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  1. Oct 2025
  2. bookshelf.vitalsource.com bookshelf.vitalsource.com
    Society: The Basics
    4
    1. Madi.cartwright 08 Oct 2025
      Hunting and gathering forced people to move all the time; however, once our ancestors discovered how to domesticate animals and cultivate crops, they were able to stay in one place. Raising their own food also resulted in a material surplus, which freed some people from food production and allowed them to build shelters, make tools, weave cloth, and take part in religious rituals. The emergence of cities led to both higher living standards and a far wider range of jobs.

      To me, this passage means a lot. It reminds me everyday to be grateful for what I have and for the people who got us here. I can’t imagine it was easy to live during a time where you could only raise your own food and had to constantly move. To me now, I constantly eat out and live in Phoenix which is a big city. This has always been normal life to me, and seeing how others started making “cities” by using shelters is insane to me. I wonder how many shelters would be in one area back then? How often did they have to move? What kind of food did they eat regularly? Did they know how much of an impact they’d make in the future?

    2. Madi.cartwright 08 Oct 2025
      Worldwide, about 8 percent of children never go to school and about 25 percent never reach the secondary grades (what we call high school). As a result, between 10 and 15 percent of the world’s people cannot read or write. In the last few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted schooling around the world and, in mid-2022, schools remained closed, harming millions of children in low-income nations (Roser, 2021; World, Bank 2022b). Global Map 15–1 shows the extent of illiteracy around the world, and the national comparisons in the text illustrate the link between the extent of schooling and economic development.

      Hearing that 8% of children never go to school and 25% never reach high school is gut wrenching. It made me realize how truly lucky and blessed I am to have a good family, live in a nice area, and a nice country. How do people manage to live life without being able to read or write? Do these people struggle to read labels on food? COVID also affected my own schooling as I was in 7th grade when it hit. School didn’t go back to normal until my sophomore year. Even then, rules that changed after COVID are still in place. For example, retakes used to not be allowed in high school but after COVID, it was district rule we got to retake anything as much times as possible. Sometimes I still wonder what college was like before COVID? How has it changed since then? Are professors more lenient now than they used to be?

    3. Madi.cartwright 08 Oct 2025
      About 64 percent of U.S. adults report that they pray at least weekly, and 34 percent say they attend religious services at least monthly (Smith et al., 2022). National Map 14–2 shows the share of people who claim to belong to any church for counties across the United States.

      This genuinely shocked me. For my entire life, I believed that around 75-80% of people went to religious services weekly. Seeing only 34% say they attended religious services shocked my system. I grew up in an area where almost everyone went to religious services and it was difficult to find someone who didn’t. Are certain parts of the country more religious than others? Are there more religious services in higher populated areas compared to lower populated areas? Do more people attend monthly rather than weekly?

    4. Madi.cartwright 08 Oct 2025
      Our culture celebrates romantic love—affection and sexual passion for another person—as the basis for marriage. We find it hard to imagine marriage without love, and popular culture, from fairy tales such as “Cinderella” to today’s television sitcoms and dramas, portrays love as the key to a successful marriage.

      This passage definitely opened my eyes. My whole life, I’ve always thought that getting older meant I had to get married and find my “true love.” This made me realize that our social norm has made our life revolve around love and marriage. It made me start thinking, what would life be without love? What would like be without marriage? Would this make life easier or harder or would not much change?

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