ainthavinit

To set the tone and open up this blog I wanted to begin with a piece that would allow us to take this journey of self discovery and self awareness together. We shall share this journey together by actively participating in the blog. That being said, I felt the simplest way to do that while simultaneously redefining common sense among us is to create new meaning to ideologies. Seeing that in a world so vastly diversified as our own we find so many different cultures and languages there tends to be a lot of confusion about the true meaning of words. Things can easily get lost in translation. Now if the same word carries different meaning from one culture to the next, one language to the next, there can be some confusion that leads to negative responses. Consider the scenario that an American moved to the UK. If that person invited some people they met at their new job over for drinks in an effort to get to know one another, telling everyone they lived on the first floor could result in the guests knocking on the wrong door. In the US the first floor refers to the ground level. In the UK the first floor refers to the first floor above ground level. We also probably all think of something different when we hear the word yellow. Personally I think about a banana every time. That is how I cross reference yellow to provide a meaning of that word for myself. We all do that with every word and phrase we consider. In addition to all of that we use media propaganda, stereotypes and things of this nature that carry different meanings to all of us, stemming from our own culture,  to define how we perceive things. Typically, this is how we set the tone about the people we come into contact with prior to having any interactions with them. In a way this predetermined context helps shape and mold how we respond and interact with that individual. As that interaction grows we form a new version of that individual as we learn more about their social location.

The function of this post will be to serve as the pathway to who we all are in this world from a societal perspective. If we understand how society views each of us it allows us to also understand how we view each other. It does two things for each of us. It creates a common ground among us human beings as it allows us to connect with each other and to visualize each other under the same microscope. That means we can see that we are the same when looked at on a micro level. Doing this allows us to climb out the box society pushes us into and to see each other as the human beings we are. When the horizons are spread it adversely leads us to the second side of the coin which is how we made the first conclusion. We get on the same page. We must first always redefine things among the group or individuals we’re trying to communicate with. If not, we get lost in translation and the true meaning being expressed can become contaminated. By now you are probably wondering when I will get to the topic. Who are we really? Well, society says we are the combination of our achieved and our ascribed status otherwise labeled our social location.

When we look at the meaning of social location lets first examine our ascribed status. Ascribed status is something that we are born into. Things we have no control over. For instance I was born a caucasian male in 1982. In other worlds my race, my sex and my age are all things I cannot control. I just have to accept that is who I am. Achieved status on the other hand are positions we have earned. Achieved status refer to the titles that we carry. I am a general contractor, a student, an instructor and to take it a step deeper I am a licensed driver. These are all positions I have earned in society. When you add the two together you get ones social location. I am a caucasian general contractor who is 33 years old. Since we all have opinions about what each ascribed status means we create stereotypes about them. We do the same with the achieved status. These stereotypes come from the meanings we attach to words from our cultural development and our own personal experience. That is how we can end up not liking someone since they are a muslim woman lawyer. If you have a negative association of lawyers, women and muslims you will start an interaction with a woman lawyer who is muslimn off in a negative mind set. Since our intentions correlate with the outcome of our lives we want to work away from forming those negative stereotypes. The only way to do that is to get out, learn about other cultures through peoples social locations and create new conclusions instead of using negative preconceived thoughts that typically hold no validity to reality.

Now that we have a cumulative understanding of social location we can say there is a bit of common sense there between us. Since the bulk of this blog will be based on the things we are experiencing in society there was no better way to pave the first  few steps of this path we shall all walk together than to redefine social location. This shall allow us to understand who each other is and why we think so differently. We have also drawn  an understanding that common sense only exists when we take the time to establish common ground among one another since we all come from different social locations. We should also understand our perceptions and opinions will always be different due to our social locations. It is essential to consider that we all see different parts of the same things always. That way we can accept others for having their own opinion. In the end, none of us would be able to deepen our own thinking if the thinking of others was absent. It is our social location that is the biggest contributor to our thoughts. It is others thoughts that either give us the idea to begin thinking about something or which expands the thinking we do about something. We must never lock our selves into the house at the address of our social location. That egocentric way of thinking only prevents growth. Much like the plants and other animals we share this world with we only live while we grow, then we die. Lets all grow together.