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The Big Questions
Unit One: Two Ways of Looking at You
When you think about your future, what questions do you ask? Why am I here? Where am I going?
What kind of experiences will I have?
Right now, the answers to these questions probably seem out of reach, unknowable. But the fact is,
you can determine some of those answers today, simply by the choices you make. This mini-course
was created to help you make the best choices. To do that, you need information about the “big
picture,” that is, the way the world looks when you have more of the facts than you do now. Our
hope is that you will gain a new, more informed, perspective on that world from working through
this course and making its information part of your life.
Some of the ideas you will meet here are challenging. They will take time and careful thought to
understand and apply to yourself, your relationships (friends, family, teachers, co-workers) and the
way you live. If you will contribute that time and thought, you will find that the effort earns you big
rewards in terms of your future happiness and the satisfaction you get from life. So let’s get started,
and by the way, we wish you a long and happy life!
Looking at you as a member of a group
One of the most important sets of information that you can learn in life is information about how the
people around you see things. How, for example, would someone you had never met before look at
you? What prejudices would they have? What expectations?
In this country today, there are two main ways of looking at people. One way is to see each person
separately, as a unique and complete individual. The other way is to see people as members of
groups. This second way is described in the chart below. On the left side is a list of the kinds of
groups that people are commonly divided into. On the right are the kinds of characteristics that
people have which allow them to be placed in a particular group.
You will notice that each of the categories listed below is based upon things like race which have equal
value. The value of one is no better or worse than the value of any other: For example, being white
is not better than being black, and being Asian is not better than being Native American because there
is no racial or ethnic “measuring stick” that can be used to decide that these different groups have
different value.
This is the reason that racism is wrong: it places different values on groups which are equal by nature.
You probably wouldn’t like it if people made judgments or decisions about you based on your
membership in a group that is supposed to be equal with other groups of the same type. If they
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