Research Paper Final

Society Norms will be the end of individuality and uniqueness of a person. When you are being yourself you are almost seen as an outsider now due to the social norms that society has supported and upholds. Mikeliest in the video said “Modern society but with it comes its own conventions for example society allows to push the idea that your value as a person is based on things that are quantifiable.” This quote established the point that due to the “normalcy” of being a certain way an individual is almost numbered based on what they do and who they are. The narrator of this video, Mikeliest, uses pathos by providing related examples and pursing the emotions and feelings of the object in these scenarios to help the watchers understand that this actually happens to people in society and that not everyone can just adapt to a certain “norm” which shows that they are incapable. Mikeliest also uses logos because he provides a clear design of his argument, and he has a lot of examples and metaphors to further interest and prove his point to his readers. Mikeliest wants to drive home the fact that a person doesn’t have to be working, in a relationship, or a graduate from college to be successful and happy in society’s eyes. Not achieving certain things doesn’t make the score of a person go from 100 (in terms of success rate and happiness) to a 0 just because they haven’t done what society deems as normal.

The journal article “Are There Still Indispensable Norms in Our Society?” by Luhmann is an informative piece that not only shows social constructs at the time of 2008 but the author uses ethos to deliver the message that social values aren’t looked at in court and in the eye of the law, but to society it as seen as a way of living. Using ethos Luhmann uses a lot of different law system such as society norms in the eyes of Roman law, in Germany law, he even goes on to mention the Greek tragedies as a reference to his point. Luhmann even goes on to say that some society’s however do law completely based on what their society norms are, “They work with this presupposition because, for the legal system, it is a matter of ordering facts according to norms and deciding whether behavior corresponds to the norm or violates it. Therefore the legal system seeks the foundation for its own method of observing the world in the distinction between norms and facts. In contrast, sociology is free to deal with norms as facts as well – obviously as facts of a particular kind.” By writing this statement Luhmann is able to tell a different perspective of his objective whereas in some law systems and religious systems the social norms are what they judge you on and if not followed consequences are usually greatly followed, while other law systems and religious systems aren’t based on social norms and judge individuals on who they are as a person. Being that he used different countries law systems and religious systems it shows the reader different points of view on the story and if in this time they were to be living in Germany or Rome, Italy their social construct would be different compared to Americas social construct. “That a society with higher organizational demands must be founded upon a deviation from natural law represents precisely the noble stratum’s requirements for differentiation. Family genealogy must be secured through lineage, thus through marriage, whatever else the natural reproductive drive achieves in terms of pathologies. The nobility must be able to name property its own and defend it, whatever other requirements accrue.27 Stratified social systems compel inequality of rank and resource distribution and they see in this an essential (indispensable!) condition of social organization. That work must be done and thus freedom limited also belongs to this. It is only much later that this arrangement can be supported by an adequate appeal to earning and spending money, that is, by wage labor.” Luhmann also explain the fact that societies that are more organized must be more different than natural law. Due to many factors such as family genealogy where through marriage the family must be able to name property as their own and defend it. Luhmann also wants his readers to understand that social normality changes due to the face that there are different ranks and different ways of power due to social organization. Luhmann uses different laws and theories from different countries to showcase a more broader concept on social norms. Now his readers wouldn’t just think of social norms as something they see daily, but as something that all of the world impacts the judicial systems, religious system, and society as a whole.
The journal article “Norms Are What States Make of the Political Psychology of Norm Violation” the author Shannon uses logos to establish their point on why society and government embrace the norms that their communities have made but when it comes unto upholding to them and representing these ideas of normalcy that can’t seem to do it. The author uses very accusative word choices and informative to show their passion on the topic. “I assume that accountable leaders have political and psychological reasons for being sensitive to social expectations. Given this, norm conformity is the default option: norms provide simple organizing and decision rules for acting safely in one’s milieu, and conformity helps one maintain positive social reinforcement and self-esteem. Norm violation requires first that a conflict arises between leaders’ perceived “national interests” and a given norm, motivating them to perceive a situation in a way that would free them from a norm’s constraints. But leaders who value their standing in international society seek to avoid negative social judgments and are likely to violate the norm only if there is room for interpretation of the norm or the situation. If the norm and situation are ambiguous enough, motivated decision-makers may perceive the situation in a way that allows them to feel exempt from its moral weight.” Shannon uses words such as “sensitive”, “assume”, and “moral weight” to let readers feel their passion and stop and think about the situation as she is representing it. Shannon explains that the “actors” also known as politicians and upper officials often need to be subjective and seemed as rude based on their opinion of their communities social norms but the easier the norm the more easier it is for them to get into character as the actors she proclaims that they are whether they are governors or politicians.
Shannon also wants their readers to see the impact that something as basic as something a community does like having a community themed decorating every holiday or a candle lighting day and a person in power like a politician or mayor decides to take away those normal moments in that community due to the amount of pollution the hundreds of candle burning produce or the amount of electricity a themed decoration would create. So when reading this article the readers can see that when looking into government officials they spend time perceiving a situation away from the norm that their community or country is used which often causes a kind of shift in the government. Much like our former president, president Trump. He had many views that went completely against Americas social norms. Views like immigration, abortion, racism, and white supremacy. What us Americans have established as a social norm was seen as irrelevant to Trump and that’s what Shannon is trying to point out that many officials in power tend to withdraw themselves from the social norms that their country or community is fighting for.
The book “Constructing Normalcy” by Davis explains how the world is created with these invisible guidelines almost. As if there is a certain standard for a person based on their race, gender, sexuality, etc. Davis uses pathos to establish how he feels on certain social norms and how they have affected individuals who are disabled with being who they are. Davis also uses ethos and provides a lot of credibility to different books and paintings. Davis explains how “The painting by François- André Vincent Zuexis Choosing as Models the Most Beautiful Girls of the Town of Crotona (1789, Museum de Louvre, Paris) shows the Greek artist, as we are told by Pliny, lining up all the beautiful women of Crotona in order to select in each her ideal feature or body part and combine these into the ideal figure of Aphrodite, herself an ideal of beauty… By definition, one can never have an ideal body. There is in such societies no demand that populations have bodies that conform to the ideal.” Davis uses a detailed description of the painting to help his readers visualize and then further continue with his point of how not one woman can have the ideal body due to the social norm of how a woman should look like the goddess Aphrodite. Davis goes on to explain how the social norms of a society can be represented in a bell curve graph, “The norm pins down that majority of the population that falls under the arch of the standard bell-shaped curve. This curve, the graph of an exponential function, that was known variously as the astronomer’s “error law,” the “normal distribution,” the “Gaussian density function, or simply “the bell curve,’ ” became in its own way a symbol of the tyranny of the norm (see Figure 1). Any bell curve will always have at its extremities those characteristics that deviate from the norm. So, with the concept of the norm comes the concept of deviations or extremes. When we think of bodies, in a society where the concept of the norm is operative, then people with disabilities will be thought of as deviants.” Davis points out how people who are disabled since they usually don’t follow what society is deemed as normal, they are often put on the back burner or usually seen as different. Not only emotionally does this effect those individuals who already look or feel different, but we put a target on their backs in society that if they don’t act a certain way people won’t accept them which is entirely not true.
In the video Social Norms by Mikeliest he uses pathos to help his readers understand and visualize the point he is trying to get across. He provided an example where he has a set of workers who follow the social constructs that we live in talking to a guy who wants to know whether or not he should get a job. The conversation goes from them explaining the number of hours it takes for them to work, how a lot of the time they have to do work at home where they don’t get paid for, and just the negatives that no one really talks about when you mention having a 9 to 5 or any job that is deemed successful in this community. The guy soon realizes that he might not want to work due to the fact that he doesn’t want to live a life where he has to put in 50 years of work to get the benefits that he wants and that having a 40 hour/ week job only has a 2 week break every year, but it is needed to get food and a house. Mikeliest goes on to further explain that the person eventually decided to take the job, but because of him now taking this job he starts to compare himself to his coworkers and the people around him due to the fact that society bunches different people and personalities into one building. Using examples like these doesn’t only prove the narrators point, but it also shows readers that these social norms doesn’t work for everyone and how insane it almost sounds when you question them. The readers get to have a more broader understanding of society norms that they probably haven’t even thought about since engraved in their head when younger is that going to school and getting an education is what you need to succeed or working in a government job or private company is making it, when there has been so many examples of people doing the opposite and being successful today. People like Elon Musk, the founder of Apple Steve Jobs, the former founder of Amazon Josh Betos all of these men went against the social norms of their community and look at where they are today.
The article “What are Social Norms You Follow Them Every Day Without Even Noticing” by Amber McNaught explains how society follows these norms and they might not even know what they are doing or conforming to because it’s their regular routine. McNaught uses pathos to establish her point to her readers. She provides examples such as chewing with your mouth close. This is one of the biggest social norms that’s labeled the right way of chewing, however without noticing it we do it since it is seen as bad mannered and disgusting. Another example she provided was the norms of public behavior, she mentions basic things that you might find as respectful rather than conforming to society. Such things like “not cursing in polite conversations”, “being kind to elderly, like opening the door or giving up your seat”, “Say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when asking or doing something.” McNaught uses common things and behaviors that everyone does to showcase the point of how social norms doesn’t always have to be something out of the ordinary it can be something that you do on a daily basis without noticing because it is the polite thing to do. McNaught goes on to explain that, “Social Norms are unwritten rules that are acceptable in a society. They provide us with an expected idea of how to behave in a particular social group or culture. Norms change according to the environment or situation and may change over time. Social norms operate to build and maintain society. Social norms are informal understandings that govern the behavior of a society. Norms can be cultural products that include values, customs, and traditions. These represent individuals’ basic knowledge of what others do and think they should. When we follow the norms of our society, we are participating to either maintain or challenge it. The idea of norms provides a key to understanding social influence in general. Norms provide order in society. It is difficult to see how human society could operate without social norms. Human beings need norms to guide and direct their behavior to provide order. We need order in social relationships and to make sense of and understanding of each other’s actions.” A reader reading this would be able to relate completely to what McNaught is trying to explain due to the fact that she uses very simple word choice and has an almost informal tone like it’s a personality quiz but in paragraph form.

References
Luhmann, N. (2008). Are there still indispensable norms in our society? Soziale Systeme, 14(1), 18–37. https://doi.org/10.1515/sosys-2008-0103
McNaught, A. (2017, May 8). What are social norms? you follow them every day without even noticing. Lifehack. Retrieved December 8, 2021, from https://www.lifehack.org/587690/what-are-social-norms-you-follow-them-every-day-without-even-noticing.
Shannon, V. P. (2000). Norms are what states make of them: The political psychology of norm violation. International Studies Quarterly, 44(2), 293–316. https://doi.org/10.1111/0020-8833.00159
Social norms – youtube. (n.d.). Retrieved December 8, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVO6jDbhcU4.