Violating Social Norms

We, as individuals, have values associated with everything around us, including other human beings. In a more sociological term, values are how, as a group, we tend to relatively see things as desirable or not (Values.) Since we all individually want to see people act in a certain way around us, in search of the middle ground for everyone, we have established numerous social norms, the standardized rules that a society—big or small—lives by, to regulate how the members of such society behaves. There are two special kinds of norms: folkways and mores. Folkways are casual norms; in other words, they are norms that originate from casual activities and interactions that are routinely repeated in everyday life, and that, in turn, regulate them. …show more content…
Whereas I would normally make my order facing toward the employee, I decided to go against such convention and have my back turned to the employee for the entire time I was being helped with making my sandwich. Although I was not a new customer to the restaurant and therefore made my order relatively easily in such situation, I was considered strange because I was normally expected to face anyone—let alone an employee of a restaurant—that I engage with. Because my norm violation required me not to visually engage the employee, I wasn’t able to observe how she visually or behaviorally reacted to my idiosyncrasy. However, she clearly made audible gestures, such as under-the-breath giggles, which exhibited her amusement from the unexpected situation. I could tell that other customers in line behind me were quite intrigued by my gesture as well, although they all went about their business and let me be after a few seconds of silently questioning me with their interested eyes. There also were a couple of kids that were chuckling and letting their parents …show more content…
Also, I noticed that the recognition of social norms comes at a quite young age by the way the kids reacted to my violation. Without having a certain level of understanding of the norm I’m breaking, the kids wouldn’t have reacted the same way as they did to my violation. I couldn’t help, then, but think how important it is for the parents in our society to properly instill clear and unadulterated knowledge about our common norms in their children. Furthermore, for them to teach their kids that the certain violations come from the difference in our values is crucial so that when it’s time for them to partake in our society as its influential members, they will have learned to embrace the differences they see in life and not blindly put them down because we see them as blatant violation of our normal life, just like some of us sadly do today regarding race, religion, culture, etc. I hope that our folkways and mores change so that in the future we don’t look down upon the things we unreasonably do today as a society, before which change obviously needs to happen the change in our individual values. Once the society as a whole advances and makes progress on expanding the social boundaries, the more difference we can embrace, the