Sumblog 2

After another week of discussions it is once again time for a sumblog. Before the week began I decided to check on the syllabus to see whom we were going to be discussing for the week. Once I saw Karl Marx's name, I was very pleased. Karl Marx is a person I know quite a lot about due to past courses I had taken. His writings proved to still be difficult to comprehend, but after class discussion (and rereading the readings), I was able to grasp a better understanding of Marx than I ever have before. Most of his concepts I do not fully agree with, but one of the concepts that I could really connect with was his idea's on the fetishism of commodities.

Inorder to fully grasp Marx's concept I first had to understand the terms that he was using. Commodities are basically any resource, some examples being, labor, water, corn, oil  and so on.  Fetish defined by http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fetish , is, "a strong and unusual need or desire for something." So when Marx was explaining fetishism of commodities he was simply meaning the obsession with a certain resource. Marx was seeing that society was slowly becoming more and more infatuated with goods. Instead of people depending on relationships, Marx's was seeing that inside of a captialistic society, people were becoming more concernced with who made what, and what the value of thier commoditiy, was over the person themselves. Human relationships were being completely replaced by the value of commodities.

Although Marx was indentifying that the value of people was being surpassed by goods in the late 1800's, I still find it completely relevant in today's society. Take technology for example. Even more specifically, cell phones. Phone company's are constantly renewing thier softwares, bringing out the next new phone, putting everything and anything at a persons finger tips. This results in society constantly wanting the next best thing. Companies are improving technology constantly because people are buying whatever is  new, whenever it is new. It is literally as if society is obssesed with making sure they have the next new iphone or google phone. Trust me even I am guilty of it, but it is time we recognize that goods are really not as important as they seem. This website provides a slide show of the growth of the cell phone from 1972 to 2013  http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gallery/2013/apr/03/mobile-phones-40-years-handsets#/?picture=406610543&index=17 . Now clearly there are plenty missing, but this site shows the improvements year after year. I  by no means am saying that technology improvement is bad, I just think we need to be careful on the value we put on having the next phone each month. Instead of putting our value as a society on goods, and who has the "best" good, we need to switch our value onto having relationships with people.

SumBlog 1

Alexis De Tocqueville, what an interesting guy. After reading just a short article about him and contemplating his theories, it is amazing on how the things he has to say are completely relevant to today's society and I pretty much agree with everything he has to say. Inside of the article Tocqueville discusses a theory on civil associations. When he is talking about civil associations, he is referring to a group or club of people with similar interest in a certain subject that one can feel very linked to. People in society use civil associations to feel like they belong somewhere. The reading states "The great advantage of these civil associations is that people are able to interact with one another, and it is out of such interaction that "feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the understanding developed (Tocqueville, 1835-40/1969:515)" Unfortunately, todays society is leaning more and more toward not being as involved in civil associations because of the busyness and independence of the people of America.
 People are becoming  more and more wrapped up in themselves then they use to be and more worried about providing for themselves and their families; with no time for group involvement. With that being said, I have chosen this picture as my  multimedia option. This may look like a typical climbing photo but, I do feel this really connects to Tocqueville ideas on civil associations and how it relates to today's society.  I feel what Tocqueville had to say was completely relevant to his time and age but not at all today. In the photo that I provided, the person is striving up a rock and there is no know end to this rock, and he is doing it alone. This person much rather go through life alone and constantly strive for excellence, to reach the top. I feel like that is why civil associations are no longer appealing to people today. People much rather worry about themselves and become successful on their own, then gain their acceptance and success through a group of people. This is one of the many reason as to  why the idea of civil associations that Tocqueville discuses is really no longer relevant.