Societal Values ≠ Solving World Issues

By Kimberly Elkin

Societal Values ≠ Solving World Issues

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kimberly Elkin
• Release date: Feb 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311660299

Kimberly Elkin

Kimberly Elkin grew up in Illinois, received her Master's Degree in Zoology and is a Biologist with The Nature Conservancy in Oklahoma. She has lived and worked in Tennessee, Alaska and Oklahoma.

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Societal Values ≠ Solving World Issues

Copyright 2016, Kimberly Ann Elkin

Published by Kimberly Elkin @ Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

ISBN#9781311660299

Table of Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Value

Chapter 2 Competition

Chapter 3 Decision Making

Chapter 4 Internet

Chapter 5 Communication

Chapter 6 Conservation

Chapter 7 Image

Chapter 8 Women’s Image

Chapter 9 Acceptance

Chapter 10 Perception

Chapter 11 Technology

Chapter 12 Media

Chapter 13 Money

Chapter 14 Judgement

Chapter 15 Social Media

Chapter 16 Attention

Chapter 17 Worry

Chapter 18 The World of Women

Chapter 19 Inequalities

Chapter 20 Solutions

Conclusions

Literature Cited

About the Author

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all of those who have supported me during the creation of this book, especially my husband and son. I want to thank Kyle Terpstra for giving me proper terminology, spelling tips and invaluable advice. I want to thank my son for giving me ideas for topics in the book. I also want to thank my extended family for their enthusiasm about this project. I want to thank my parents for always encouraging me to pursue my dreams even when it took me a long way from home.

Introduction

What does society deem valuable in our everyday lives? Are we raising children who care less and less about what happens to the world around them so that these children stop caring or even know about world issues altogether? I struggle with this and what I view as issues that are not relevant to making progress toward solving the critical problems that we as a society face every day. I try to avoid what I call drama. I define drama as making a big deal over something unnecessarily. Drama doesn’t advance world issues, and it certainly does not pique my interest. We all know people who gossip and talk about others behind their backs. I don’t understand why people feel the need to gossip. I have quickly learned that this places me in the minority and therefore leads to my having fewer friendships because I don’t engage in drama that only harms society. For instance, have you ever noticed someone or even your friend look you up and down to check your clothes, your hair, and your makeup or lack thereof as you walk by or while engaging you in conversation? I don’t dress up often because my job doesn’t require it to accomplish the work I need to do. My grandmother always said it wouldn’t hurt me to put some makeup on every so often and always made comments when I did get dressed up.

I have always considered myself different than most people based on my thought processes and ability to not give into societal drama and demands. I have never conformed to the norm of what women should choose as a career. I decided to be a biologist, which breaks all the norms of society and what women have been told to do. People always used to tell me I should be a nurse like my mother. I thought this was because being a nurse is what women are supposed to do. Those comments just made me mad and want to take a male-dominated career path to prove those people wrong about what I should choose as a future career. We are always trying to prove ourselves to others as if this is the only way to prove ourselves to society. If we could just strive to satisfy ourselves and not worry about proving what we can do to others, we would accomplish more and tackle world issues more profoundly because we are doing so to help the world around us.

I started to make observations of the world around me at a young age, and as I have grown older, I realize that societal values are not helping solve the world problems that exist today. The constant tabloid articles at the grocery store check-out line create a sense that all is wrong with what we value in the world today. If those magazines were removed and the celebrity paparazzi didn’t exist any longer, these magazines could be replaced with publications addressing real viable concerns for which people could work towards finding solutions. I have heard too often that nobody cares about you unless you are a celebrity, politician or professional athlete. By viewing today’s news headlines, I would have to agree with that analogy. Is money the driving force behind everything we do or can do as a society?

What motivates people? Is it fame, money, self, others or image? Are we so consumed with our own lives that we choose not to concern ourselves with the world around us because its issues don’t directly affect us? People strive to better their lives by going to school, working, or raising their children with care. I strongly believe that the more people venture out into the world from the places they were born and raised, the more aware of the world’s issues they will become and find ways to get involved in solving some of these pressing concerns. People tend to have a daily routine that involves some form of work task they carry out. Are we all routine-driven people who are so tied up with happenings in our own lives and our family’s lives that we forget about the people around us? When we get up in the morning, we are thinking about going to work, school or what we will do today. We have become so entrenched in our own lives that we don’t think about what’s around us. Many of us don’t want to take the time to get involved because it can be time consuming. If we have to work every day and have a family to take care of after work, the last thing we want to do is get involved in an issue that can take away our free time and time with our families. We instead get involved with extra-curricular activities that involve our families or our children. We have a tendency to focus our time and efforts on activities that benefit ourselves or our families. That doesn’t make it wrong, but it does take time away from focusing on the needs around us. Therefore, in our minds, those issues don’t exist.

Chapter 1

Value

A personal or cultural value is an individual’s assumptions of ethical value that can form basis for action (http://www.wikipedia.org). Personal values provide an internal reference for what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable and constructive (http://www.wikipedia.org). Values generate behavior and help solve common human problems for survival by comparative rankings of value, the results of which provide answers to questions of why people do what they do and in what order they choose to do them (http://www.wikipedia.org). In order to understand why people do what they do, we have to understand the inner workings of our brains. Every human brain is different and culture seems to play a big role in what people value in society. Cultural values are instilled by our parents and passed down from one generation to the next. The values people choose to pass down have everything to do with what families want to continue as part of their traditions. Values in turn become ethical issues for people as well. Ethical standards are the standards of our environment that are acceptable to most people (http://www.nacada.ksu.edu).

I have worked since I was eight when I had my first paper route. I am now thirty-eight and realize that all I have ever done for thirty years is work and go to school. I have taken opportunities to volunteer for causes such as conservation, shelter animals, and functions related to my child’s school. When I was a teenager, I attended a city council meeting and voiced my opinion for making recycling a part of our town’s waste management program. It was long after that public outcry in front of the city council that my small town in Illinois finally started a recycling program. I was able to make a difference in a small town’s way of doing business, and if you look at recycling across the world, it is now a big part of most towns’ daily operations. Recycling is the one way people feel that they can improve the environment, which in turn places a value on the importance of the environment in our daily lives.

Social value is also defined as the dynamic interaction between supply and demand in the evolution of markets for social value (http://www.ssir.org). Human beings have minds of their own, and are subject to many social, psychological and environmental forces (http://www.ssir.org). Social values are based on our own cultures, family and friends. Psychological values are typically ingrained from early in childhood and can lead to many of the choices and decisions we make. Environmental forces have to do with the climate