When it comes to some things in life, I would never avoid nepotism altogether. Nepotism has a very negative connotation, i believe it can be a bad thing but it also can be a good thing. In life, it is sad but true that to get far it isn’t really what you know but who you know, or at least this is the usual case. This is the reason why I not try to all-out avoid nepotism, when I have advisors who can help me get a good job or internship, I will obviously use their help which is a sort of nepotism. In my own life I have had situations arise where I could have used nepotism in my favor, but I have avoided it a few times, such as my brother, who is in the same industry as I am, helping me find a job. I refused to have him talk to people for me because it does not look good on me to have him doing work for me like that. I did have him tell me where I should go and look for jobs but I did not have him contact anyone for me. If he were to offer me a job at where he works, that’s more of the kind of nepotism than him contacting people for me. This case for me is different because it is still me using nepotism because I would never refuse to use it, but it is in a different way and I am trying to prove myself and my worth to others, not let them believe that I am receiving anything I don’t deserve just because of who I know or who I am related to. I don’t really ever blame anyone for taking advantage of nepotism, because if they have the means to advance themselves then they should take it and run with it. Even if someone doesn’t deserve what they get because of nepotism I don’t really blame them for taking advantage of the situation. Good for them for realizing that they have an advantage over other people. I would like to see everyone get what they deserve in life and have to work for whatever they get but life and the world are not necessarily fair. There are a lot of situations that occur where nepotism really is detrimental, and also other cases where it isn’t. I believe on average nepotism hurts more than it helps, however knowing this I still would not choose to use who I know and who I can network with to my advantage. These are advantages that other people have just like I do and I would be stupid to not use this to my aid as well.

This class did not make me feel uncomfortable at all, especially compared to some of the other class periods. Gender relations really doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable and I really enjoyed learning about how women/girls feel about certain things such as the needy penis. There were a ton of things we talked about in class that I had never really thought about before. I never exactly felt bad for myself for my unquenchable libido, and won’t really now, but I never thought about it how it was explained in class. I don’t feel as bad as I did for my desire to get down and funky from time to time (always), considering that I am a guy and it is normal. Also what was explained about girls libido in their early 20s was interesting to me because I did not think it was really any different than how guys feel at that age, apparently there are a lot of differences when it comes to that stuff, especially as you mature and relationships develop more and more. I thought it was pretty cool that we had both Sam and Lorie’s full opinions on sexuality in relationships, and knowing them they did not hold back at all. They did focus a ton on sex and sexuality in relationships, which I guess was the point of the class. There are a lot of other things that go into relationships that were really not addressed at all, but this was not the class for these things to be addressed. I think the title of the lecture was funny, but also so perfectly fitting for the talks that took place. I definitely learned a lot from this lecture, there were a lot of things I either did not know, or I did not think about in the way in which they were presented in class. I knew that the sexual world was a male dominated world, but I thought of it as a male dominated world in a different light than the way that Lorie presented it to us. I could maybe see some girls being a little bit uncomfortable in this class period because guys are a lot more open with their sexuality, especially when talking to other guy friends. I only know about this from experience on one side of the spectrum because I happen to be a guy. I assume that girls talk a lot about sex with other girls, but they are typically more uncomfortable talking about sex with guys, especially guys they don’t know; whereas, guys are a lot more inclined to feel comfortable when talking about sex with girls they may or may not actually know. This class was enlightening for me and totally comfortable, but there is so much more to learn!

I don’t think that any stages are necessarily better or worse than any other stages. It is all about growing up and learning the ways of other races. Some people may never actually get to the 2nd stage, and some may even get to the humanitarian stage. I think that it depends on a lot of other factors, some of them include things like their family, their community, what schools they went to, what region of the country or the world in which they grew up. A lot of things come together to develop a person and what stage they are even capable of reaching. Some people are destined to not even reach the 2nd stage of development. Whereas some other people are completely capable of reaching the later stages but they either choose not to or they get lazy about it or don’t put in the work on themselves to get to the later stages. Many people may try to claim that they can reach humanitarian status or they have reached humanitarian status. As Sam said in class, he has only met a handful of people who have gotten to the humanitarian stage, and he has traveled all over the world. I think that this also goes back to the determinism and free will, some people are determined when they are born to reach a certain stage, in fact I think most people are like this. I think that it really takes some effort to get past the stage that they were originally probably going to end on, or effort in the other direction to not reach their full potential when it comes to stages. I would see it as such an unbelievable accomplishment to reach the last stage, and I guess it is some sort of long-term goal for anyone to reach that last stage, but it does not mean you’re any less of a person for not reaching the humanitarian stage or you are some sort of racist because you can not see the world how a ‘humanitarian’ sees it. I don’t think that just because someone is incapable of seeing the world as someone in another stage sees it that they are not as good. Maybe something has happened in someone’s life and someone of another race did something hateful to the person and it has scarred them for the rest of their life, then they will probably never be able to reach the highest stages innately because they have troubles with that race. This is a deterministic part of the way these stages work, but there are also people that something like that may have happened to them and they are able to get to the humanitarian stage because of this trauma.

I think it is a daunting task to try to relearn feelings or ideals when it comes to race or religion or sexual orientation, etc. For someone to actually relearn ideals or change their mentality when it comes to those things its much more intense than just convincing them to think differently. One cannot just go through life thinking that another race is bad, or wrong, and then be convinced that their previous thoughts that they were always brought up with are in fact not good ideals and bigoted. I don't even believe that opinions like that can be changed through situational living experiences. For example, if a white person was always raised thinking black people are bad and they end up rooming with a black person in college and enjoy their time spent together and never have a problem, I still think that the white person will not be a fully changed person. They have too many innate thoughts about the other races that they will probably be able to convince themselves that their black roommate is an outlier in their population and they're one of the few 'ok' people of their race. It really all comes down to how people are raised. That was a more extreme example where someone is raised really bigoted and not very accepting of another race. I think that people can change from how they were raised to think about other races if they are able to truly think for themselves. Not all people have the ability to truly think for themselves and believe what they want to believe about others and not what they have been taught to believe. It also depends on the severity of what they have had instilled upon them from their parents or guardians from an early age. If you are able to change the thoughts early enough in life, maybe the child will not be stuck thinking what originally was taught to them. I just think that rational thinking people who are capable of thinking for themselves will always be able to at least see less wrong with people who are different than themselves. I think true racism stems from something innately wrong psychologically in people, but that is more extreme than what we are talking about now. When it comes to subconscious feelings toward other races I think that in some cases these feelings can be altered, maybe even changed, but I don't believe they can be fully reversed. Subconsciously when you have grown up for years of your development stages of early life with certain feelings, it is extremely difficult to reverse these feelings, especially because they are subconsciously engrained in you. These thoughts stay with you forever.

I believe that originally affirmative action was formulated with good intent of leveling the playing field when it comes to education and employment between different races, but it was not done correctly. It does go too far now, why would an employer want to hire someone to ‘level’ the playing field when they are hiring someone who is clearly inferior? That is, to say, if the person is actually inferior. There are many reasons why this system does not work to actually help anyone involved. It gives a job to someone who may be inferior, it hurts the employer when they have less free reign to hire who they want to hire. I believe that affirmative action does not even anything, it just makes the playing field slanted in the opposite direction that it was originally in. To actually level the playing field, why not just take race completely out of the applications? That is not perfect however, because people of color are less likely to be coming from better high schools or colleges. This at least gets closer to the main goal of having things even for everyone. I think the only place in which affirmative action should be utilized is in the first stages of education, in the K-8th grade. When kids are actually on a level playing field when it comes to that education, that’s the only time that affirmative action will work. Once they are looked at evenly at that age, no matter their race, family income, no matter of anything except intelligence, that’s when affirmative action is useful. Once these kids start to grow up, in a diverse classroom, they will be more inclined to be accepting of all people and races. Then they will be able to grow up in a more accepting environment; after that, they will be applying to high school and it doesn’t matter where they come from because they have been on a level playing field for years. It doesn’t matter where theyre coming from or what race or religion they are. They have the same education as many other kids in their class who are coming from many different backgrounds. I just don’t see the sense in affirmative action, it is impossible to measure the effects of affirmative action, just like it is impossible to measure the true white advantage and how strong that is. It’s the only thing I have seen that has been created 100% to bring down white people, and I have no problem with that. I just have a problem with the fact that it is a stupid system that never really worked all that well and people are so afraid to change anything about it.

I have never been a fan of affirmative action. I totally understand what it is trying to get at but the overall idea does not make any sense at all! If we are looking for equality then why in the world are we going to put race on applications and then decide well since we put that on there, and we force people to hire minorities, then that is fair. I am a white person, and along with many other white people, I know I have advantages that I do not deserve. I know that there are things in my life that I have no control over whether they are in my favor or against me. When it comes to this topic, it is actually something that weighs against me because I am white. I have never had affirmative action affect me, so I can look at it from the outside-in and have an unbiased look at it. I am really perplexed at the idea of affirmative action, I do not know who decided to instill it, I don’t know why they thought it was a good thing, and I don’t know why it is still in place. I understand that back when it was started it may have been for the better. But right now we should just leave race completely out of it and maybe then the most qualified person will be the right person for the job. I really liked the example that Sam used about white sounding names and African American and other Minority-sounding names. It does not shock me at all that the white sounding names were the ones to get more call backs than that of the other racial sounding names. What was an unbelievable example to me was the example where the white people with criminal records were called back at an even higher rate than black people without criminal records. I cannot believe that study, it is really shocking to me. If I was told it was close but the opposite, I would believe it and it wouldn’t shock me as much because I know that employers are not fair in regards to race and gender. That example really disappoints me because that is such a controlled study, as was the study where the names were the only factors that were different. It really shows the blatant racism shown by employers in their interview and hiring processes. Going back to the affirmative action topic, I just think that affirmative action is way outdated and embarrassing to our society that it is still in place. I don’t agree with hiring someone who may or may not be less qualified than someone else just because their race needs to be represented better.

I blame the media for the utter underexposure of this despicable issue. We saw in the past few weeks what happened in Egypt, I know that I was unaware of the goings on in the Egyptian government before the past few weeks, and I know that a majority of educated Americans can agree with me on that. We are underexposed to some of the greatest issues that face our nation and our planet. But with the way things were panning out in Egypt, all the major news sources covered the story and everyone became informed. It was truly a tough job for CNN and all the major news corporations to go in there amongst all the violence in the streets, risk their safety and well-being to inform others back home here in the United States, but they were able to do it and we are more informed because of their bravery. The same type of thing should be done for these issues we have talked about in class in the past week. We need to be exposed to these injustices and inhumane acts so that something can be done about it. When these issues are kept under wraps it is clear to me why they continue to happen. When national or even global pressure gets involved with these evil-doings, good prevails in the end, or at least what we as a society believe to be the good and right thing. I just watched a video that another person had posted about a Florida teen who was tricked by a friend of hers who she had met a few months prior and considered a close friend. The girls became friends over a few months, their friendship strengthened, and when the girl was finally granted permission from her mother to sleep over her friend’s house she was ecstatic. They went over to her friend’s house and her friend’s dad took them to a different house where she was drugged and repeatedly gang-raped. This story was so graphic and chilling to me, especially because after three days they found her, thankfully she was alive, but she will never be the same and will always have issues because of this. The worst part of the whole story to me is that no one was charged because they didn’t have enough evidence and in her case, as with all other cases of the sort with not enough information, she was considered a runaway. This aggravates me that the judicial system cannot do anything about this poor teenage girl who will have issues for the rest of her life. They cannot prosecute the men who did this to her because there isn’t enough evidence? What about DNA? How can they just give up like that? It is so upsetting to me to see this story and see how it is on national TV and nothing is done about it. I hope in the future another story comes out about this girl saying that because of the media attention, her captors are now rotting in a jail cell.

I think Sam's King of the Hill example is great because it is an excellent way of simplifying a complex topic. The people who are ‘on top’ or at the cream of the crop as far as any topic goes are able to pull up whomever they want to join them at the top. I have seen this in business, in racial issues, in government, in almost anything. It proves again and again that a lot of times it does not matter how qualified you are by talent standards, how you move to the top depends on networking, it depends on who you know but also who you are. As much as some people may want to say that the way to get something or get somewhere in life is to be the best at whatever you’re trying to do, a lot of times that only gets you so far. This King of the Hill example deals with the ‘free will’ vs. ‘determination’ theory because sometimes to get to the metaphorical ‘top of the hill’ some people are born into it, such as kings and future owners of companies that are passed down from generation to generation. This is the determination theory coming out with this example. But there is also the free will theory that can be controlled by people. In the free will example of king of the hill, you can rise to the top by working hard but also by making connections with the people who can help you get to the top, whether it is by being pulled to the top by them, or by having them help push you to the top of the hill. Everyone is not on a level playing field no matter what anyone wants to think, the world isn’t equal. The world isn’t equal for men and women, it is not equal for blacks and whites, it is not equal for someone who is 21 compared to 41, nor is it equal for someone from the inner city compared to the suburbs. Some people have risen completely past all of this, some through the course of history have been able to overcome having everything dead set against them. These people have been able to defeat the king of the hill theory but they are truly few and far between.

I think Sam's King of the Hill example is great because it is an excellent way of simplifying a complex topic. The people who are ‘on top’ or at the cream of the crop as far as any topic goes are able to pull up whomever they want to join them at the top. I have seen this in business, in racial issues, in government, in almost anything. It proves again and again that a lot of times it does not matter how qualified you are by talent standards, how you move to the top depends on networking, it depends on who you know but also who you are. As much as some people may want to say that the way to get something or get somewhere in life is to be the best at whatever you’re trying to do, a lot of times that only gets you so far. This King of the Hill example deals with the ‘free will’ vs. ‘determination’ theory because sometimes to get to the metaphorical ‘top of the hill’ some people are born into it, such as kings and future owners of companies that are passed down from generation to generation. This is the determination theory coming out with this example. But there is also the free will theory that can be controlled by people. In the free will example of king of the hill, you can rise to the top by working hard but also by making connections with the people who can help you get to the top, whether it is by being pulled to the top by them, or by having them help push you to the top of the hill. Everyone is not on a level playing field no matter what anyone wants to think, the world isn’t equal. The world isn’t equal for men and women, it is not equal for blacks and whites, it is not equal for someone who is 21 compared to 41, nor is it equal for someone from the inner city compared to the suburbs. Some people have risen completely past all of this, some through the course of history have been able to overcome having everything dead set against them. These people have been able to defeat the king of the hill theory but they are truly few and far between.

This question is deep on a few levels; consider all the possibilities of what could happen if we did actually live like monkeys, also consider the actual similarities between our world and the world of monkeys. If we lived like monkeys, that would just be setting ourselves back thousands of years. We DID live like monkeys for generations and then evolved into Neanderthals and eventually into human beings as we see ourselves today. Our brains have developed over thousands of years to be able to adapt to our surroundings and use everything we have to make our lives better. No matter what the actual processes are, everything we do in life is in order to attempt to make our life or the lives of people around us better. Whether you agree with another person’s definition of ‘better’ is debatable. We have grown from the time periods of when we were monkeys for a reason, our ancestry shows us that since that time period our bodies have developed to suit us better. We have less hair on our body, our skulls are bigger and there is more room for a larger and more developed brain, over time people have become taller. These are all changes that we as monkeys have been able to utilize to further our species. We can’t live as worry-free because we have made our civilization by far the most complex out of any species on the planet. There is no other animal that can extract materials from the earth and use it to build vehicles and computers and advanced weapons. Sure there are animals that use the natural environment for their own good-beavers can build dams, octopuses can use coconut shells as portable armor, chimps have been known to use rocks as hammers, but none of these animals are anywhere remotely to the point of development humans have reached. With this great intelligence is great responsibility, and we cannot live as monkeys because of that. We, as human beings, are responsible as world police. The rest of all animals are the ones who can live on the planet and just be concerned with the basic necessities such as shelter, hunting and gathering. As much as we are truly similar to monkeys, we are also very different and much more complex. If we lived as monkeys and only worried about basic needs, the world itself would never move forward, the planet we live on would become complacent. Humans have been deemed responsible for the advancement of our planet because we have been given this great intelligence and the ability to use it for good. Some animals may be very intelligent, may be able to use tools, may be able to communicate and travel as a pack, but there is no other animal on the planet as advanced as humans and we have to use that advanced intelligence wisely, it would be an absolute waste to live as monkeys do in a care-free world.