Fear: Is It Our Surroundings We Fear or the Unpredictability of Them?

"Watch enough brutality on TV and you come to believe you are living in a cruel and gloomy world in which you feel vulnerable and insecure. In (his) research over three decades (Gerbner) found that people who watch a lot of TV are more likely than others to believe their neighborhoods are unsafe, to assume that crime rates are rising, and to overestimate their own odds of becoming a victim. They also buy more locks, alarms, and- you guessed it- guns, in hopes of protecting themselves. 'They may accept and even welcome,' Gerbner reports, 'repressive measures such as more jails, capital punishment, harsher sentences- measures that have never reduced crime but never fail to get votes- if that promises to relieve their anxieties. That is the deeper dilemma of violence-laden television."- Barry Glassner

The quote above is taken from an excerpt I read in The Culture of Fear. To me, it means that the more violence we watch on television, the more the thought that we live in a violent world in instilled into our mind. While the television portrays a dramatized version of reality to keep viewers interested, the more time we spend watching it, the less time we spend out in the real world observing how wrong television's portrayal of life is. This evokes us to fear common things that we normally wouldn't fear and that potentially won't harm us. 

Take a look at the following gif;

Dramatized or not, it gets the point across; we are exposed to over-dramatized stories on the news, on television, in books, everywhere! Our mind absorbs the information we are given and leads us to fear something as simple as a small dog just because we heard of a dog of an unrealistic size attacking it's owner out of the blue, even though we know this behavior isn't common.

The fear-saturated media we are exposed to does affect our happiness and our lives; it causes us to curl up within ourselves when we are in the midst of the subject of the latest news story. As for the criminal justice system, the way certain individuals of a particular race are portrayed immediately puts them at either an advantage or disadvantage from a legal standpoint. When you are walking down a dark alley at night and see a tall man of African American descent, you're probably going to relate back to the stories you've been exposed to and instantly start to feel fear inflicted by them and that person. 

When we become afraid of other people, we end up spending our money on security systems that we feel will provide protection from people roaming the streets and that results in a larger income for security system manufacturers.

Another short story I read was Once Upon a Time, by Nadine Gordimer. Her story was of a family who was so set on protecting themselves from the dangers of the burglars outside their household that the measures they went to to ensure their safety caused the death of their son. This is similar to The Culture of Fear because both stories talk of the danger of how fear is instilled upon us and the negative effect it has on us. The media is only increasing our fear of the world and the income of sellers of security systems. In buying into the stories we constantly lose our grasp on reality and what is really harmful to us; in Once Upon a Time, what the family was told to fear isn't what ended up being the danger in the end. The real danger was what they had become as a result of what they were told and believed.

Always Something to Improve Upon

Today I was given an essay I wrote earlier and was asked to reread it…

…and then I was asked to fix it.

If you're in school now or have ever been in school, or if you're a regular human being, I'm sure you've had to write an essay before. Therefore, you must know how excruciating it is to read an old essay once you've learned how to better your writing. Of the essay I was given, this is the paragraph I chose to do-over:

"Single stories are a form of stereotype that are common everywhere and surround everyone. It is only dangerous to know one story of something or someone not because it's false, but because that story is incomplete. Stereotypes not only have the potential to hurt others; they also limit our view of the world. By only seeing someone as their one story, we keep ourselves from learning more about the world and getting a different perspective. In The Complete Persepolis, Marjane quickly became the victim of the single story and experienced it firsthand."

Above, there are a few sentences that are oddly worded and the paragraph is lacking detail. I failed to give a summary of the book in the thesis statement. Here is the re-done paragraph:

"Single stories are a form of stereotype that are common everywhere and surround everyone. It is dangerous to know only one story of something or someone not because it is false, but because that story is incomplete. Stereotypes not only have the potential to hurt others; they limit our view of the world. By only seeing someone as their one most common stories, we keep ourselves from learning more about the world and getting a different perspective. In The Complete Persepolis, Marjane becomes the victim of the single story and experiences it firsthand when her country, Iran, is thrown into war and she escapes to Austria in an attempt to continue her education and ensure a bright future not compromised by warfare."

I went back and fixed some of the wording and changed some of the tenses to present tense. Also, I added onto the thesis statement so that the reader of the essay would have an idea of what happened in The Complete Persepolis. When I reread my essay, I did feel slightly embarrassed about some of the mistakes I made because they seemed obvious, especially mistakes about the way things were worded. If I could go back and rewrite it, I would make sure not to be so vague with my thesis statement, as that seems to be a recurring problem with my writing. Practice makes perfect, so i guess I'll just have to keep on practicing!

For my next essay, I'll definitely take more time and read over, making a mental checklist of my common mistakes (i.e.; vague thesis statements, lack of present tenses…), and fingers crossed by the end of the year, my writing will be transformed!

Stereotypes vs. Reality: What We Are Told Growing Up and What We Don't See

This week I was shown the following images:

I don't know about you, but when I saw these pictures, they seemed like polar opposites to me. The image at the bottom appears to be a more conservative and restricted society. Do you agree? If you do, you'd be wrong. These were what came up as search results for 'Iranian women 1970' and 'Iranian women 2002'. It's amazing how the public's view of Iranian women changed in a mere 32 years. The top picture could be a search result for anything, while the bottom is clearly the stereotype some people have of Iranian women. 

If more photos like the first one were seen instead of the bottom, such harsh stereotypes depicting Iranian women most likely would not exist. The supposed fear people build up in their minds of them, if there were no images to cause it, would not exist. No one benefits from the fact that the second image is the most common. The Iranian women suffer harsh judgement and we suffer from the closed-mindedness. If we opened ourselves up, we could educate ourselves and get to know the people better, not to mention stop making ourselves appear so judgemental.

On that point, I'd like to bring up the author of a book I recently read, Marjane Satrapi, who wrote The Complete Persepolis. She was a young teenager when the veils came to be and vividly remembers it, and I feel she would want us to know that the veil doesn't define the woman. In both pictures, short skirt or long black veil, the people behind the veil are the same. They have the same wants, the same needs, the same feelings. I'm sure it doesn't make them feel good about themselves when they are seen in public and are scowled upon or glared at. I'll leave you to think about that.

How Images Affect Us

Throughout our lives there are certain things that truly affect us; people, events, a dream we once had, even something as simple as an image we once saw can impact our lives, causing us to think about things differently. Maybe you watched a scary movie once where a monster lived under a child's bed and now at night you can't help but think of that monster when you lay in bed at night. I bring this up because this week's topic in my English class is what image has had an impact on our life. While my example is of a monster under a child's bed, that's far from the type of image that makes a lasting impression on my mind.

An image that would have the power to leave an impression on my mind would have to be somewhat personal, which is where this image comes into play:

If you can't tell, the man in this picture is in the hospital with cancer, but when I look at this picture I see someone who is on top of the world and still has his whole life to live, even if fighting an uphill battle. This image embodies strength, power, and also courage, because I know from firsthand experience without those qualities, the journey through this illness is impossible. 

Words don't depict what this image does. There are only so many words in existence, but when you look at a picture, no words are needed . It's as if you can feel what the person in the picture is feeling. Maybe you don't feel what he is, but then again, who can but he? No one knows exactly what it feels like to be him, looking out at the city. No one knows what it feels like to be me, except for me. We all are our own person. We all only understand ourselves best. 

I do know how he feels, though. I've been in the same position in my own hospital room, peering out the window at the city surrounding me, surveying my own world, with my own life I've only begun to live.