was so many help or the money we can get. However, it does not seem the majority of the people know about it. That saying, someone should tell everybody about those programs and set up a program that helps the people to translate their language into English or vice versa to help them get all the need they can get. I think I am part of that group of people even though I know English, the only programs I know was the food stamps and the WIC. If I am going to get those programs in the future (which I hope not but still have to take it in consideration) then I wonder how I would need to do that. Is it quite confusing living in the American Way of Life because we all need this and that and if something is missing, there's a hole where it needs to be fill with something else. And I think this is one of the things I dislike about the American Way of Life because it is confusing, which I don't like to be and it gets harder as I grow up.
However, one of the things that have been more clearer to me is about food because I just think about eating food, eat it if I like it, don't eat it if I don't like it but I do not usually check out where it came from and how it was processed. In the past, we did not have machines, but using our hands and sharp tools, we stay in the field, plucking the fresh plants out. Now, we have machines to do it for us, we are in a industrial era and as well as we controlling the machines when we kill the animals or plant the seeds or the other way too.The machines only produce efficiency, which leads to having the process of making our food to be fast, and profitable. The animals that were sacrifice for us to eat have and are still being treated horribly and abused by the machines and especially, us. As well as the plants that are constantly being spray by pesticides, and in return, the pesticides cause the workers to get illnesses (Food Paper).That is why, I come to the clearing understanding that if I ever have a backyard or a gardening place, I would grow the plants more naturally rather than growing the plants industrially and more chemically and to treat the animals more humane before killing them though I wonder if I am able to eat as much meat as I ate before. One thing I notice, also with myself is that we do not ask ourselves much of how did these food came to be like it was. In the “Omnivore’s Dilemma”, Michael Pollan, in the beginning and in chapter 7 talks about eating food from fast food industries and how we are all eating from the same plant, corn. In chapter 7, Pollan and his family bought McDonald but when Pollan asks his son how the chicken nuggets taste like, the son replied that it taste like chicken, "duh". This can imply that we do not know much of where our food comes from and what actual ingredients were made to use it and not from the looks of it. Actually, most of the food especially meat, the main ingredient in there beside the animal itself is corn because all the animals eat corn and the farmers feed them corn since corn is grown very fast. Now that I know that, I feel less guiltier or dumber in what is the rather "main ingredient" in what we eat. As for the animals, we and the machines/technologies that we had built had cause them a lot of suffering even though they might have no idea what is going on before they die. In the video, the "Meatrix", they show how the cows were in bad condition, smelly environment, becoming very skinny, and unhealthy-looking from lack of nutrient. It is not the humans that are milking the cows, but the machines. When they show in the farm that was disgusting and horrible was when the machines were feeding the baby cows with (cow?) blood.Well, beside the treatment of the animals, the workers working there are worse too.When the meat that was hanging on the air to be cut up was dripping brown/black liquid onto the meat the workers were cutting. Then because the boss wanted to have more profit than the safety of the workers, he switches the machines to become faster, leading the workers to work fast, causing them injuries such as cutting their hands. Now I would feel very uncertain when I look at the food that I ate, wondering what happen before it was cooked.
In the movie, "Our Daily Bread", they show clips after clips back and forth between how the animals are treated and then how the plants are treated. When they show the clips on the animals, especially the pigs, the chickens and chicks, it was quite depressing.The chickens were stuck in the big place without any sunlight and the place was quite dark. The place looked like a prison for the chickens and they were all unhealthy looking too, especially when they were in the rows/racks where there was a middle lane where the people walked through to check for dead chickens. As well as the chicks (I feel sorry for them since they were cute creatures) that they were thrown very fast by the machines and then a trip to here and there like the suitcases that are in the airport being transferred. Then they have to have shots, which look like it hurts, and if one of them is missing a body part, they get thrown away. Now that is unfair because they are missing a body part is because of the machines that were going fast and nonstop and the people were dumping them on the boxes. Even with the pigs, they filmed it close up, wth the pigs having their bodies being stamped with labels and then cutting them in halves and taking out the body parts for other food as well (which didn't look nice). If we have treated the animals better and giving them an actually good environment, and feeding them a lot more food than what the people are doing now? I think it would be better because if you think about it, we, the people want to eat healthy meat but if seeing that those unhealthy animals are turned into meat, I would not be able to eat it. If we want healthy meat, shouldn’t we treat the animals better so when they died, the animals might feel better (and think they had a good life) and then when we eat it, it tastes more healthy than meat that has so much chemicals in them to make them healthy-looking. I think we would feel better eating the meat because oh, we know they are being treated fine and good before they were sacrifice for us to eat.
This same treatment is made towards the plants that has been grown industrially. We've been planting ever since in the past but the soil is getting less healty and nourishing for the seedlings to grow because we've been growing on the same place over and over again, the pace of planting faster than what the mother nature can produce back. Then the farmers have to use fertilizers and more as time goes on to keep the plant from growing bad but growing more "healthier looking" than meaning healthier in the plant. They also have to spray pesticides to get rid of the insects. There was a scene of a field of beautiful yellow flowers, but then a helicopter flew towards the camera and then out it came was a flood of pesticides spraying on the flowers, which destroys the image of "nature". Additionally, the condition that the workers were working was harsh too. A huge net surrounds the field, which in the inside, the plants and the workers are stuck in a huge container, working day and maybe night. This makes me feel as if I was in a container too because I am eating the vegetables and fruits that came from a field surrounded by a net and also that the plants are being mechanically grown, not naturally grown.Besides that, there was a scenewhen there was huge white plastic sheets flung over the rows of plants and the spaying of water or pesticides while not all the workers have left yet. It sort of shows how the treatment towards the plants is like the treatment towards the workers. Knowing about how the plants, animals and the workers are treated, I feel sad for them because they are also a part of what I am, of what I eat and how the workers are involved in processing the food everybody buy and eat. Which brings me to another confusing point, since we are so busy working and getting money to support ourselves, do we even have enough time to produce our own natural food? Is the American way of Life supposed to be like this? Making us do our use to it cycle, our daily routines, over and over again until we aged?
If all these things continue to happened, would there be a collapse? I would think so since we are taking out so many of the resources without knowing how much we took out. In the article, "I, Pencil" by Leonard E. Read, he was narrating as a pencil and he said, "Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me". The reason I think being is that we only look at the final stage of the product and if that is good enough, sold for more than enough profit, we are all blinded to see how many steps, stages it took to produce one time and the amount of energy it needs to do that. Even a pencil takes a lot of stages (read the article to find out). And the energy that are needed to make all the possible objects that we have everywhere is oil. However, we have used half of the total oil since 1971 (Peak Oil), and now each year, we are getting/finding less and less oil but our world population is getting exponentially larger and larger. If we have known in the past, how the oil that we've been using up would affect the future, would we have changed like the Easter Islanders? The Easter Island population collapse because they were lacking the important resources, which are trees and fresh water because they used up the majority of the trees for their culture, competing to build the coolest, most popular stone statues that weight tons. Just like us, our culture is technology because we've been in an industrial era for a long time and surely because we have to build so many technologies, we need bits and pieces of raw material to build it. Everywhere we see are technologies, which will eventually lead to the collapse of the American way of Life because the resources on earth that we have found would not be enough to make the things we need in the future (Collapse Assignment 2), which means collapse. And of course, we need oil as an energy resource to build everything. "Oil-derived petrochemicals are found in the most mundane household and office items ... from condoms, clothes and cosmetics, to nappies, pantyhose and the much-maligned plastic bag" (An Australian Case Study). I feel that cutting off like 1/2 or 1/4 of the products that we are wearing on our clothing would not help much because all the things that we are using, wearing, are of combined cultures for America is diverse. Even if a group of people is trying to change what would happen, even if we announce on the t.v. news that we need to save oil, I don't think many people would listen because they believe there would be always something to be used/replaced. It is calculated that after a few more decades, most of the oil in the world would be used up and then what will happen? How chaotic would the world be? How would America be affected since it uses up 25% of the world oil (Crude Awakening)?
So in the end, I still feel that making sense of the American way of Life still needs a lot of attention to the outside world as well besides being in our own little world. I find it that everything that I learned and the things I will be learning in the future will connect to each other and how that would affect each other. As I stated before, I neither like nor dislike the American Way of Life because I am still finding more about it. I am asking questions to help myself build more of an open mind of both side (depends on what I think seems more appropriate and right) rather than stucking with what I know. I think it is hard deciding as well what one should do to make his/her American way of Life better because they are involve/affecting others way of life. I think we've been given this many years of living to involve thinking about the way of life that we wanted to live but because of what is changed, our values changed which is that, work, work, work, should we find time thinking about it? I think yes.
