Time=Money?

“Time is money and money is time.” This is just one of the many American values that we discovered this week in class as we began observing our culture with a more critical eye. Values are defined as socially shared ideas of what is right. Some American values include achievement and success, freedom, material comfort, and democracy. One of our first assignments was to identify some of these cultural values and how they were presented in advertisements and commercials. It never struck me how most, if not all of our advertisements are built around these values. For instance, in the “Five Hour Energy” commercials I watched they had several people with different occupations and all of them were people who had gone through eight hour work days, but still had to take care of their children or do other work. After watching this commercial from a sociological perspective, I realize how much stress our society places on achievement. Achievement is measured in our day to day live; it doesn’t necessarily have to be measured in terms of one’s life. In the “Five Hour Energy” commercial one woman had the pressure of successfully completing several things in one day: an eight hour work day, a workout, and making dinner for her family every night.

Values are supposed to be a good aspect of culture, but they can have negative effects. For example, our country places such a high level of importance on achievement that we put necessities like rest and time with family on the back burner. There are millions of people in America who have weak relations with their family because they are always working. In that way precisely I see our values affecting my day to day life. I’m a busy person; between my extracurricular activities, community service, honors and A.P. classes, and college applications I rarely have time for family or rest. However, I can’t just stop partaking all of those activities because then what would I have achieved in high school? Such a situation seems like the ultimate paradox. Which is more important achievement or leisure time and family? This question continues to follow many Americans. We are not sure of the the answer, so I guess in the mean time we’ll all just drink our “Five Hour Energy”.