Daniel Yankelovich, "Stepping Off Maslow's Escalator" (1984)

1.       When do we find self-realization?

2.       Is the “self” only defined by caring for others?

3.       Why are we so obsessed with find our-selves?

I don’t think that there is a certain point in everyone’s lives where we find our-selves.  Yankelovich says at one point that someone describes when someone close to them was near death and it was then that they reached self-realization. He also gave the complete opposite example of another person that was near death and how he didn’t seem like himself and that he would reminisce about when he was a child. Personally, I think that not everyone will leave this world having a confident outlook on whether or not they reached self-realization.  It is something you may reach by just living your life and realizing the things, people, places, etc. that you like and that you can relate to. You may think that you have reached self-realization at one point and later on in life realize that you hadn’t.

 I do not know why psychologists and the everyday person obsesses with “finding themselves.” I don’t understand why it is so important to reach self-realization…I think It’s better to go on living your life day to day and not spending so much time on over analyzing whether or not we are the best self we can be. Also, maybe if people didn’t spend so much time analyzing this thought than they might actually reach their “perfect self,” just through living and making mistakes and learning from them.

However, I do think that once you are confident with you and what you have become in your life than comes the caring for others (not that you can’t care for someone/something without reaching self-realization). I just think that once you have reached this point in your life than you can allow yourself to be vulnerable and tell people about the mistakes you’ve gone through in your life, in order to help them with something they might be going through. It’s almost as if you don’t need to be fixing anything in yourself so than you are able to help others with themselves.

Kincaid's, "A Small Place"

1.)    Overall, is tourism good or bad?

2.)    How come when we become tourists “we become ugly?”

3.)    Does this make readers want to visit or avoid Antigua?

Overall, tourism is good for every country. Without tourists some cities or even larger areas wouldn’t flourish and this might even result in poverty.  “An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you, that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness (you do not look the way they look); the physical sight of you does not please them; you have bad manners 9it is their custom to eat their food with their hands; you try eating their way, you look silly; you try eating the way you always eat; you look silly) they do not like the way you speak…”

                I totally agree with this excerpt from Kincaid, although it may come off a bit harsh it is very true. Most of us live in South Orange County where we experience plenty of tourism during summer time and we can all relate how annoying it is to try and go to the beach and have all these people taking all the parking and spots on the beach that are not there the rest of the 9months out of the year. We mock the male Europeans that are there wearing speedos or tiny little shorts because this is what we’re not use to seeing or accustom to, but to them this is normal. We get angry when we see a car with an out of state license plate causing traffic because there are sight-seeing or aren’t sure where they are going. But, we do not realize that when we travel somewhere that we never been or aren’t use to that we become these people that we despise oh so much. Why is it that when you take someone out of their normal element that they become “an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing?” Does it make us stupid that we aren’t familiar with a certain surrounding or do we come off stupid to the locals that live there…?