If I Had to Explain, You Wouldn’t Understand

This is a picture of a recent weekend trip north of Traverse City, MI. my Fiancé and I, spent an entire day just riding. We rode up to a lighthouse, through Sleeping Bear Dunes, and all over some of America’s beautiful roads. Why I chose this photograph is because it reminded me of our recent reading by Allan Johnson, In The forest and the Trees, and Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear.
Johnson talked about symbols and value. “But most of what we value is what we learn to value through socialization in a particular system’s culture”(49). What he meant by this was that we value things we are taught to. Whether we are intentionally taught, even know we are learning values, or just absorbing them as we struggle through life. we are acquiring values. A person’s culture plays a huge significant role as to those values learned. I imagine there are quite a few cultures that would not understand the mentality of a biker. The meditation one gets from serene riding alone; no radio, no conversation, just open roads and thought. This is a culture that was learned as Johnson spoke of. The value one possesses was most likely a conscience choice of preference to things they were exposed to. Many cultures stereotype and fear the culture of a motorcyclist.
Most motorcyclists that are not casual riders, but bikers, are not the criminals that America portrays them as. They may be obsessive about their machines, similar to a hot rod guy about his car, or a polo champ, to his horse, but it is estimated by a few random polls that only 1% are Outlaw Bikers” This is explained by Glassner as he opened the chapter with “ Start with silly scares, the kind that would be laughable were they not advanced with utter seriousness by influential organizations, politicians and news media” (3). He was saying how most of this type of fear mongering, is