What Are The Positive Characteristics Of American Culture

According to “The Action of Smoking and Health,” every six seconds someone loses their life as a result of a tobacco related disease. It’s hard to realize how damaging cigarette smoking’s effect can be until you experience it first hand. It is almost certain that every one knows someone who is currently a smoker or was a smoker at some point in their life. For years smoking was the seen as the “cool” thing to do, it was how to “fit in.” There was no real emphasis placed on the dangers of this particular habit, and as a result, it became a world wide trend. In the past, technology and medicine were not nearly advanced enough to be able to determine just how harmful tobacco usage is. However, as we have made medical and

Most, if not all, people know that smoking is harmful to health. However, many people continue to practice the bad health behavior. Dr. Shelley Taylor, author of Health Psychology, states that smoking increases the risk for respiratory diseases including emphysema and also causes about 1 in 5 deaths per year, mainly due to lung cancer. This was the case for my grandfather, Isamu “Sam” Hanano. He began smoking at the age of 25. My mother remembers that he would smoke up to 3 packs of cigarettes in one day but quit cold turkey when he found out that he would be a grandfather. At that time, he was 59 years old which meant he smoked for 34 years before he quit. Even though it was great that he was able to quit without relapsing, the amount that

The other day I was sitting on my balcony, enjoying a cup of green tea, and taking in the ocean air when my neighbour stepped out onto his balcony and ruined my zen with his chain smoking. One cigarette isn’t completely finished and he’s lighting up a new one. This one time I witnessed him smoking a cigarette while eating a sandwich. Before I became a neurofeedback therapy specialist, I could never understand why some of my family and friends couldn’t just stop smoking, knowing the many health risks that come with it, like cancer (anywhere in your body), coronary disease, stroke, blood vessel damage and so on. According to the CDC, Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States. This is nearly one in five

One of my first memories in the United States was taking a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) class. I was in sixth grade and a top student, as talking about drugs and alcohol and the way they affect us was fascinating to me. This is why, the following year, I volunteered to become a peer educator in Teens Against Tobacco Use (T.A.T.U). For a couple of years, I gave presentations to young students which included facts, demonstrations, and games, to spread the knowledge that tobacco is harmful and that staying away from smoking prolongs life expectancy and increases the quality of life. It should come as no surprise, then, that I consider myself a big proponent of staying tobacco-free and encouraging others to quit smoking as a great way to promote health. I remember watching my mom and sister as they took part in their nightly ritual of smoking a few cigarettes to unwind. “Did you know that a main component of cigarettes is used as rocket fuel?” I would ask them, as I opened the window and they stared back at me blankly. “We know, we know” was the answer every time. I knew that convincing them to quit was no easy task, but I was committed. Day after day, I proudly stated a new fact about the evils of smoking. Finally one day, they quit. At first, they attributed it to the cost. Since we had just immigrated to the United States, the cost of cigarettes was simply not something they could afford. I didn’t believe it. I proudly

in order to sustain a healthier life style. This essay seeks to illustrate the impact of smoking on a

Growing up, I can remember my mother’s ongoing disappointment and frustration with my grandmother’s smoking addiction. She continuously begged her mother to quit smoking, but unfortunately, her words never had much of an impact other than my grandmother trying not to smoke around her or moving outside the house to smoke. With my grandmother aging, her smoking has not decreased and with other compounding health issues, my mom is not just frustrated but also extremely saddened by the state of my

Americans have always held a close connection and fascination with the American Founding Fathers who se the foundation for American values. Their work is idealized for being the beginning of what is considered “American”. These founding principles of American culture, ideology, and society have become glorified in modern American culture. A rise in political scandal and a shift in cultural values that is affection legislation has called into question whether America is still following her founding principles. The fault of this question stems from the value each citizen places in American ideals and the manipulation of how American history is preserved.

Being an American means having the chance to voice your opinion. This can be either good or bad for multiple reasons. A few positive reasons are that you may have a view that no one has considered or you may have new ideas for laws and/or acts. A few negatives to everyone has a say is that mainly elite upper class white males or people with massive amounts of funding are elected to positions of power. In addition to the political system we have in place we have a great economic system. In America we are free to buy and sell almost anything we would like to. The one stipulation is that you cannot sell controlled substances and things of that nature. We are also able to hold a vast assortment of jobs instead of having a few that the government allows us to choose from. Finally, America has a great social system. In America you are allowed to practice your religion without being arrested or killed. We also have a great assortment of different cultures and ethnic groups. America isn’t called a “melting pot” for nothing.

Many drugs are used, misused, and abused in American society today. Some of these carry stigma in the general population, forcing users into an underground drug subculture. Others are accepted and almost promoted under certain circumstances. Tobacco is one of those drugs. Tobacco will be discussed in the context of cigarette smoking. This is not to undermine the existence or danger of other forms of tobacco, but instead to have an exhaustive discussion of cigarette smoking and its societal impact. Cigarettes are a means of inhaling tobacco, where it enters the lungs and is absorbed through the blood vessels, traveling to the heart, from which it is finally pumped to the brain (Hogan, Gabrielsen, Luna, and Grothaus 2003:76). Cigarettes are detrimental to society because they not only affect the user who chooses to smoke; they impact people around them through second-hand and residual smoke. The damage done by cigarettes is not impossible to address. Successful prevention measures are already in place, but this paper intends to suggest other more direct measures, especially related to statutory regulations.

Entrepreneurship is America’s defining cultural characteristic. Consider the college dropouts that sat in a garage trying to develop inexpensive and better ways for Americans to connect, communicate and move data - think Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and of course, Apple Computer. Or consider another college dropout that conceived an idea to connect millions of people through his interpersonal software application called Facebook – think Mark Zuckerberg.

The health of the population is currently one of the most debated topics in society. The United States is among one of the most unhealthy countries in the world. When people of other countries are asked to describe Americans, they usually respond with a statement about the health status of the citizens, or about how Americans are supposedly “obsessed” with freedom. Many individuals believe that their physical health and their personal freedoms have relation. There are many ways that this can be both proven or rejected. Smoking in public facilities is where much debated stems from; some people believe that it is best to take away the right to smoke in public, whereas that it is a personal freedom that should be honored.

An individual’s Americanness often greatly contributes to their experience in America. How American someone is or chooses to be largely boils down to outer appearances and how much he or she chooses to conform to American norms, as our society cannot help but fall back onto the preconceived notions associated with our differences instead of our similarities. Often, many hold these differences under great scrutiny while ignoring that most, if not all Americans and those who choose to reside in our land, want the same things that our country has to offer. However, different Americans have different takes on what it means to be American. Some say it solely depends on how closely one’s views line up with the constitution; some (implicitly)

Equal opportunity, achievement and success, material comfort, activity and work, practicality and efficiency, progress, science, democracy and free enterprise, freedom, and racism and group superiority are all key values of American culture. Of these American values I try to embrace all but one. I have grown up in a racist home, yet I try to be as open-minded as possible. Now that I am old enough to understand the extent of my parents’ beliefs, I have found that I disagree with their opinion on certain situations. In the past six or seven years I have been reorienting myself so that I do not become such people as my parents, and not to say they are horrible people, I only strive to have better personality and value traits than what they

If I couldn't see the blending of cultures like we have here in America, our lives would be boring and we wouldn't have the quality of life as we have today. Although we think we are Americans, our deepest ancestors might have come from completely different countries. One example of a way I think our lives would be more boring is in food. Would you like to eat hamburgers and hot dogs and fries every single day? I don't think so. Here in America we have so many different kinds of food. We have Italian restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Chinese restaurants and I even saw a free sample at Costco once which was Afghan food! Besides, eating a variety of different kinds of food is much healthier than eating only hamburgers, hot dogs and fries. We have to appreciate that we live in a country like America where so many cultures blend together to form the country we have today named America. However I do not think that all I need only happens in society, it can happen in facial expressions too.

Two words that best represent the characteristics of America in my own opinion are courage and respect. Courage almost represents the values during the age of reason. Then respect represents the values of today’s society. Respect was one of the many values they had back in the day. For me it seems that respect was very important during that time period. They needed respect in the everyday values.