Traditions Are Limiting Our Personal Growth

For the most part, American traditions have stayed pretty consistent throughout the years. It is respectable to state though, that time can make or break long running traditions. Or keep them alive but maybe changing a few aspects. For example, the gossip industry which used to run on People magazine alone, has been blow out of the water into a "massive multi-million-dollar celebrity gossip agency", as explained in "Stalking Celebrities" by Heather Havrilesky. Today, society has the same needs for attention-seeking as they did a few years ago. The only difference is the media. With more technology and people demanding more and more out of celebrities, while trying to find the wrong doings of them, we are creating a new culture that coincides with the old. "An odd group of attention seeking celebrity sociopaths rose to the occasion with increasingly aggressive public displays of affection for themselves and no one else". That quote from Havrilesky explains with a new age comes new obstacles.

Sometimes, traditions can have a bad influence or can be limiting to others. Especially those who have not been involved in that particular culture or tradition before. For example, in "A Wobegon Holiday", poor Aunt Marie was married into Garrison's family and always felt out of place at holiday parties or other family gatherings. She was always worried about perfecting recipes and not making huge messes in the kitchen. With so much pressure to fit in, it can be hard to find a spot in someones culture or community. Not knowing where to start, not having any previous knowledge or guidance, can be hard on someone who is not born in one's culture. In my opinion, it would be much easier to have been born into a culture and grow up knowing its traditions and values, then to be forced upon one and having to learn everything about it.

Knowing one's identity can help to carry out a culture's traditions. "Social diversity has erased many of the older markers," as stated by Janny Scott and David Leonhardt in "Class Matters". "The contours of class have blurred; some say they have disappeared." This means that over time, with all of the pressures of becoming something more than just someone having "more than a house with a porch and coming home to dinner", people are forgetting who they really are. Not saying that it isn't great to aspire to be something great--just don't go overdo it and go into debt, pretending to have something you don't. With time, comes research and new advances. With research and advances comes the movement of families up and down the economic ladder. This mobility has slowed over time, making it seem much harder to get anywhere in life. This is why many students are attending college right out of high school--they want to advance, to carry out the "American Dream".

Now a response from fellow classmate:

Daniel,

While I enjoyed your perception regarding these readings, I find myself still postulating your opinions on cultural traditions. I loved the quotes that you chose, but I also would have enjoyed a bit more verbosity on your part, as what you did write was very compelling. Do you find traditions guiding or limiting? What do the American Dream and the contours of class have to do with forming our personal identities? The idea that the search for "something more than a house with a porch and coming home for dinner" could cause one to lose their identity does not make sense to me. Admittedly, I am profoundly against the conquest for monetary success and material obsessions, but I can only imagine that searching for something more would lead to FINDING one's identity, rather than losing it.

As you can see, the response from my classmate was focused, they had questions and gave their opinions. In turn, I gave a decent response to go further in depth on what message I was trying to convey to the audience in the first place:

To Anon classmate,I feel that traditions are both guiding and limiting, but if I had to choose one or the other, I'm leaning towards limiting. There is a lot of pressure that comes with either joining a new tradition, starting one, or even just carrying out a tradition. As far as "something more than a house...", the sentence went someone along the lines of: with all the pressure of wanting to become something more and having more than just a house with a porch (which was the seemingly simplicity of life 30-40 years ago), many people are doing what they think other people would want from them, not something that they want. For example, working at your dad's mechanic shop because he wants you to, even though you might want to go to college. I feel that many people are joining clubs or participating in traditions because its something they think society expects out of them, if that makes a little more sense. I don't remember saying anything about losing your identity, but maybe it was just me wording things a little wrong. Hopefully, that gives you a clearer understanding.