Those With Sight

Book one of the Life Goes On series Arc One The Artists Book One "Those With Sight" Shuttered Vision

“What are you doing here?”  She snapped.

He smiled at the little beauty, she felt him as soon as he showed up this time.  She was getting better and better at it. He loved her dress.  It looked like it was patched together like a quilt. All those lovely loud and soft colors that did wonders for her dark skin. It fit her like a glove. She was shorter than him by five or six inches.  She wasn’t a very slender woman. Not fat by any means but she wasn’t one of those super slender super model skinny numbers he had gotten used to in Hollywood.  She had full breasts a slim waist, ample hips and thighs.  He was willing to bet the backside was as well thought out as the front. Her blue black hair fell in soft wavy curls to her shoulders thick and full. Those amazing gray eyes were on him.  She was furious.

“Mad at me for the stolen kiss?” he teased her.

“No I was mad at you for interrupting me with my father.”

“Your father, so you were talking to somebody.  Here I thought you were nuts.”

“You’re in my dream, I’m not the one that’s nuts.”

He laughed at the matter of fact way she said it. “How is that possible huh?  I can be in your dream but you can’t be in mine? I think you have that wrong.”

She just stared at him confused.  He tried to imagine her near him again.  It worked all of two seconds and then she stopped and stared at him.

“Stop that. If you want me to come over there, ask don’t demand.”

It was something about the way she said it made him ask instead. “Would you, if I asked?”

“Why don’t you find out?”

Seemed simple enough. “Will you stand closer to me?”

“How much closer, be specific.”

His hands itched, his mouth watered. “Close enough to touch.”

He watched spellbound as she shifted her hips stepping lightly and smoothly walking over to him.  The motion of her hips was distracting him.  She flowed like water, well set music.  He felt himself respond to her.

“Will you listen to what I have to say to you?” she asked.

“Why do women always need to talk, we have nothing to talk about.” He placed his hand on her face cupping her cheek, it felt like the smoothest silk. “Touching, that’s what we need to do.”

She cupped his hand in hers as she looked him in the eye. “Why are you here?”

He stared at her oddly as the question vibrated in his head like an echo.  Her eyes expanded and started to glow a bit.  He saw a part of her, like a shadow or illusion of her shift away from her and fly into him. He could feel her in his head starting to tear around.  His childhood flashed briefly in his mind and was passed on to his first sexual experience.  He was in his bedroom when he was 17, Janet Tully taking him into her hand for the first time.  He has his first realization about Hollywood as two skinny blondes with fake tits offer him cocaine on their exposed breasts.  The strips of his mind peeling away as he started to lose control of his motorfunctionality lying in the middle of his gameroom.

“No.” Colan sat straight up in bed naked sweating, breathing hard.  

He dropped his head into his hands, the dream vivid in his mind.  The feelings of helplessness and vulnerability were stark in his person. He threw himself back down on the bed with a thud, then gave a disgusted look at his sheet tenting over his erect penis.

“Well good to know you still work in moments of crisis.” He muttered.

He couldn’t blame it, she was gorgeous, that creature he had dreamed about constantly for months now.   Really it was the dreams before that had eventually led to her. It had started sometime after his nervous breakdown.  He would be sleeping and have the most horrific nightmares.  He was in hell and all around him were roaming beasts and fire breathing creatures.  And always some new lamb for the slaughter would drop from the sky and be unmercifully eaten.  He had tried to defeat the beasts and they would come back stronger, more evolved.  After months of these dreams he had resorted to trying to escape.  One night he had gotten to the top where people were dropped in and he had heard singing.

He closed his eyes and recalled the dream.  She had been singing Amazing Grace.  Simple lovely and it had actually sounded like salvation.  He had waited till she finished and then pulled himself up and he had been in that odd field.  She hadn’t seen him.  Just continued about her way.  She would lay in that field humming to herself.  She would do such odd things there as if she was somewhere else seeing something else.  It was like this odd form of pantomime. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago she had sensed him and now they actually spoke to each other.

He got out of bed to start his day.  It was such a silly foolish thing, his dream woman.  Everything about her was completely different from what he usually looked for in a woman.  She was a dark skinned brunette he usually went for pale blondes.  She didn’t mince words, his women where usually cunningly coy.  She stood up to him, he hadn’t had a women tell him no in a little over a decade.  The oddest part of the whole thing was that every once in awhile he had to work very hard to convince himself that what happened in his dreams wasn’t real.  That she wasn’t real.  He had done all kinds of research on it.  Dreams were just an extension of repressed desires.  Really he wanted something different from what he was and where he was and she represented it.

He stood in the shower letting the hot water fall over him.  He dropped his head and felt it running through his hair down his neck and shoulders. She was an interesting creation he had to admit. She was black from what he could tell, but those eyes and her hair, the black women back home had never looked like that, not women of any of the races he had grown up around.   There were things that were still considered taboo in Oklahoma, especially in the country.  Dating someone not of your same color was one of them.

Honestly he hadn’t ever really thought about it.  His mother hadn’t raised him to care.  But the people surrounding you always ingrained it in your make-up.  White privilege is what it was called by people who studied it.  This whole dichotomy of entitlement and empowerment. He knew about the theories, those with power and all that. He also knew that they were one hundred percent true.  This had been part and parcel to his breakdown.

All his life he had told himself that he wasn’t a racist.  That deep down inside he wanted equal rights for all people.  But the world was the way that it was and nothing could change that.  Such a scapegoat that was created with that one thought.  Colan knew better, he made movies, he created and recreated the world everyday, every week every hour as a new person was exposed to what he was directly responsible for creating.  

The world is not the way that it was because it just was, it was the way the people in power created it to be.  Through all open forms of media, radio, television and film Americans are being told what to do, how to do it and most importantly who to do it too.  It wasn’t too long until books and magazines converted and now you even had to second guess what you read in the newspaper.  Then the internet came along and changed the face of the game.  There was information out there for those willing to look for it about the true face of things in the media and the world.

Colan realized that he had gotten lost in his thoughts but like a well trained automaton had dressed himself, drank his morning health shake and was firmly seated behind the wheel of his jaguar.

Coming June 2015

Stereotype Tree

Multicultural image

I think the importance of stereotypes and their existence become greatly undervalued.  If you ask someone why a stereotype is bad your general response would be something along the lines of 'Well it isn't polite, or nice."  Which of course opens the doorway of using them when you intentionally want to be mean or seen as bad.  It becomes a matter of opinion on civility instead of a matter of fact in regards to inequality systems.  Make no mistake about it; stereotypes have very little to do with civility and a whole lot more to do with the maintaining of inequality systems.

Inequality systems are an interesting thing.  In the current text I am reading "The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality" there is an analogy that is given by Marilyn Frye that I find to be very appropriate:

"Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires.” When the cage is observed so closely, it’s unclear why a bird—eager to escape—wouldn’t just fly around the wire. It’s necessary to step back and look at the entire cage. “It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which could be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the walls of a dungeon” (Ore, 2003)

The interesting aspect of inequality systems is that people have a tendency to deny their existence.  The common perceptions among average Americans are that if a certain sector of the population is not successful it is through their own lack of desire, initiative, and drive.  According to the most privileged Americans, the playing field is level.  This is just the idea that the inequality maintenance system needs to survive. This perception of falsified equality. Yet in language, media, and legislation inequality thrives, and has convinced some that the perceptions given are the truth of the tale. Stereotypes then become even more invasive than these other influences because stereotypes are what a person is involved with on a psychic level and it becomes condoned and supported by these things.  This causes an invalidated truth to take root and be accepted as a validated truth.

Stereotypes are formed because we as people need to isolate things; assemble patterns. That's what we do, and how we learn. Just in case no one has noticed, humanity is in a heap of trouble. We have compounding problems from our environment to our economy. The issue is that likeminded groups stick together. We form these pockets of humanity, and these pockets only like to allow other likeminded individuals in them. We all do it.  However, like minded individuals are what got us into this situation in the first place. Diversity is the only answer now. Different heads need to be thinking about our issues from different perspectives of thought. No individual group is going to come up with an adequate solution. They can't. The only people they bounce ideas off of are just like them, and they see things too similarly. If they had a viable answer we wouldn't be in such a quandary.

Stereotypes are the root of all perspective evil because they incorporate assumptions about a whole that is usually only applicable to a few. However with this assumption in place, the perspective of the person is set and fixed to find evidence of this assumption in everything. It's our ability to create patterns used against us. Even if the stereotype is obviously not true in a person, we are actively looking for it to the point that another unrelated aspect of them seems to reinforce the stereotype. It's us typecasting each other, building that pattern.

Amazing Tree

Stereotype Tree

ROOTS

Roots of stereotypes come from culture, life experiences, and media. These are the things that shape us that were in place before we are even conscious of what we are or who we are going to be. The surrounding infrastructure that facilitated your birth. We would all be different people had we been born in the early 1800s instead of now.

Culture

Culture is the thing your family instilled in you and your beliefs. This includes religion, location, racial identity, socioeconomic status, acceptable behaviors and rewarded ideas. These are all the factors that those before you put into place. My foundation was set by a mother who raised me to believe that as a general rule people considered 'white' would always look down on me, but this was should not be the case.  They are no different than us, but they will always act like they are. Already I have a cultural perspective that says this type of person is always going to look down on me, but they are foolish for it. There is no difference between them and me.  This colors all interactions I have with people that are considered 'white'.  Does this person disapprove of what I am doing because as a woman who is 'not white' I should not be doing this because it implies equality?

This is the first step, so try to really dig into this concept and formulate what was presented to you as far as ethnic, class, financial, gender, and sexuality based expectations.  What were these mostly unspoken rules of what your family and friends expected from you at the very beginning of your life?  What was fair and what was based solely on stereotypes and uninformed assumptions?

Life Experiences

With the example set by your culture you have a certain perspective of the world. You see it with lenses colored by your culture. Situations that would seem one way to one person is actually completely different for someone else. When I was accused of cheating on my aptitude test in elementary school the teacher probably noticed me looking around because I do, a lot, always have. I didn't look for answers. I was just looking at the other kids because I was new and trying to figure out my new environment. When the scores came in, she confronted my mother about this. I felt guilty because my understanding was ‘looking around was bad’. When my mother found out and the teacher tried to explain, my mother got angry just like she does when she complains about white people, and tells me that I won't be attending that school anymore. This reinforces the stereotype that my mother has ingrained in me. This is an example of a life experience that can be seen from that cultural perspective.  Now I have an instance where it can be perceived that a ‘white’ authority figure has in fact 'looked down' on me because of my 'non-white' status as she openly questioned whether I was capable of achieving this aptitude score.

Media

Media is a growing issue for stereotyping because it is so ingrained in our lives now. The messages that are being generated by advertisers and media outlets is shameful because the generation that was raised by television is now letting their children be raised by the internet. Should advertisers and content creators be more discriminating, yes, will they, no. They aren't trying to raise your kid right; they're trying to raise your kid to buy what they're selling. Question any and all media no matter what is being said and no matter who is saying it. All media can be traced to 6 corporations.  http://www.newint.org/magazine/ni333-media.pdf  With that small amount of diversity, everything is being reported from a very limited and specific social perspective.

TRUNK

The trunk is what the roots feed, it's the person you are, and how you react and respond to others in day to day activities. The areas this effects are social, professional, and private aspects of you. In some situations this branches out to virtual versions of you. So think of it as the social you, for friends and group settings; the professional you for the sake of your career or livelihood, and the private you which are the aspects that only close personal people know or no one at all including you even understand. Then there is the advent of this virtual you. The person you project yourself as in cyberspace.

Social

You choose to be in certain areas. Certain groups of people make you feel comfortable or uncomfortable. People create hives and groups based on affinity and relation. Usually these are dens of like-mindedness where ideas are identical and mirrored. These mirrored ideas reinforce stereotypes because they are never challenged.

Professional

While your job can create pockets of diversity, the understanding is that this is a ‘working you’, and not truly who you are. At work we respond sometimes as we must to fulfill the job expectations denying personal concerns. Most businesses are not expansive enough to need varying degrees of ability and talent with the exception of some high end performance and technology fields. Business autonomy sometimes makes it unnecessary for these different parts to fully interact. Working day to day while having certain stereotypes in mind causes you to see co-workers in a certain light as well. What is just playful banter can be misconstrued as an insult because of this. Stereotypes may be jarred a bit, but never disavowed because everyone is at work, and the actual face of who they are is not visible. Some fields are so devoid of diversity that even if people interacted with everyone they would see very little difference in ideologies. People who like to do certain work, or have to do certain jobs, have similar ideas and perspectives.

Private

In the deep dark parts of ourselves we know what we truly believe. We believe what we've been shown through media, culture, and life experiences. Patterns develop that lead to who we are and manifest as the decisions and actions taken in our personal time. This is where stereotypes truly fester because our time can be spent in any way we would like. We guide ourselves inside of our own heads; this manifests in habits, likes and dislikes; our dreams. Our minds are our own, and they can either be cultivated or left barren.

Virtual

The interesting thing about being virtual is the assumption that it creates anonymity. As a programmer I'm here to tell you it doesn’t. Web bots know you're IP address, with that they can find anything and everything they need to know about you. Just hope that no one wants to find you because it isn't difficult if you know how to look.

Online combines aspects of you and content creation. Media intermixes with self and amplifies self. In no other venue will you find more stereotypes being generated, accepted, and passed about freely as if they are actual facts than online. Then the issue becomes that a consensus has been formed, and together through another broader form of socialized communication, a body of evidence has been built and seems airtight. However if you apply all that came before this step, you can see why it works out like that. Now the stereotyped are accepting the labels, the typecasting, and are in fact living to make the stereotypes as real as possible, like some odd form of nihilistic approval seeking.

BRANCHES

The result of the roots and the trunk are the branches. This is the active part that the person themselves take in creating the stereotype and regenerating it over and over again. This is the truth of what you believe in habits and nuances that are influencing other people, and reinforcing a certain perspective of an issue adjusting how you respond to them in the real world. You don't have to be a politician or someone in power for this to be effective. Just another person and it's done. This is where social expectations change the course of your actions when you are placed in stereotype forming or breaking situations. Here is when your need to act or fear of acting becomes a crucial determination of your true stance on the issue and ultimately your role.  This is where the company you keep sets an example. As human beings we are either reinforcing stereotypes or we are breaking them. There is no passive in-between.  Fence sitting is just the same as reinforcing them. People can ascertain your ability to accept others by the things you do, and the things you don't. Limitations, drawbacks, and misunderstandings are created by rating things in quality by untested assumptions. 

LEAVES

The idea is that these stereotypes should become leaves if you do a thorough analysis of your thoughts, ideas, and behaviors. They should grow, be tested, and fall away so that new ones can form, because unfortunately that is part of the human experience. There will always be stereotypes. It is the individual's choice if they would like to be a stereotype rock or a tree, always growing, always changing, always adapting.

Ore, Tracy E., ed. 2003. The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Amazing Tree image courtesy of http://www.sharenator.com/Amazing_Trees_1/#/amazing_tree-5.html

Multicultural image courtesy of  

http://cas.ncat.edu/~liberal_studies/index.php?Key=display_page&node=171

Super Hero Theorem

I love all stories about super heroes.  I always have.  I realized that this fascination came from Saturday morning cartoons.  Let's just say when you are a little black girl growing up poor in Texas you have very little to believe in. Religion was taken from me by a Sunday school teacher that found it offensive that I wanted to be like Jesus. Needless to say I recall so clearly watching the X-Men, and thinking no one cares that Storm is black. She's just a mutant, and thus one of them. It was a really revolutionary thought for me. If you find the group that is the most like what you are at your core level, it won't matter what race, age, or religion you are.  In the eyes of the world you are all the same, and deserve the same treatment. What a concept.

I'm older now, and I still love super hero rhetoric.  I find the readings sometimes refreshing and more tolerant than anything I can find in any other form of media. The lines are sometimes very simple.  There is good, and there is evil. Upon occasion some of the contemporary classics have featured graying between the two.  Some such as DC's award winning Identity Crisis and Marvel's House of M sequence that leads to Civil War blurred the lines with a ruthless aggression that made the stories all the more human.  However these stories are about defining the lines between good and evil. Very rarely do the good ones even mention such uninteresting incidentals as race, class, religion, and gender. These are instead visual descriptors that have nothing to do with whether or not the character is good or evil.  Their actions and the reasons behind their actions determine this.  If only the world in general followed suit. With that said, DC's The New Frontier was a stunning entry that did account for race, class, and gender within the time period while being very honest about the world we do live in.

I find myself wondering how comics have been able to mature the way that they have, and I can only come up with one answer.  Stan Lee. Then I have to acknowledge that Stan Lee is a social genius.  He found a way to deal with very sensitive issues at a very sensitive time of our nation's development.  The first issue of The Uncanny X-men was released in September of 1963.  Please keep in mind that initial desegregation had only occurred in 1954, and supplementary legal actions occurred well into the late 1960's as states were resistant. This version of the X-men by all accounts was socially acceptable accept for the fact that they possessed mutant powers.  A gene anomaly that made them capable of doing things normal people could not do. They were outsiders, and an almost perfect simulation of ethnic and racial profiling and inequality.  Mutants were treated badly, looked down upon, and shunned.  Mutants were subject to being lynched and physically harmed. Some had mutations so radical that it changed the way they appeared making them not resemble a normal man or woman at all. This addendum is a precursor to people who are not able to disengage from their ethnic designations.

Let me flesh out this concept.  During this time period there were several ethnic groups that were being discriminated against.  The irony is that most are now considered 'white', and can choose to be viewed as their ethnic group or as census classified 'white' which is most people of European descent.  Other ethnic groups cannot 'blend' in, and pretend to not be a mutant. .  I mean a minority : )

This within itself was rather groundbreaking; however in the 70s this comic series took another brave step and began to introduce nontraditional characters of many ethnicities and nationalities. Now the X-men were international with differing political, religious, and social beliefs.  Yet despite this they were bound to each other by the overwhelming blanket of what they are.  To the world they were not even human, but a mutant first and always.  Any other differences from each other they may have has paled in comparison. It's so funny because I am one of those people who believes that despite humanity's best efforts, in the end Adrian Veidt from the Watchmen comic is absolutely right.  In many situations we do need a greater cause to make us forget our differences, and be reminded of our similarities.

As I find myself delving deeper into readings concerning race, class, gender, and religion I find myself being reminded of simple truths that I feel like I have always known that media is slowly trying to drown out.  My personal project for this summer is to prototype a game that will aid in teaching these concepts related to issues in sociology.  The ones that Stan Lee managed to endear so gracefully so many years ago.  I wonder if he planned it from the beginning.  If he intentionally made the first set of X-men the way they were to broaden the impact of the ones that came later or if it was just a blessed accident?

What my research has shown is that people are adaptable to certain forms of stimulation.  They will take in the information given and apply it to everyday life as a means to be a more socially acceptable creature.  However there has to be an entry point of familiarity.  To some degree they have to be able to relate to one concept in order to discover another. We are a pattern making species, and even if the pattern is perceived incorrectly, the die is usually cast. 

The brilliance of the way Stan Lee did this is that the original X-men looked exactly like the bourgeoisie at the time.  This was an epic point of relatability as they were concerned for the safety of those they loved and conducted rather normal lives.  They weren't fugitives; they were students trying to do what was best for an ignorant and intolerant world. With this identity of the X-Men firmly established you introduce new elements that will become relatable because the label has not changed.  The tenets and the belief system are not different, just the packaging.

So as I look at the fringes of society and the 'geek' and 'nerd' groups that enjoy eccentric entertainments I wonder if they have somehow been changed by their exposure to things like the Uncanny X-men as I have?  It is a fact that most people who read graphic novels and comics have a rather pronounced sense of detachment from mainstream society. Especially if they are an adult reader as 'mainstream' socialization tells people that a certain age is 'too old' to enjoy this type of entertainment. Yet it thrives as movies and television shows have tried to emulate these teachings about equality and the far reaching hand of justice. Even those who do not participate anymore in the reading feel a kinship towards the stories and are eager to engage childish sensibilities once again.  But the most telling is the fact that these sub-cultures of society exist and thrive outside of the machine so to speak.  It is an indication that it is possible.

For all change there has to be an entry way.  There must be those who dare, and those who succeed.  I’m just hoping that I have just enough Stan Lee in me to make a difference.

Perspective Bluff: The Leading Lady

I am a bit of a sociology buff.  It's one of those social sciences that I feel very connected to mostly because it's the study of society which is a construct made by us.  People.  So I read lots of sociology blogs and textbooks because I find the study of us rather fascinating.  Recently I've decided to embark on another odyssey besides romance novels.  I also would like to write self-help books for those members of society that would like to free themselves from the constraints of society which would benefit everyone overall.  My self help series will be about women and some of the common perception traps we often find ourselves in.  So here is a little sample of what I would like to confront.  We'll call this segment the leading lady.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching this romantic comedy called Just Wright starring Queen Latifah and Common.  Most days of the week you'll catch me watching some action or super hero movie.  It's just what I prefer.  There was nothing else on, and the part of the movie I chimed in on intrigued me because I've always felt like no one has ever dealt with this aspect of female socialization.  The aspect I'm talking about is the 'professional athlete wife’.  This movie confronted the common perception issues most people have with this designation of society.  It is a one sided account so while it was not very flattering to the image of the professional athlete wife it did show some deeper thought and intelligence directed towards the professional athlete.

The character development for the movie was pretty standardized. If you picture in your mind what the wife of a professional athlete should look like she is usually of a certain weight, height, hair color or texture and sometimes a certain ethnicity. She is what Hollywood would refer to as 'The Leading Lady’.  The leading lady is a concept that leads into certain beliefs about a woman and her worth in the world. Through her portrayal in the media the average person begins to believe that only certain types of women deserve to be treated well. A man should only fall in love with a specific type of woman. She should have certain types of friends, and participate in certain activities.  She should always dress a certain way, and she should always be perceived as the height of feminine beauty.  The Venus Di Milo if we are being specific. The movie has this fascinating scene during a game where the two female characters that will ultimately vie for the attention of the male lead are facing the wives of the athletes.  It was this stark cookie cutter scene where there were rows of women who physically looked nearly identical.

The brilliance of this movie was that the actual leading lady was Queen Latifah who by all standards has never fit into the so called 'leading lady' role.  At several times during the movie I myself questioned why she was cast as she was.  The story itself was a paradox as I found myself thinking about how implausible it would be for a professional athlete to even consider a relationship with someone who didn’t fit the standard. This even slight wondering on my part was quite an epiphany for me because I usually don't prescribe to these pre-conceived notions.  Then I had to acknowledge how invasive and brainwashing media can be.  Even though I knew that this was not such an odd occurrence and should in fact be seen more and not less, something niggled at me saying that this woman wasn't the woman that belonged in this situation.  She didn't have the right qualities to be loved by this type of man, and she shouldn’t be the focal point of this movie.  This was all based on her physical appearance alone as the movie was full of women that did fit that very narrow ‘leading lady’ designation.  But it was that setting that made the absurdity of it my thoughts so apparent.

What it made me realize is how victimized American culture is by the mandates prescribed by our media.  Women hate themselves for not being what media tells them to be, and men actively support it.  However this point is in all respects. While it seems that one end has it better than the other end, what is thought of an unconventionally attractive woman who endeavors to expound upon her beauty as opposed to a conventionally attractive one who attempts to hide it. This aspect of fitting in becomes a value system for self worth and societal standing.  The rating system wants to know how well you fit in, and the system is set up to punish those who do not conform. Consider what happens to an Amish who falls into prideful ways.  In many respects society seeks to do this to those who don’t conform, thus the many societal subcultures.

The irony of this was presented so very clearly in the movie as the standard ‘pro athlete woman’ was in fact a gold digger who didn't care about the man or the sport he played.  She cared about the status symbol he would become in her life and the exalted status that she would enjoy as his wife.  While this is an unfair assumption to place onto most of these women, how many of them have carefully cultivated that look so that this goal can be achieved? It was the believability of it that was the most startling as women do sometimes see each other as either a scheming gold digger or not. We limit what the other is capable of because of it. But in regards to the professional male athlete isn’t this type of wife a statement of the same value system? Even though the female lead actually had more in common with the male lead, when faced with a conversation with each of them he chooses the gold digger instinctively understanding that this was the proper woman to be with thus solidifying his place in the system. This is how he fits in and thus reaffirms his self worth.

The key to society working is the understanding of each other and the value inherit to certain aspects of humanity.  The world is growing more caustic by the day towards ideas of true charity and service because of establishing ideas of glamour and excess. Instead of correlating societal value to service, dignity, compassion, empathy and care, value is given to avarice, vainglory, and idolatry. The system is in place, and it is not a faulty system.  However the accepted qualities and designations of fitting in desperately need to be reworked.