Violence

People are often more attracted to the gruesome than to positive experiences. There's a reason why media coverage focusing on negative events gets more coverage, and why true crime shows are so popular. When viewing violent or dangerous events, people often feel compelled to keep looking rather than turn away. Dr. John Mayer, a clinical psychologist, places the reason as part of the survival instinct: "This acts as a preventive mechanism to give us information on the dangers to avoid and to flee from." Naturally, when something potentially disastrous occurs right in front of us, the first response is to find out more so that we can avoid the danger. It's a sense of morbid curiosity, where information about danger is balanced with the unpleasantness of viewing it. It's a balance of learning more about danger to avoid death and dealing with the graphicness of such danger. Even when we aren't confronted with danger directly, seeing what happens when facing destruction gives people a chance to confront their fears in a safe environment. This is why people are so drawn to violence even when it's occurring through the distance of a screen. With this distance, there would still be somewhat of a survival mechanism, but less so considering people can quickly recognize that they are not actually in danger. Rather, the distance gives people a chance to confront the reality of death without directly experiencing it. It gives you a chance to think about what you would do in that situation, whether you would be able to survive or not. It is also still a function of learning about danger, a way to glean more knowledge about how to avoid it yourself.

More Links:

Dr. John Mayer interview: https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/science-behind-why-we-can-t-look-away-disasters-ncna804966

Psychology Today - Interest in Crime: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/decoding-madness/202109/why-are-we-so-interested-in-crime-stories

Vertical Farming

    Vertical farming has the potential to become a key component of agriculture, considering its benefits in making fresh produce more accessible.

    One of the largest advantages that vertical farms provide is reliable food production. Vertical farming is done in facilities that are completely climate-controlled. All factors of the farming process are controlled and can be adjusted accordingly, making crop yields far greater and more reliable than in rural farming. Source B adds that "crops produced by traditional farming are limited by geographic region and seasonal changes." Because of this, certain areas don't have access to fresh produce. Even regions that do have nearby farming aren't guaranteed such access, as Source A points out that "swaths of the country wither in the heat and drought of climate change." As such, weather changes completely out of control can drastically affect access to food for thousands of people, making traditional farming unreliable in comparison to newer farming techniques. Sources A and B would agree that vertical farming provides a far greater advantage in that food can be provided year-round without worry of environmental changes potentially damaging crops. Fewer regions would have to worry about access to fresh produce since vertical farming provides more consistent production of food and can be implemented in a greater variety of regions, both urban and rural. Thus, integrating vertical farming into agriculture provides an advantage to everyone, increasing access to something that should be a universal right: food. 

    While vertical farming provides greater advantages in the long run, it should be acknowledged that starting such farms can be energy-consuming. Currently, according to source D, "container farms...use...about 8 times the electricity used by an average San Francisco apartment." It's true that energy consumption could be a major environmental problem associated with vertical farming, but this agricultural technique is greener in other aspects as well. Source E touts the environmental advantages of vertical farming in its use of "recycled water and nutrients" and its potential to "completely eliminate the need for pesticides and herbicides." Recycling water and reducing environmental contamination from pesticides will have long-term impacts that will prove vertical farming's green reputation as valid. Even with its large energy consumption, Source D acknowledges that there is potential to "offset the enormous sums of electricity they use by powering them with renewable energy - especially solar panels." Source D tries to spin this advancement as negative, arguing that these farms are "trying to use the sun to replace the sun," but that's largely an attempt to scare the audience away from vertical farming. Even if vertical farming doesn't use natural sunlight, it doesn't mean that the system is ineffective. If anything, using solar panels to power vertical farms will provide an even bigger advantage by reducing one of the biggest flaws of vertical farming. Now, vertical farms can provide the advantages of reliable food without contributing to environmental damage. 

Words

In everyday life, doublespeak seems to be an expectation. When you meet strangers, your interactions are characterized by this, with words exchanged of "How are you doing?" and "The weather is nice," which don't really mean anything. Instead, they convey a message about the kind of person you are. They paint you as someone who is a good enough person to be kind to strangers, as someone that anyone can have a decent interaction with. This always seems to be the case with such language in relationships where the two people are either unfamiliar with each other or take on a professional connotation. When you form actual connections, such as those with friends and family, such expectations drop. This is expected, since close connections come with the expectation that you can say more of what you really mean without worrying about social niceties. After all, friends and family have stuck by you through hardship and are not as easily dismissed by not being greeted with proper politeness and small talk. In fact, I feel like the way you say what you don't mean switches, actually. In society, you say what you don't mean to be kinder. You're trying to portray yourself as more considerate than you normally would be. With people you've already formed close connections with, you don't have to build that reputation. You're not trying to put on an image of kindness and compassion because they already know about the natural versions of those qualities that you carry. In fact, I noticed that among my friendships and family, we say the opposite of what we mean in the form of insults and teasing. We say that we dislike each other and make fun of each other, but it's all words we don't mean. In a sense, it's that the idea of actually meaning such words is so ridiculous that saying them already creates a joke. Obviously, anyone can take this too far, where it becomes legitimate bullying rather than a form of friendship. However, I still found it interesting how different the words I don't mean are in these different contexts.  

Name

The only thing I really hate about my name is the confusion it causes for me. I'm already a quieter person, and I don't like having to ask questions that seem dumb to others. So, every time someone is calling out names, I have to try really hard to hear mine. I don't want to miss it because someone pronounced it wrong, but I also don't want to accidentally respond to someone else's name. The most common mispronunciation of my name is Nishika, which is the real name of a few other people. Half the time I hear someone say Nishika, I respond to it. Sometimes it ends up being right, and sometimes it ends up being the actual Nishika. I know it's not technically their fault, especially when it's someone's first time saying my name. But I hate having to be confused about who they mean when they say that name. I don't mind having similar names at all, and I wouldn't change my name. Having similar names is honestly what might have kick-started my friendship with Nishika, and I'm grateful for that at least. I just hate being confused and then having to ask people a question that they deem completely obvious. If not Nishika, the next default name is Nishita, which I don't really get because the "th" sound exists in America. However, there's usually little mistake about who this name is meant for, so it's moreso a bit annoying than confusing. 

Am I really one to talk though? I've mispronounced my fair share of names, even my own.

Style

The children of the Naricema also partake in a daily ritual, a rite of passage to adulthood. Every day, they awaken at the break of dawn and perform their bathing rituals. Then, they are sent off to the temple, a place referred to as loohcs, where they are forced to wander its halls while carrying large loads on their backs. It’s a miracle there aren’t major spine development issues considering the frequency of this ritual. They continue this for hours of their day, with brief periods of respite where they sit in rigid formation. During these periods,  they are led by trainers, who are entrusted by the society to lead the children through this ritual every day, essentially meant to train them for the rituals they will have to perform as adult members of the society. Despite this purpose, it does seem that this ritual doesn’t achieve its touted purpose. As I’ve been able to speak with the children, they all express a distaste for this ritual. They loathe spending such a large portion of their day entrapped in the building of the loohcs. Even the adult members I’ve discussed this with have conveyed their unhappiness going through the ritual as children, though they see no reason to change the ritual to make it less grating. It seems that going through it themselves has only indoctrinated them into believing this ritual is essential to society and cannot be changed in any way. Yet another odd characteristic of the Naricema makes itself clear.

About Gender

    Reading “About Men” by Gretel Ehrlich this week got me thinking about other professions that are painted as masculine or feminine but do not nearly fit this stereotype. While doing some investigating, I came across nursing as one such profession. In general, healthcare is female-dominated, with nearly 80% of the healthcare workforce being comprised of women, according to the CDC. This is in line with the image attributed to healthcare, which depicts its workers as people who display an empathetic, nurturing, caring nature. This connotation carries over to job postings for healthcare workers. Job listings for female-dominated jobs tend to use feminine language, with common key words of “sympathetic, care, fosters, empathy and families.” These job descriptions appeal to female candidates, who are more likely to view themselves with these traits than male candidates. Yet, this is not the only reality of healthcare jobs. With the nurturing aspects also comes many stereotypically masculine aspects: intense physical labor in dealing with patients, high-stress endurance, rapid decision-making and critical thinking skills under pressure, and emotional compartmentalization skills. If a nurse is now soothingly talking to a patient, they have just dealt with an unexpected outburst in which they had to quickly restrain and calm the patient. If they are acting playful with a pediatric patient, they are trying to distract the kid from the medical emergency that had just happened a few minutes before.

    Just as with female-dominated jobs, male-dominated jobs often contain masculine descriptions in their job postings, with key words like “manage, forces, exceptional, proven and superior.” While many male-dominated jobs don’t necessarily fit with the feminine descriptions listed earlier, these masculine descriptions are often a large part of female-dominated jobs as well. Claire Cain Miller, a journalist who frequently considers gender in her works, points out that this could be a reason why “women have historically entered male-dominated professions…more than men have entered female-dominated ones.” This also makes me consider the fact that in society, even as there is more flexibility in definitions of gender in recent times, the masculine option always seems to be preferred. As women have the option to enter traditionally male fields and dress more stereotypically masculine, men have not experienced nearly as substantial of a shift into femininity. A successful women can now be a woman in a male- or female-dominated, but men can only be successful in masculine fields. This stems from the idea that masculinity remains superior. Women reaching into a socially acceptable form of masculinity is seen as improvement, but men going into femininity is stepping down. Obviously, it is not nearly as simple and binary as this, but I hope this leaves you with the desire to consider more about how patriarchal ideas are embedded into modern society.

 

Gender Roles and Time

When thinking about gender roles in society, the common debate is whether they are inherent in biology or socially constructed. This is the common debate for many topics in anthropology, such as the popular debate of whether biology or the culture around a person leads them to become the way they are. People question how biology and physical traits connect to societal constructs such as race. While gender is based on a biological concept, all the roles and associations with gender have formed based on social constructs. Across cultures and time periods, gender roles have varied in how they have been expressed. The most well-known examples have been the transition of gender roles across time periods. For example, with gender associations of color, pink and blue used to have different connotations. Pink was seen as the stronger color for boys and blue as a dainty color for girls. Similar examples arise in clothing and beauty choices across time periods, with high heels, wigs, and makeup all being seen as appropriate for men at various periods throughout history. Even our interpretations of gender roles in hunter-gatherer times are tainted by the expectations we hold today. It used to be a widely held belief that men did most of the hunter and women did most of the gathering and farming chores. While this is usually justified by biological differences in men and women, this can’t justify the belief that women were mostly excluded from hunting. Looking at recent reports, archaeologists have been reevaluating this belief, especially after finding female remains buried with a wide variety of hunting tools. This discovery indicates that women have been apart of big-game huntings. Overall, recent discoveries indicate just how much weight the social construct of gender holds.