August blog post.

One concept that really caught my eye was system of meaning. This is really interesting to me because when I think about it everything does have a meaning in its own way. The system is a business, a family, a group of friends and anything else along those lines. What these are, is a set of assumptions, expectations or some sort of rules or norms that a group of people set for themselves. Within this group of people they all share the same sort of shared understandings. This is what a system of meaning means to me. How I can connect this concept in others ways is by looking at different kinds of cultures. For example take a Christian family and a Jewish family. These are both families but have different systems of meanings. They have different holidays, family traditions and celebrations. In other families there are different roles in their system of meanings. Take a typical American family, both parents go to work while the kid or kids go to school and then the kids get picked up by a parent after work and then they go about their normal evening with dinner and other activities. But take a family that has different roles for he parents. in some cultures only the man works and provides for the family while the mother is the one who takes care of the kids and does everything around the house. Instead of both parents providing. Each family is different and has a different system of meanings.

Why I think this concept is important is because this keeps things diverse and other people can learn new things. I think it would be quite boring if everything had the same set of norms. I also think this is important not just for others to learn from other cultures but to also keep the different systems of meanings alive so they can keep being passed down and even changed if they need to be, to see what is good and what can be forgotten.