High School Lunch (Christine Porcaro, Week 7, Substantive)

So when reading part of the article “Anarchy is what States Make of it” by Alexander Wendt all I could think of the first day a new kid walks into the cafeteria in high school. I am talking about the part where Wendt describes the different security systems. Once the student enters the cafeteria each student represents a state. These first few interactions could be extremely negative where the new student is extremely rude to everyone and just assumes that everyone would just be mean any way. Not only is the new student mean but each student does not really like the other students. Each student wants to be more popular than the next. This sort of situation would create what Wendt defined as a “competitive” security system. The student could also come into the cafeteria sit in their own little corner not bother anyone. All the other students basically keep to themselves and just want to make sure that everyone has lunch. It’s not that the new student doesn’t like anyone they are just more or less indifferent. This would correspond more or less to what was categorized as an “individualistic” security system. Finally the new student could come into the cafeteria with a huge smile on their face and instantly everyone thinks that they are super awesome. Everyone already gets along, they all like to share lunches and talk about stuff that going on in their lives. This situation most mirrors the “cooperative” security system. I don’t know if this makes sense or why I wrote about it…it was just the only thing that kept popping into my head.