” The fact is that we all live our lives in groups- the family, work groups, social and religious and political groups.” Being in groups is something that is second nature to us just because of the way society is brought together. The American Dream is to have a better life. Having a better life consists of having equality, we want to all be equal. In the older days, equality was not present and it is something that got so much better in this modern day, but still not to the fullest yet. This dream of wanting equality is nothing easy, but it is controversial. Many people are still racist, some people might remissness the past, whatever the case is, it is a problem that is still taking place everywhere. Part of equality is learning how to accept it. Although a certain person might hate the other, they might be in the same group, so the best thing they could do is figure out what’s wrong, try to solve it, and connect with a group mind to come to a further conclusion on whatever the case or scenario might be.

A group mind is more than just a mind. A group mind is an idea, shared from many ideas. For instance a team, when they play, it is not 1 vs 5, it is 5 vs 5. If four of the teammates on one team are on the same page and that other one person is not, that is going to mess things up if the other 5 players on the other team are on the same page. A team would unconsciously come up with decisions in the present moment of the game, using their group mind and everything they have learned together. A group mind is more than just coming to an agreement to something other than sports or games. Imagine having a group project worth 75 percent of your grade and you have two other partners. A group mind will get the best grade on that if the members of the group take advantage of having the opportunity to be in a group. Most people don’t use the opportunity to be in a group to their advantage. Most of the time, one person might be doing all the work, whiles the others are agreeing what they have to say even if they are not exactly sure if they are right. A group mind is not just agreeing to what the others have to say, but debating why that is the right answer and trying to figure out if their are any other ideas that might come to a better answer.

Western society is a group orientated society and it second nature for most of us just the way everything is brought together. Not too many people are content with being alone and those people are sometimes seen as odd, but are not the ones to blame. The way we were brought in this society was together, which is why everyone is so used to it. If we were alone more, we wouldn’t have problems being alone because we would be used to it. We are always trying to be a part of a certain group and when that group dissolves, our initial reaction is to find another one. Rather than us making our own decisions with our own mind, society usually makes our decisions for us and that’s just how things are. When we are in a group, our group members are like our professors because when opinions are shared confidently, we believe them even if we are not exactly sure if it is right. Just because the group feels some way, some members will just agree with whatever and not even try to share the ideas that they have. This might occur because it might be hard to share in front of a group, some people might be afraid they have the wrong answer, but this is something we need to get better and develop to take full advantage of a “Group Mind.”

The American Dream is to have equality and we should be proud of the American Dream. Everyone wants a chance to have a voice and handle any situation they want to handle it. If they feel a certain way, they should speak up and use the advantages we have in this present day compared to the old days when the American Dream seemed further away than anything. This is not the case that is going on right now. People say things like they are going to speak their mind, or they are their own person, they have their own rights, but for most people, that is just talk. We are so afraid and worried about what others have to say where we forget about or morals and the way we want to live our life, but still for some reason have trouble with it. Majority opinions in a group determine our thoughts sometimes just because of the pressure of a group which was presented in Asch. Sometimes the pressure might be so strong for someone, that they wont even share what they say, even if deep down they are dying to let something out.

Some people get very excited when they hear about being in a group and the first thing that comes to some people’s mind is that they have nothing to do now. When you have a task that needed to be done by yourself you are more likely not to slack and contribute more because of the obedience to authority that is second nature to us. It might be hard to stand out in a group which is why a person might not want to contribute but we have been in groups our whole life, so it something where we need to learn how to adapt to and get comfortable with it. When people disagree with each other in a group, instead of changing it with discussing it or challenging the opinion, and coming to a group mind, they just let it be. A group mind is more than letting things come to you because there are more people around, but it is to come all together, with shared opinions and ideas to come to a better and stronger group conclusion.

Asch presented the studies of the Milgram’s experiments and saw that they provided great evidence of the degree to which individuals can surrender their on judgement to others, even when those others are wrong. Group pressure plays a big role with groups and that is because sometimes you might have less knowledge than a group member and things can be tough. They did experiments to see what would happen with group pressures and 36.8 percent of the selections were misleading because of the pressure around. In groups others might think they are right which can cause confusion and conflict with coming to a group decision.

I strongly agree that group pressure can be tough sometimes and getting on the same page as others, if you’re not really on that page. You might not want to be wrong and hold in some ideas you believe in. I feel like even though it is hard, we have to get used to because we should be by now. Everything we do in life is with groups so we should be able to handle everyone’s opinions and the group pressure normally as we do on an everyday basis without even thinking about it.

Lessing shows the value of groups. We all live our live in groups, our family, work groups, whatever the case is. The article stated that people tend to not want to be by themselves sometimes. People are so used to being around others because that is just a norm for us and that is how life works. People get so used to being around each other where they always need to be around the person. Obedience to groups happens because people understand the difference between opinions and groups tend to lean towards someone else’s argument or opinion depending on what the scenario might be. He also mentions how sometimes being in a group can be hard which is oblivious of course.

I agree strongly with the need for groups. Most things in this world can be done in a group and that is truly a blessing. The best thing about this world is how much resources we have around us, if that is our friends, family, work groups and much more. The more brains, the more opinions and ideas that can develop into a bigger and better idea. He said that most people can’t stand being alone and that truly hits the heart. Being alone for me this year living on my own was tough and I can’t wait to move back home with my family, which is my group. When I am in my group, I feel so much smarter and I feel like I will always be fine because I will always have someone there for me if I need it, and vice versa if they need it.

Like the last article, authority was presented as in and of itself. Brooks presented the Follower Problem, not as much the leader issues. Although America might have a leadership problem, because everyone has a different opinion, Brooks mentions how he doesn’t know if there are leadership problems but he does know there are following problems. He mentions many great monuments that people wave off like it’s nothing. They say that many Americans don’t trust their institutions that are blessed around them. He says that the problem develops because people act so cynical and like to pretend that they are better than everything around them. He finished it off with to have good leaders, you have to have good followers.

I believe that yes there are people that think they are better than everything around them but I also feel like sometimes, a person might have so much going on in their life. We all live in the same world so we know how the problems are around us and we know that sometimes things can get pretty hard. For instance, me, sometimes I don’t pay any attention to these great things that I could take advantage of but there are times I have so much on my mind that I don’t get creative with my habits and exploring and experiencing new things that are around me. I never feel to cool and better than all these beautiful monuments left for us but to me it’s just not as important as the things I got going on in my life right now with family, school, sports, work and much more.

With the Milgram’s experiment, they concluded that regular, normal, ordinary people tend to follow whatever is given to follow by an authority figure and sometimes that is just second nature. The way we were raised, was to obey and follow the rules from our parents and family. They say that obedience to authority is ingrained in us and sometimes we can’t do anything about it. They used the Milgram experiment to show how no matter what the case is, if people have to follow an order, they will do it.

In Sociology class last year in Highschool we had this topic and I was very into it. I agree as well as disagree with some of the things he has to say. I agree with the fact that of course we follow authority from the ones around us but to a certain extent, we have boundaries where some of us won’t cross a certain line like that. People will put others in extreme danger and they will follow it just because of the obedience to authority that they had ingrained in them. It was crazy that the guy would get shocked everytime he made a mistake and me personally, if I was ordered to do that, I would not be able to no matter what the situation would be.

The Power of Situations presented the idea that another will conclude that “It seems that ordinary attributions of character traits to people are often deeply misguided, and it may even be the case that there is no such thing as character, no ordinary character traits of the sort people think there are, none of the usual moral virtues and vices.” They also present the idea that ending character traits do not determine our behavior, rther, our behavior is determined by situation variables, such as experiments such as the Good Samaritan.

The final idea the author left for me was “Do I think character might be fiction, or over rated.?” After reading this, I do believe character might be a little over rated, but that just depends on that specific character. Although this may be true in some cases, there might be cases where the character of someone is more developed to have better reactions to experiments like this or anything else in general. I do also agree how people get away from the morals and vices they should have in acts like this which strengthens the point towards the negativity to character.

This article started off by talking about how human history was lead by an act of disobedience according to the myths by the Greek and Hebrews. The first topic of this article is about Adam and Eve. It jumps into the point that they were both human, and not human at the same time. Everything had changed when they didn’t follow an order. They both were then set free which was a huge eye opener for them. They felt like strangers of the world when this happened. This was the beginning of history and “Original sin” which was produced by Adam and Eve. For the prophets, they look at history as the place where man becomes human, which was a huge deal at this time. As a result of disobedience, there is a new paradise formed by man himself, which he could create by himself because he was obligated to the leave the old paradise.

With this article, I learned a lot of new things. I’ve heard a lot about Adam and Eve and Original Sin from being in Catholic school for four years, but there is a lot of new knowledge I finally grabbed. It confused me how they were both human and not human at the same time which made me wonder what the true definition of human is and if we still have man where they can both human and not in this modern day. As time continued to progress, man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience which I predicted would happen based on the context of the article. This article ended with, “.. to criticize, and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.” I had to read this over and over again, before I could agree with it, and once I finally understood what that sentence meant, I agreed with it because of the features man posses that are different from human, and not human.

This article jumped right into the new ID card. After reading the first paragraph, I saw how they are trying to make change and not just let all these people without identification stay like that. This article mentions the fact that Illinois has no state requirement when registering to vote. Anyone that is trying to vote can simply lie. There is a box that asks you to check yes or no if you’re a citizen. Even if a person is not a citizen, they can easily check yes, that they are. Dietrich mentions that what is going to result from this is people getting deported. Because it will oblivious that they are not citizens. They figured out about 100,000 active registrants who are non citizens, which is crazy how much they are lying and beating the system.

It is hard to agree or disagree for me because I always tend to try look at things in both perspectives. I can look at in the perspective as a citizen and think about my country and if I want noncitizens to have a say in whatever the case may be. I also look at in a non citizen perspective because I have so many family members that are non citizens and I truly feel that they should have the same rights as us no matter what. If I had to choose between both my perspectives, I would say yes, we should have new ID cards because it is only fair, and we should make a stand for this to happen.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton