The American Frog

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I really don't know how I came around to thinking about The Inconvenient Truth but I definitely enjoyed it, especially the part about the frog (shown below). So this inspired me to write about the nature of Americans' abilities to respond to conflict.

As shown in the video, the frog doesn’t move until there is an evident danger. Why is that? Why can’t it sense the coming of danger and hop out while it still can? Why is it dependent on an outside force to save it?

The frog has a procrastinating nature which causes it to delay action until it is absolutely necessary. Americans are procrastinators. We wait until we need to do something before we do it, or until someone tells us to do it.

Why do we do this? Because in the back of our minds we always tell ourselves, “There is plenty of time to do that later, it’s ok we’ll get to that in just a tiny bit”. More often than not we really don’t have that much time, but we keep telling ourselves that until it is painfully obvious that we’ve run out of time.

A situation like this has played out on a more national level in America. Americans did not read the signs of the coming economic decline and told themselves "It's ok, we have more pressing issues at the moments, we'll get around to that in just a bit". However we kept saying that until it became the most pressing issue and the nation spiraled into seemingly irreparable debt. Now that we've finally become aware of the severity of the situation we are scrambling for a way to get out. But why couldn't we have taken care of this while it was still a smaller problem? It's because of our lack of awareness and our incredible procrastination.

The Stories Our Friends Tell Us

Courtesy of Google Images

Continuing in my series, I decided to investigate the stories that our friends tell us. I was inspired to write this blog because in the past week I've been observing the behavior among my friends. Girls like to hear compliments. They purposely insult themselves in order to hear compliments about themselves, or also known as "fishing for compliments". 

In the example of a group of girls, a girl will say “My outfit is just so gross” in hope of eliciting responses such as “No it’s not, you’re so pretty and the outfit is incredibly trendy” from her friends. This response will reassure the girl that her friends accept her choice, thus making her more confident knowing that she now has a niche.

I then expanded my thinking to a greater subject: Americans. Everyone likes to hear good things about themselves. It is so vain the way people purposely undermine themselves in order to gain sympathy or acceptance from others. In fact, this is why people “fish for compliments”. They want to know that they are accepted in a group or by a society. They insult themselves awaiting reassurance from their peers so that they may continue their pursuits with more confidence since they are now within accepted societal norms.

But why must we be accepted by others to continue doing "our own thing”? Why do Americans, especially, rely on the consent of others on their every action? Although individuality is valued there is always this push towards normality. Normality is accepted, individuality is coveted, but oddity is shunned.

In order to avoid being rejected from society most attempt to be individual within normal limits because those who are too “edgy” walk a fine line between true individuality and oddity. Americans strive for acceptance from their peers because we fear doing the “wrong things” and being shunned for being odd. Ejection from a group would be devastating for any Americans which is why there is the unnecessary, constant consultant of peers on the multitude of dilemmas in every American life. 

The Stories Our Parents Tell Us

Following my train of thought from last week, this week’s blog is about the stories that our parents tell us when we were younger and how that affects our lives today. In particular I wanted to talk about homeless people.

 Seemingly random and unrelated, homeless people bring up a distinct memory from my booster seat days. I would sit in the car and my mother would tell me, “Do you see all those people living on the street? They have no homes and do you know how they got there?” I’d look out the window and see all the homeless people and then shake my head, because as a six year old the thought of people living without homes was inconceivable.  Then my mother would go on, “Well, they were all too lazy and didn’t get good grades in school, so they couldn’t go to college or get a good job. And because they didn’t have a good job they couldn’t make money to buy a house, so they have to sleep in boxes in the street.”

I was absolutely stunned, and tremendously frightened. I did NOT want to sleep in a box on the street, so I needed to work hard and get good grades, or else. And I believed this story for an extremely long time, and while there is some validity to the story I realized there was also an enormous amount of prejudice. Dubbing people lazy or stupid is not only incredibly hurtful but also ignorant.

Homeless people are often perceived as the people who didn’t try hard enough or were too stupid. However none of the images produced are made with consideration to each of the individual circumstances. Sure there may be some that were “too lazy” or stupid but of these Americans are living there own dream just like you and me. They may be where they are now  as a temporary solution to a cruel trick of fate. The American dream is all about hard work and a little bit of luck, so maybe these Americans missed their luck this time around.

So why do Americans judge one another? We judge one another and to try and separate ourselves. In this case my mother was trying to remind me of the separation between me and the homeless man. She wanted me to know that I could not be like them that I didn’t belong there and I had to do everything I could to keep myself from ever being there. Americans love division. This is evident in our classes, neighborhoods, and professions. We judge in order to divide.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves



Rowing Erg
Courtesy of Google Images



An ongoing American Studies discussion has been about “the stories we tell ourselves” and I thought a lot about it, especially during rowing practices. I realized some reoccurring patterns, between the stories I told myself, and my performance. 

                For example, if I did a piece (a specific workout usually dictated by time or distance) on Monday, on the erg (an indoor rowing machine) and I did better than expected or better than most of my teammates, then I would tell myself, “Wow I am a fabulous rower, a better rower than all these people, evident by my results on the erg”. However if on Tuesday, I did badly on a piece I would most likely think, “Wow, today was a bad day. I got very little sleep last night and I had a looming cold all day”. Now whether or not that was true, I would still tell myself that just to make myself feel better. Of course I couldn't possibly be the reason for my own failure because, I am that fabulous rower that pulled so well on Monday and beat the rest and there is no possible way that on Tuesday I could have done so poorly, unless some uncontrollable factor came into play.

              These observations lead me to think about all the times I have made excuses for my own shortcomings. Why I couldn’t perform better on that piece, why my test grades weren’t higher, why I couldn’t finish my homework at a reasonable hour. I came to realize that most of the time; these types of things are my own fault, not the world’s fault. This is both a lesson in growing up and a theme that, in America particularly, seems to be forgotten by too many of the world’s adults.

                Why “in America particularly” you may ask? This trait is commonly found in Americans because we believe that we cannot possibly be the reason for failure. It is always someone or something else. We can’t be held responsible for failure because America is the land of success and as Americans we do not fail. Americans blame one another or god or nature or even the weather, because those are all outside, uncontrollable forces. But we never look to ourselves.

                Yet it is the people that do look to themselves and do blame themselves, that succeed. They succeed because after failure, instead of blaming others or the weather, they look at themselves and take responsibility for the failure. They find the reason for failing and then they find a way to fix it and a better way to operate for next time. Ironically these are the people that make America the land of success.