Evaluation of American Culture

Evaluating American Culture

The American culture is very diverse and eclectic. Not every single person has the same views on a given subject, partly due to environment, race, age, and religion. This exercise in where we surveyed five people made that very noticeable.

I surveyed five people, five people of which have the same job environment, but varied from the age of 18 to 34. Surprisingly, the age was not a major factor in their opinions as I had assumed it would be, but in some cases it was. For instance, when it comes to success coming from hard work, the majority of people said that they strongly agreed. However, two people, an 18 and 19 year old said they strongly disagreed. It was the fact that they were paying for all their own necessities in life that caused them to disagree. Where as the other three people who strongly agreed were older and looked at their growth. Everyone generally agreed that we should trust the armed forces, police, schools, and courts. The media was a different story; everyone said that they can't trust the media, due to the "story twisting." They all said that they wished they "could believe the news, newspapers, and magazines, but you just can't." One would think that everyone would have been in agreement about not dissenting when our country is in a time of war, but there was one person who strongly disagreed. This person dislikes our current president to the extent of where she doesn't believe in war at all, and thinks we should pull out of our current war tomorrow, if the citizens of the United States agreed. Where as the other participates had military backgrounds, regardless of their opinions on the war at hand, they believe that we should be behind our country. When it came to the religious questions the answers were shocking. Even the people, who were strong believers in a god, said that our political leaders don't have to be a believer and also said that moral values and laws do not necessarily be derived from religious convictions. I expected the responses on this question to be parallel with their own beliefs; however, everyone said that it wouldn't make a difference to them if the president, for instance, believed in a god or not.

Personally, most of my opinions coincide with the survey participants. One question that was a very difficult question was about economic equality and equality of opportunity.