Thursday, October 23, 2008

Are all people created equal?

I believe that not all people are created equally, but everyone has the opportunity to become equal. Some people are born into families that do not have as much money as everyone else. Each one of those families here in America have the opportunities to become just as good or even better than everyone else. A lot of people have become successes from a poorer background. People who have a lot of money also have the ability to become successful, and sometimes unsuccessful. It’s a little bit easier for them to be successful since they have the money to go to college and they probably have a better education. These people can also become unsuccessful if they don’t try. Each group of people has the opportunity to fail or do well.
People used to not be equal because of their skin color but ever since the Emancipation Proclamation, every type of person has an equal opportunity in the world. There is still racism in the world today, but more and more people are looking beyond skin color and treating everyone equally.
Here in America, everyone is under the Declaration of Independence. Every person follows the same one giving everybody equal rights. Not one group of people or one person has different rights, giving everybody the same freedoms and laws. All of these rights were created so that every person would have equal opportunity. Under the Declaration of Independence, everyone is equal. People in other countries, however, follow different ways of living. Different groups of people have different freedoms, which makes everybody unequal. People in certain social classes have certain freedoms, which can prevent them from moving from one social class to another. People in higher social classes also stay in the class they were born into, giving them an unfair advantage. We learned about this in DeTocqueville, where people in different social classes in other countries each had their own advantages that allowed each group to become successful, or unsuccessful. The lower groups were not as restless but they didn’t have the opportunities the higher groups did.
Every person has certain talents that make him or her special and sometimes better than other people. Some people can act better, some can do math better, which gives each of them their own advantage. In a way, we’re created equal since each person has their own talent, but some people may disagree on that because some talents are more useful or more wanted than others.

Monday, October 20, 2008

super size me

I though that Supersize Me was a great movie that teaches people about not eating fast food, but that doesn’t change my opinion about people eating there at all. I think that it’s stupid that people wanted to sue this company. People have so many options of where to eat and they could’ve chosen a healthier eating establishment. Ever since the film, McDonalds has changed some of the things that they do and I think it was for the better. Now, McDonalds has their nutrition on the back of every paper they put on top of the trays. McDonalds has also added their snack wraps which aren’t that bad for you. They have also gotten rid of the large yogurt and the supersize option. It’s not like the company is forcing people to go there so why would it be their fault. When you’re at the food store, you have the option between the veggies and fruits but you also have the option to buy donuts; should we sue the donut companies for making donuts available to the world? There’s even a story of a man who lost 86 pounds and lowered his cholesterol on a McDonalds diet. He only ate their snack wraps, salads, apple dippers, and hamburgers for 6 months and lost 86 pounds. This shows that if you eat the right thing there, you can be healthy. A lot of user reviews that I found on IMDB disagreed with the film saying that it was unfair since people don’t eat McDonalds everyday, and it’s true. The girls that were overweight were wrong to sue McDonalds because they always had the option of avoiding it, and also, the parents shouldn’t have taken them there so much, especially knowing the harm it can cause. As a child, I hardly ever went to McDonalds, I wanted to all the time, but my parents would hardly take me. I always said to myself that I’d just eat there everyday when I got older, but as I’m growing up, I don’t find McDonalds the first thing on my list of things to eat. I think that if Spurlock were to have eaten the better things on the menu, he would see no change in the way he feels or looks. I also found some reviews that said that this movie was more to entertain and that the movie Fast Food Nation was better at showing the effects of fast food. I agree with them in thinking that this movie was more to entertain. I thought it was a good movie, but it didn’t change my feelings towards my one true love McDonalds. There is even a parody of the film called Super High Me, where a comedian smokes weed for 60 days to see the effects it has on his health. Overall I thought it was a great movie, but it didn’t change my feelings at all towards McDonalds.



Creative Commons License
the stairs by george is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at flickr.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://flickr.com/photos/ggiacobbe93/3178460593/.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Why American Are Restless Blog

3.) Is having a lot of material goods a help or hindrance to happiness? Why are some people able to be happy with little, while others with more are miserable?

I feel that having a lot of material good can be good but can also be a hindrance. Obviously having things make you feel good, but it seems that people always want more. When my sister was younger, she wanted to get a cell phone (just like every other teenage girl). She finally got that phone and after 3 or 4 months she wanted a newer, better one. It always seems like people want the newer better thing and that there is no satisfying the need and want for next best thing. Sometimes it feels like material goods are good though. For some people, it’s a necessity having a lot of things. These people have a lot of money and can afford them and for some people, having a lot of things is all that they need to be happy. Some people on the other hand have a lot of things and can’t afford them. These people may be happy now, but when it comes time for them to pay and they can’t afford it, they will realize that what they did really didn’t make them happy. I saw a MTV True Life episode on people that loved buying things but couldn’t afford them. While I was watching the show I noticed that the people were happy that they had all of this stuff, but realized that having all of this stuff made their lives and the people around them lives a lot harder.

It seems like people who start out with little are happier with little. It seems like these people are closer to their families and friends, which make them happy and not be as obsessed with items. In pretty much all of the winter holiday films, the people that don’t have much get what they want and they’re all happy that they got the stuff they wanted, but they realize in the end that it’s the people around then that’s making them happy, not the material goods they got. The characters only wanted little and now they realize that they could be happy even if they didn’t have that stuff. People that have less than others that are around people that have more material goods appear to be the people that are most upset by not having a lot of material goods. These people are more upset probably because they are compared to their peers a lot and when they’re compared to their peers about how much stuff they have, they fall shorter and feel like they need to have more.