24
Oct 14

Paradigm Shift (Very) Rough Outline

  • Intro
    • Describe the shift – More people (especially Millennials) are planning on not having children.
    • What is happening? There has been a drop from 78% down to 42% in Millennial’s planning to have children in the last 20 years, and this number is continuing to decrease
    • Briefly mention various causes and impacts
    • For various reasons relating to economics, culture, society and social media, a shift is occurring in which less and less people are deciding to take upon the responsibility of having children.
  • Reasons for this shift (Some of these claims I don’t yet have research for but I’m making based off of personal observations. If I can’t find evidence obviously I wouldn’t include them)
    • The economy
      • The state of the economy is scaring many younger people looking towards their future. They don’t see the financial security required for having a child at any point in the near future, and so they aren’t planning on having them.
      • More people are beginning to see children as a financial burden due to the economy; whether or not they are financially secure, they don’t want to make themselves worse off by needing to spend money on a child
        • On average, raising a child in the U.S. costs about $240,000 not including college tuition
    • Women working
      • Traditionally, women stayed home to raise children while men went off to work. Our current society is much more questioning of these traditional gender roles, and we see more and more women going to work
        • With both the man and the women working in the house, both of whom value their careers, neither partner wants to take the time off the raise a child, and so they simply decide to not have one.
    • Increasing divorce rates
      • With the divorce rate being at about 50%, many couples don’t want to risk having a child with a partner they aren’t sure about
        • The divorce rate also discourages millennials from planning on having kids, whether with a specific partner in mind or not, because they see that relationships aren’t lasting anyway.
      • Related to increasing divorce rates, it seems that more and more people are shying away from long term relationships which only further discourages having children
    • Upcoming generations are less accepting of cultural standards and are more questioning
      • This is causing more and more people to critically think about the idea of having a child, rather than just doing it because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do
      • Numerous studies have been done on the correlation of having children and happiness. It has been found that generally those who choose to not have kids have happier lives.
        • This can be correlated to the above point; many people have kids without thinking about what is best for them. They simply do it out of tradition. As more and more people start to think about this life decision, they realize they would be happier without children
    • Those debating being parents don’t want to introduce children into the world as it currently is (This point is a bit more theoretical and personal, but I’ll try to find research)
      • Having been a young teenager myself, I saw what the average teen looked like, and I don’t have confidence that I would be able to raise one of the rare kids that isn’t drinking or trying drugs or having sex at 14 or 15 years old.
        • This can largely be attributed to the types of things that kids are surrounded with in terms of media, not necessarily bad parenting. It’s hard to lead a child away from all of the songs that glorify drug use and having sex; they’re even played a middle school dances. I, and many other people I know, simply don’t want to raise a kid in this kind of environment.
  • Effects of this shift (The shift is still occurring, so many of these are just theoretical. I’ll add more later)
    • Obviously a decrease in population (or at least decreased population growth rate)
      • This effect in itself will have widespread subsequent effects on food/ world hunger, poverty, etc.
    • Economic impacts
      • With less people there is a decreased work force which ultimately leads to less productivity and less being done.
      • Despite this, GDP per capita would increase, meaning individuals would have more wealth
      • Distribution of spending would change; with $240,000 not being spent on raising a child, where would this money be going?
    • Cultural
      • Cultural standards and tradition of generally always having children could be broken

17
Oct 14

Paradigm Shift Ideas

According to Time: Money, by 2017, millennials are going to have more spending money than any other generation. One of the main reasons for this is because they aren’t planning on having children. Just 20 years ago, 78% of millennials said they planned on having children, and that number has since dropped to 42%. If we extrapolate this, that percentage will continue to drop. But why could this be?

My paradigm shift essay will be about this change in millennial’s values and views towards children. Are more and more people starting to worry about their own careers and prosperity rather than starting a family? Children may be starting to be viewed as something that impedes one’s life goals. Maybe they are discouraged by the high divorce rate and perhaps no longer can commit to long-term relationships. Whatever the case may be, this change is happening and seems to be becoming more prevalent.

The effects of this shift also must be questioned. For one thing, having fewer children may help to alleviate the world of overpopulation. It could also be beneficial to the economy, but will also likely change economic focuses; according to the USDA, the cost of raising a child is about $240,000. This is $240,000 that isn’t being spent on food and clothing for children, so where is this money going to go? Is this shift going to mark the beginning of new cultural standards? All of this will be examined and more.


03
Oct 14

Rough Outline of Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Here’s the commercial.

  • Introduction
    • Call of Duty is a first person shooter style video game that has been around for almost a decade. With a new version released every year, it’s popularity continues to grow and each subsequent release breaks the previous years sales records.
    • One particular commercial for the game “Call of Duty: Black Ops”, released a few years ago, used interesting rhetorical tactics in an attempt to not only increase their sales, but to also broaden their demographic.
    • The ad cycled through a series of individuals all fighting on the same, middle-east looking battlefield. Each individual in the ad was representative of a different type person within society. For example, there are business men and women, construction workers, a cook, etc.
    • Each person has some sort of gun and the commercial goes from one person to the next, showing an action sequence for each.
  • Use of “Regular” People
    • It’s obvious that the main rhetorical component of the ad is it’s use of “regular” people. Because the developers and the publishers of Call of Duty: Black Ops want the game to be more casual and accessible to people of all ages, they have made their ad in a way that it caters to this audience. By using regular people, they are attempting to demonstrate that people of all ages, professions, genders, etc. can have fun playing their game.
    • Another thing to take note of is that instead of showing groups of people, each type of person get’s their own segment of the commercial to show that each individual is just as important as the others and that in a sense, each person is a hero.
      • This is an appeal to logos as well as ethos. Logically, people think that if they see other people of a similar societal role enjoying the Call of Duty world, they will too. For example, a business woman seeing herself in the ad will think that she too will enjoy the game. because other business women do. This is also an appeal to ethos because people are able to identify with the people in the commercial and have a certain degree of respect for that person and their opinion because they are so similar to themselves.
  • Use of Celebrities
    • The ad also features two celebrities (Jimmy Kimmel and Kobe Bryant), which carry a large degree of ethos. When people see these familiar faces with guns in their hand enjoying the action, they not only identify with that person, but also respect the legitimacy of their opinion. People look to celebrities to tell them what they should and shouldn’t like and when they see a celebrity endorsing a video game, they automatically assume that this game must have a certain degree of quality.
  • Use of a familiar, classic rock song (Gimme Shelter – Rolling Stones)
    • The song in this ad is classic rock, a genre that is normally familiar to a large variety of people. Older people/ adults have heard the song because it is from their generation, while teenagers have heard it because it’s a “classic”.
    • This does two things; first of all, the familiarity of the song among people creates a sense of unity between the viewers. Everyone recognizes the song and realizes that most other people have heard it as well. Call of Duty’s Publishers are trying to draw parallels between the song and the game itself. They are attempting to paint the game as something familiar and fun that everyone can enjoy and play together, regardless of what generation you’re from/ who you are.
    • The beat of the song itself also has a fairly fun vibe. This entirely sets the atmosphere for the commercial. Normally, a bunch of people shooting guns wouldn’t seem like fun, but the song contextualizes it to make it seem like shooting guns and using explosives is something that we can all enjoy because the song itself is pleasant.
      • The use of a familiar song is an appeal to pathos; for many older people, this offers a sense of nostalgia
  • Use of a commonplace; everyone wants to be a hero; everyone wants to be in the action
    • At the end, the slogan for the ad is “There’s a soldier in all of us”. This is meant to appeal to people’s’ desire to have their actions be meaningful. While the other aspects of the commercial show the viewer that they will have fun playing the game, this aspect shows them that they will be able to be engaged by the story and real like a real “soldier”; their actions will feel meaningful and heroic.
  • Lack of actual violence
    • Despite all the gunfire, explosions, rocket, etc. in the commercial, at no point does the viewer actually see anyone get shot or hurt
    • While this is something people wouldn’t explicitly notice, it is an appeal to pathos because seeing people getting shot is never really considered fun or playful like the rest of the commercial. The exclusion of this allows the commercial to keep the fun, action-packed tone.

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