Toilet Assumption

What causes people’s behaviors to change over time? Is it the society shifting as a whole or it is the little things that gradually affects humans? Each generation has its own special traits, and these traits are depending on the surrounding environment-immediate context. The immediate context is words or behaviors that people are using present day have their meanings, which connects to the surrounding environment. There is a time period that everyone believes that he or she is the best, which brings up the idea of self-centered. In An Army of One: Me, the author Jean Twenge, compares situations under the idea of ‘self-esteem” and the society is over-popularized the idea of “me”. This social problem causes the unbalanced understanding of normal tasks and over trended to individualism and self-centered. However, this social phenomenon does not appear suddenly; instead, it depends on people’s living conditions and the surrounding environment, in other words, which it the immediate context. In The Power of Context, the author Malcolm Gladwell, introduces people were living in a negative environment that full of crime and bad behaviors, which results people’s actions are also changing with the surrounding context. However, there are also little things that exist in the surrounding environment that influences human behaviors; as a result, people are gradually changing the environment into a positive way. During this process, people become more selfless and serve to the society.

One typical example in Davidson’s essay “Project Classroom Makeover” is the iPod experiment, and we can see how creative and brilliant the generation me can be under the stimulus of the “immediate context” in this experiment. Similarly, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the “immediate context” in his essay “The Power of Context”. He describes immediate context as people receive small signals from the environment and make response due to the small signals, which helps us to understand the high self-esteem’s behavior. By using the idea of “slow thinking” from Nelson, we can better understand why the generation me have some problems dealing with their high self-esteem, and then with the help of Gladwell’s “immediate context theory”, we can think about the role of small signals in the context that works on the generation me. Finally, Davidson’s iPod experiment inspires us to find a better way to raise self-esteem, and rethink whether high self-esteem is such a severe problem or

This can also help to raise awareness of individual’s differences as well as influencing practices and interactions with others.

In addition to revealing to people what the true "self" of others was, Jean Twenge explains in "An Army of One: Me" that the "self" is changing with generation after another specifically in the twentieth century. Twenge argues that over the second half of the twentieth century, American's have become more about individual celebration rather than the being worried about other. This new change in individualism had a direct correlation how the "self" is now viewed, "[f]or the Boomers, who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, self-focus was a new concept, individualism an uncharted territory... which is why many Boomers talk about the "self" using language full of abstraction,

Today’s population being a waste generation is difficult to derive from the definition of dumpster. In addition, the motivation to capitalize such a simple word as “dumpster” seems absurd. In other terms, this essay did not establish educated ethos like that of the first essay.

Anthropocene is a term used to describe earth’s history including when humans dominated a majority of natural processes globally. Anthropocence was a term used throughout the article to discuss the impact humankind had on the environment that caused many changes that had a negative impact over many years. Another term used was anthrones, the human footprint, which describes how much human kind has made lasting impassions on the earth. These terms have made me come to the realization anthropology operates at the crossroads of social and physical sciences, along with humanities to examine the diversity of humankind across many cultures and time.

In the short piece, “An Army of One: Me,” written by Jean Twenge, there is an issue that is not only evident in today’s society, but in one that started well before the contemporary times. We relate these matters to the generation of baby boomers and also currently labeled, Generation Me. Generation Me is often criticized in having little to no self-esteem. Because of the prior generations, the word self-esteem seems to be brought up quite often in this passage. There has been a strong focus on mental health of a child growing through school and seems to be affecting their outcome as well as ability to learn. We live in a world where there is a push for the better of people, more so the consiouness of idividuality. Twenge inserts a lyric by Whitney Houton stating, “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all time (756).” Twenge inserts this quote because of the issue brught up in the world today, the lack of Self esteem. What does it mean to have self and how does self-impact students today and beyond? To have self, it simply means how that person builds self-growth, an education and in real life realtionships. This certainly has a direct correlation and impact on how students experience in school and in real world living.

In my opinion, as individuals we are fractions that make up and contribute to the challenges and problems the world faces as a whole. Individual issues can affect the individual, family and friends, and communities, which can affect society in general. For example, a child that comes from a single parent home has a greater likelihood of being raised in poverty. A child raised in severe poverty has a greater chance of becoming involved in criminal activity. If a child gets involved in criminal activity, not only can the individual be negatively impacted, but the family and friends of the individual can be negatively impacted as well. As a result, the individual becomes part of the juvenile or adult criminal justice system (sometimes

Influence is powerful in determining one’s future. Actions behaviors and opinions are all connected to impact of others and the way they shape our views on the world as well as ourselves. Self-Image is dependent on the acceptance of others, thus always changing since one’s morals and ethics do not stay the same as time goes on. Influence of others play a role on how one tends to view themselves and people around them, by either being forced to conform to a country’s lifestyle, completing constant tasks to keep up with society’s demands, or being able to be content with oneself rather than being blinded of the onslaught of constant expectations.

The Anthropocene additionally enables us to rethink the connection amongst people and whatever is left of the normal world. Regardless of when it started, the idea of the Anthropocene is noteworthy. It features the size of our effect on Earth. By characterizing another epoch, we are announcing that the effect of our activities is worldwide and irreversible. It enables us to join various talks in regards to the condition of the planet, from environmental change to loss of biodiversity to natural degradation, by distinguishing the one thing they have in like manner; they have all been influenced by human impact.

There are numerous things in our daily lives that we take for granted without thinking about the effect on the big picture. Things that affect the planet in a negative way, but people don’t see the world outside of their life time even when there are signs like Global Warming. In “The Year without Toilet Paper”, going without toilet paper for a whole year was just one of the Beavans many renouncements in their effort to motivate others to save the earth. With their attempt to live “greenly” as possible, they changed their way of living through means such as: only

The advent of industrialized civilization has brought to us many remarkable feats that enhance our everyday lives. Such things as automobiles, airplanes, tractors, mainframe computers, and even relatively simple machines like lawnmowers have intertwined themselves into the everyday culture of modern day industrialized countries.. These products have provided us enormous benefits compared to the types of lives our ancestors used to live. In the eyes of some, the consequences of industrial activities that have evolved around the world will not pose any problems in the future, however as most have realized, this is not true. Contemporary production processes use fossil fuels such as

In addition, they too have been growing and learning in their own environment with different family members’ influences.  Each of our own influences, in turn, influences others.  From there, we again take in and learn what we can so we can make our own decisions on how to define our “selves”.  Later, society influences our thoughts on who we are as people and our relation to the world as a whole.  There is a constant norm that people try to assimilate to or diverge from.  Society presents its own ideas of who we should be as people, and it is then our own job to take that information and do what we will with it to make our own definition for ourselves of who we are.

Mearns and Thorne (1998) investigates the foundations of the person centred and states that focusing on past experiences is damaging for the present self-concept. This will have a domino effect as this self-concept will not let individuals reach their full potential and therefore, they will fail in becoming fully functioning persons. Furthermore, the need for positive self-regard, according to Rogers, developed in early childhood and directly influenced one’s self worth.

In our homes waste caused because we don’t pay attention; we are inattentive and ignorant. For some of us, it just isn’t important. (Jones, Dive!)