Not Your Typical Sociologist

2011-09-30T10:11:00.000-05:00

Mind...what a waste

I want to make clear a couple of points I raised in Wednesday class; they have to do with my intellectual orientation to the study of human behavior.

First and foremost, I am a behaviorist. This means that I observe everything that humans do in terms of behavior. This includes thinking, feeling, etc. As such, the purpose of a human science is to explain or account for behavior. I do this by using the evidence generated by research conducted by behavior analysts. Why? Because after years of consideration, I have concluded that they have the best empirical evidence to support their claims. In addition, many claims made by behaviorists have been confirmed through other research.

Second...please don't think that because I reject the notion of "mind" that you have to as you don't. Your acceptance or rejection of this claim has no bearing on how well you do in the course. The reason I reject it is because I believe that the issue is explaining behavior (see above) and I think the addition of something called, "mind" to do that is unnecessary and misleading.

In addition, if we posit that people act because of mind, we have a problem...mind is an immaterial object...this means that it has no empirically identifiable properties (you can't touch, taste, hear, see, nor smell it). As such it is similar to a "ghost" or "spirit" and these notions are rejected by scientists because we cannot verify the existence of them. Put simply, based on what science has demonstrated after hundreds of years of application is that an immaterial object (mind) cannot control a material object (body). If we accept this premise, we have no reason to use the scientific method anymore because it is rendered useless since it is based on empirical observations.

So, what does work to control human behavior? This is still not well understood, but we know that the brain plays a part (if not THE part). Notice how a brain is not the same as the "mind." The brain has an empirical reality, whereas mind does not. So, if we want to find out the role that brain plays in human behavior, we have something to work with. Many people will say, "mind" when they are really referring to brain; I prefer to just say, "brain" if that is what I am being referring to.

Not me

2011-05-27T21:39:00.001-05:00

I realized today that I am not the source of my own life. I don't animate myself. I did not create my life. I am something that's been created. Consequently, I am a fiction.

2011-04-12T15:42:00.000-05:00

Recent rant on a list-serv...

RE: students not being able to pass the citizenship test and/or not being aware of current events...

I, too think that this is disconcerting, however, I am not that surprised. Given that our economy is one of consumption, it makes sense that students (and others) are busy consuming...entertainment, food, time through the ubiquitous use of social media, etc., at the expense of "school." School inevitably loses in the competition for attention, if for no other reason, our marketing budget is far, far less than that of the entertainment (read "product sales of any kind") industry. Let's be realistic, they out-spend us annually by billions of dollars. Who can compete against Xbox? Facebook? iPhones? Chili's? American Apparel? Consider that students are exposed to thousands of ads on a daily basis for these "products" and weigh that consideration against paying attention to stuff that is decidedly NOT entertaining...politics? social unrest in other parts of the world? genocide? nuclear meltdowns? "Nah, pass the chips and salsa, the remote for the Tivo, and the Corona...I got better things to do (like entertain myself) than watch this depressing crap."

Don't forget, we are also dealing with the leftover (now reheating) "culture wars" which equated being educated with being an elitist or, God forbid, a liberal (several years ago I had a student in class state that, "Science was a liberal endeavor"). And many states are cutting funding for education in a hopeless attempt to balance budgets, AND the unemployment rate is still high, AND the feds are cutting education funding...makes sense to me that more kids are opting for entertainment VS reality -- hell, reality sucks. Entertainment is...entertaining!!!

Last time I heard about "job creation" it was the creation of lower-paying (i.e., not much education required) jobs, so who needs to "waste time" getting an education when it isn't going to pay off? I have seen articles in various mediums discussing how getting a college education isn't worth the money! Plus, most of my students work AND go to school, so when they are not busy with family, school, entertainment, they are working (consequently "entertainment" is most appealing).

In sum, I think we are fighting the proverbial uphill battle; I don't know how we are faring in the war, but it sure seems like we ain't winning.

Email to some friends...

2011-03-26T13:41:00.001-05:00

Mother Nature is awesome...I think she does these things to remind us humans that despite all of the BS we tell ourselves, we ain't runnin' shit, SHE is in charge.

For better or for worse (worse in this case), nuclear power IS the best solution (currently) to the massive energy needs that we, China, India, Japan, et al have right now. If you set aside the dangers (hard to, I agree), it IS the cleanest form of energy production that we have on the scale that we need (and we ARE going to run out of oil someday). Sure, passive is great, but it is not at the capacity to replace traditional forms of energy just yet. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason solar and other sources are not more available is BECAUSE of oil companies, nuclear energy companies, etc. But unless we want to return to a pre-industrialized form of society (i.e., no electricity), then this is what we are stuck with. At Dharma Farm (our place), we are try to live with the least amount of energy, but not easy to do.

War...I have come to respect the people in the military -- they are all brave people (far braver than I). What pisses me off is how American Presidents use these people in such a cavalier fashion -- doesn't matter what President. I also think that our choice of wars reveals the duplicity of our government. There are "humanitarian" crises in many places around the globe (Darfur, Ivory Coast, etc.), but we don't give enough of a shit about them to enact a no-fly zone. Here we come back to the energy issue again -- sure seems to me that we only decide that a conflict requires military intervention when our "national interests" (read: access to energy resources) are threatened. I would have far more respect for leaders if they were at least honest with populations -- "We really don't give a rat's ass about the Libyan people, we are kicking the shit out of Gaddhafi because we need the oil underneath Libyan soil." And the reason for increasing gas prices around the world is NOT due to a lack of oil from Libya (Saudi is making up for any reduction), it is ONLY because of speculators -- the same assholes who brought us the financial meltdown that we are still reeling from. Of course, THEY get the bailouts while we get the shaft.

From the mouth of the babe

2010-12-05T14:39:00.001-06:00

My son went to an Xmas event at church the other night. He told me that some girl was bothering him, so he called her a "dumb ass." Then he clarified that what he really called her was a "dumb asshole."

My first thought was, "Son a bitch, son, you can't say shit like that at church!!!"

How I wish I could speak the truth.

2010-12-02T10:36:00.002-06:00

It's the behavior, NOT the revelation about the behavior

I heard on the news on the way into work today that some folks are claiming that the Wikileaks cable release about the Yemeni President lying to his country about U.S. bombs dropping in Yemen might serve as a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. This immediately reminded me of when I worked with substance-abusing felons...

Part of my job as a counselor was to challenge them about their behavior and to encourage them to be honest about any behavior that violated the rules of the treatment center. This was in keeping with the treatment philosophy of "honesty is integral to recovery from substance abuse." If they admitted to a violation, however, they would receive a consequence. Needless to say, it was indeed challenging to get them to fess up. What was interesting was their main reason for NOT fessing up; it is essentially the same thing that is happening with the above situation.

Their argument was that being honest (i.e., fessing up) would cost them...and indeed in one sense, it would and it did. As such, it was in their best interest to lie. I pointed out that this was in fact incorrect. It was not their HONESTY that resulted in the consequence, it was their BEHAVIOR that resulted in the consequence. In other words, it was not the revelation about the behavior that was consequential, it was the behavior itself.

Put simply, don't do stupid shit and you don't have anything to lie about; you can in fact be honest with people about what you have been doing.

Who knew that people in power could act like felons?

2010-12-01T10:01:00.000-06:00

( Some comments I made at an Honors Reception)

Beware the Glittering Generality

I want to start by asking you to consider the following three statements from three different individuals, all made within the last decade…

1) “I think our core businesses are extremely strong. We have a very strong competitive advantage. Of course, we're now transferring this very successful business model and approach to a lot of new, very large markets globally.”

2) "The fundamentals of our economy are strong,"

3) "There is a reasonable chance that the biggest part of the housing correction can be behind us in a number of months -- I'm not saying two or three months but in months as opposed to years,"

Now before I tell you who made these statements and when, I want to ask if you noticed any similarities among them? Aside from their assessment of the economy and/or their business?

If, when asked to notice similarities, you thought of the use of the words strong, successful, competitive, correction, advantage, all different in form, but similar in type (they all speak to something that is good, a “virtue”) then you are on to something. The question is, of course, what are you onto? The answer is…propaganda. And more specifically, a specific form of propaganda termed, Glittering Generality.

I can hear some of your thoughts (Sociologists are imbued with psychic powers, so beware what you think in our presence) Propaganda you say? In America! In the 21st century! Nyet! Can’t be so! You’re lying!

Um, yeah, afraid not that I am lying and afraid that what that is…is propaganda. In America…in the 21st century…so common…so much a part of our culture…so integral to the discourse of our culture (especially political discourse)…that we don’t even notice it.

And why should we notice? Very few of us have ever been educated about propaganda. We might hear about it and the word might conjure up images of soldiers with rifles, charging a hill or decrying bad habits during wartime, but most of us have never been educated on recognizing the more subtle, linguistic, discursive forms…the forms that dominate our social world.

Believe it or not, there was, at one time in our national history, a brief 5 year period during which a concerted effort was made by a national organization to do precisely that…to educate the general public on propaganda in general, and seven specific forms it takes, in particular.

This work was conducted by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Inc. A non-profit organization founded in the United States in 1937. Its aim was to educate the general public on recognizing and then refuting propaganda. It produced pamphlets, newsletters, even a few books, all intended to raise public awareness about propaganda, which they defined as

“…expression of opinion or action by individuals or groups deliberately designed to influence opinions or actions of other individuals or groups with reference to predetermined ends.”

Or to put it another way (my words)

“Specifically designed linguistic and visual efforts to rouse people to respond in precise ways without requiring their conscious acknowledgement”

Or perhaps, even simpler…getting people to do stuff without thinking about what they are doing.

Now, as I mentioned, the institute actually identified seven forms of propaganda. Time does not permit me to explicate each form, but briefly, we have:

Glittering generality

Name-calling (So and so is a communist, socialist, Marxist, etc.)

Transfer (all members of the Tea Party are patriots)

Testimonial (Wear Hanes underwear because Michael Jordan does!)

Bandwagon (Don’t be the last one to join! Have! Get!)

Card-stacking (Gay marriage will destroy the moral fabric of America!)

Plain folks (You betcha! I’m not a witch, I’m you!)

All of these share several features...

First, they are designed to shape public opinion

Second, they are designed to inhibit consideration, i.e., thinking

Third, they are designed to get people to respond in specific ways

Fourth, recipients (i.e., the public) are not supposed to notice that they have been designed nor are they supposed to notice their effects; they are simply supposed to respond.

Powerful stuff, eh?

So what about the statements that I started this with? What was the form of propaganda they employ? Oh, yes, as mentioned, they use something called, Glittering Generality, which is:

“…associating something with a ‘virtue word’ [it] is used to make us accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence.”

Let’s hear those statements again and this time listen for the “virtue words,” the Glittering Generality

2) "The fundamentals of our economy are strong,"

3) "There is a reasonable chance that the biggest part of the housing correction can be behind us in a number of months -- I'm not saying two or three months but in months as opposed to years,"

Did you hear them this time?

Remember, I pointed them out earlier; they are:

strong, successful, competitive, correction, advantage

Notice that they all are “virtuous” and suggest “good” things… strong, successful, competitive, correction, advantage

These are things that we all want, right? Only a fool would not want them!

Do you see how they almost immediately stop any questions, any discussion, any consideration of their accuracy? We are supposed to take the people who said them at their word. We are supposed to say, “Okay, nothing to worry about, we can relax…”

The problem is that at the time each one of these statements was uttered, there WAS something to worry about, things were not going “swimmingly.” Who said them and when?

The first, was something Ken Lay, CEO of Enron said during a conference call with employees right before Enron tanked.

The second statement was made by John McCain during his campaign for Presidency at the beginning of the financial crisis, and

The final statement was made by Hank Paulson, Treasury Secretary during the Bush Administration at the start of the housing crisis.

And how was the public supposed to respond when hearing these statements? Were they supposed to question them? To challenge them? To attempt to refute them? It doesn’t seem so; rather, it seems that they were uttered in an attempt to allay any fears about what was occurring to our economy.

So, why talk about propaganda? Why give examples of glittering generality? Is it to bring everybody down? Poke our society in the eye? No. It is a small attempt to continue the work started by the IPA back in 1937. A brief, however limited, endeavor to educate us about the efforts of other people to direct our attention, our thinking, and ultimately, our behavior. It is to increase critical analysis of social discourse and social interaction. It is to invite everyone to develop a healthy skepticism about what is being said by whom and perhaps most importantly, WHY something is being said. Our world has always needed well-educated, thoughtful, people. We need those same kind of people today. We desperately need a well-educated public in this country. We have a future that is like so many other futures of years past…uncertain. We need to take action to make sure that all people are prepared to respond effectively to that uncertain future, to respond in ways that will ensure a better world for all of us, to increase the chances of us individually and collectively living to our fullest.

2010-10-07T19:01:00.000-05:00

Building character for whom?

Just dawned on me that the "build's character" adage has been usurped by corporations. Historically, it made sense to work hard and build character because the individual benefited from that labor. Today, however, it is the corporation that reaps the rewards from the sacrifice of the individual.

Hmm, that sounded kind of Marxist...

2010-09-16T13:55:00.002-05:00

PETA and Propaganda Analysis

I recently became interested in the study of propaganda and more specifically the analysis of propaganda in the media and in written/verbal discourse. In searching for sources on propaganda and the analysis of same, I came upon materials developed by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis, Inc. (IPA) This organization, established in 1937 (and dissolved in 1942) in response to the recognition of the impact that propaganda had on populations during the first World War and subsequently in the development of public relations, advertising, and marketing, identified seven techniques that propagandists use to influence individual and group behavior. Six of the techniques are listed here (name-calling, glittering generality, testimonial, transfer, plain folks, bandwagon); the seventh, card-stacking is defined as “…the ordering of facts or falsehoods, illustrations or distractions or distortions, logical or illogical statements, in such a sequence that the best or worst possible impression will be made (Lee & Lee, 1939).” I wanted to see if there was any evidence that any/all of these techniques were still in practice today, some 70 years after their identification. I discovered that they were; in fact, I think it is reasonable to conclude that they dominate much of the political, marketing, advertising, public relations discourse that we are immersed in today.

One example of their application comes from an analysis of a document on the PETA website; itis an argument for the recognition of animal rights. I used a qualitative analysis software package to identify any uses of six of the seven techniques (I conducted this analysis before I learned about the technique of card-stacking; primary source material on the seven techniques developed by the IPA is difficult to obtain). I developed codes (a methodological element of content analysis) for each of the six techniques; they were: PF (plain folks), Tran (transfer), GG (glittering generality), Test (testimonial), BW (band wagon), and NC (name-calling). A screen shot of the coding of the PETA document using the software is below:

Using one of the features of the software package, I was then able to determine the frequency with which each of the codes appeared in the document; this is represented by this graph:

As you can see, the techniques of transfer and glittering generality were used most often. The reason why is probably due to the nature of the argument. Recall that the document is attempting to argue for recognition of animal rights. In other words, the argument is attempting to suggest that animals have rights just like humans have rights. As such, one would expect seeing the technique of Transfer used as there are repeated concerted efforts to get the reader to equate animal rights with human rights, i.e., transfer the notion of inalienable rights, historically associated with humans to animals. Similarly, Glittering Generality is used to make the Transfer easier. This is accomplished by associating “virtue” words that are normally used in reference to human beings with animals. In fact word, “right” is an example of Glittering Generality all by itself.

From this analysis, it is apparent that the propaganda techniques identified by the IPA are still alive and well.

2010-06-16T22:15:00.000-05:00

Reality is relentless

I have been on anti-depressants on and off for the last fifteen years (mainly on). During the summer, when I am not teaching, I will stop taking them to give my body a bit of a rest. I am doing that this, summer, too. I have been off for four weeks or so. What I have noticed is that reality, the actual experience of life, is intense; in your face, 24-7. It is not unbearable, but it is relentless. I could start taking them again for some relief, but I no longer want relief; rather, I want freedom. I know that if I persist, I will learn to live with all of the sensations of life. When I am comfortable in my own skin, I will be free. I guess relentless is how it is going to be from now on. I need to learn how to ride it and not get involved with it; detachment is the word, I await the result.

2010-06-12T15:19:00.000-05:00

The Buddha says...

That we have six sense organs...eyes, ears, nose, tongue, touch and...mind. So those thoughts that run through my head are just sensory data...they are not me. Cool.

Humans are verbs...

2010-06-11T22:41:00.001-05:00

Not nouns. Their is no listener, there is only listening. There is no thinker, only thinking. There is no -er, only -ing.

2010-06-07T19:20:00.000-05:00

Freedom isn't free...

It's highly regulated. Posted this notion on my Facebook page and got into a cyber shouting match with a friend of mine. Some conditioning is very hard to overcome (for both of us).

To me, it seems patently obvious that we are not truly free in the U.S., despite claims to the contrary. I understand that power of conditioning, but this seems like a fairly mundane observation. We cannot do “as we please” in this country (or any other for that matter). Of course, we can do some things, but if freedom means the ability to engage in behavior without consequences or fear of consequences, then no one is free. The physical environment limits our freedom...I am “free” to walk through a wall, but I will be stopped as soon as my body makes contact with it. People don't seem to have a problem understanding this one.

What is more intriguing and apparently much harder to see, is how we are regulated by our social environment, too. Funny thing...many people claim to dislike the federal government and all of the regulations on our lives (I being one of them), but we gladly regulate each other (“Hey, cover your mouth when you sneeze!”). Prime example is our wearing of clothes. I don't know the history of clothing, but I suspect that it originally was borne out of body decoration and/or necessity for protection against the elements. Either way, today it is a requirement, not an option, when we are out in public. Today, it seems the reason we are required to wear clothes has nothing to do with either decoration, nor protection, but to cover up our “privates;” (after all, there are laws against going nude in public) again, absurd...who has never seen him or herself without clothes on? Are we unaware of what we look like nude? Similarly, I would suspect that at a fairly early age (especially if one has siblings) one sees a person of another gender nude. So, really, is there a need to cover our “privates” when a) we all have them and b) everyone has seen at least their own and in all likelihood, someone else's too? Sure, there are situations in which nudity is “legal” (truly an odd idea...our bodies being, “legal”), but we learn at an early age that we “...have to put on [your] clothes before leaving the house.”

Of course, the prime irony is that we have made the culture that we live in. We may have little control over who gets elected to write our laws (We don't get to “choose” our candidates, they are chosen for us and we get to vote for whomever is left after the weeding out process), but we sure do like to vote for regulatory legislation. To be sure, not all regulation is bad, and some of it makes sense in terms of protecting ourselves and each other; but to claim that we are free or that we are the “free-est” country on earth (whatever that means) is at best inaccurate and at worst a nice tool to get people to act against their own best interests.

2010-06-05T20:59:00.002-05:00

Let's see, where was I?

On the road to perdition or was it liberation? It was both, that's right.

I've noticed just how insane my (I'll keep it local) brain is. There is absolutely nothing wrong in my life at any given point in time, yet if the activity and resulting emotional sensations in my brain were the sole source of evidence, I would be convinced that my life was terrible, horrible, really no good. Not me, per se, but my life. Astonishing how brains become conditioned and retain that conditioning.

The upside (I suppose) is that the neural insanity prompts me to be free of it. Not simple relief from (which is always temporary), but freedom from forever. There are many who have taken action to achieve a similar freedom, but I am not interested in ending my life. That is not what I am talking about. Due to karma, God's grace, serendipity, whatever, I KNOW that there is an alternative that can provide that permanent freedom. I don't know much about it and knowing about it is really irrelevant. What is relevant are the actions that I can take to align this body with it. Challenging? To be sure. But not challenging like many, many other people are challenged on a daily basis (my life is good, remember? I AM one of the lucky ones). It seems to be the most (at least right now) compelling task before me; I am lucky that it is this way.

So, how do I know that such an alternative exists? Because I trust what certain people have told me and continue to tell me. These people are incapable of lying. First is my (Divine) Mother; there is absolutely no way in hell the She could, nor ever would, lie to me or anyone else. I know, I have looked Her in the eyes and She has returned the look and when you peer into infinite patience, compassion and love, you are more than convinced. Second, Eckhart Tolle; another person incapable of telling a lie. Where Mother loves me no matter what I do, Eckhart explains the freedom that I seek and does it in an approachable, understandable way (for me). All sanity, all freedom.

The others...the Buddha, Christ, Adi Shankara...have shown me the way out and God does know that the day will come when I step through that door.

In the meantime....where was I? On the road to perdition or on the road to liberation?

2010-06-01T19:50:00.002-05:00

America...land of the scared shitless

Went to the SS office today to order a new SS card as I lost mine over 10 years ago. While waiting in the lobby, my wife calls me on my cell phone. I answer and start talking to her. The security officer comes over and tells me that I can't talk on the cellphone in the lobby and I need to go outside if I want to continue the conversation. I hang up.

It comes my turn to actually meet with a SS employee, I am polite, but not talkative. She starts asking me about my weekend, where I went, why the conference I went to was over Memorial Day, etc. This, of course strikes me as odd because I have not noticed any of these people (including her) carrying on this kind of conversation with anyone who has gone before me. Again, I am polite, but not real forthcoming.

I ask her why you can't use cell phones in the lobby. She looks quizzical and says she doesn't know why. She then offers a possible reason...people might get distracted (from what?? the stunning interior of a federal building?). I tell her that there are no signs posted about no cell phone use in the lobby. She pauses and says, yes there is one by where I had to get a number (to wait in line to see her).

On the way out, I notice the sign she is talking about. It is one of those that someone prints off of a PC, about 8.5 X 11 that has a cell phone with a crossed-circle over it. It is barely noticeable. There is another, similar sign that indicates that you cannot take any photos in the building either.

Now, let's see...who paid for the construction of that building? Oh, that's right we did. So who owns that building? Oh that's right, we do. So we pay for and own a building where we can't use a cell phone and take pictures of the interior (as stunning as it is) and the people who work there don't know why we can't use the cell phone to talk to anyone. I figured if I ask why we couldn't take pictures, I would end up in hand-cuffs for asking too many questions.

America, once the land of the free, now land of the scared shitless and suffocatingly regulated.

Tarpocalypse

2010-05-31T08:08:00.001-05:00

Definition: The collective outcome of the BP spill...

2010-05-27T11:32:00.006-05:00

James Cameron...epic tool

My review of Avatar (from a couple of days ago): Cruel, exploitive fantasy; some reasons 1) takes a "white" guy to save the indigenous people, 2) the indigenous people are victorious in the end, 3) military personnel are depicted as blood-thirsty dumb asses. Cameron is a tool. He should have just made a history of dominant-minority group relations throughout the world, that would have made him LOTS of money as there is plenty of blood, destruction and misery...not fantasy, either. What a colossal waste of money and time at the expense of indigenous people everywhere. Anyone with courage will just read, Bury my heart at wounded knee (Brown) and My life on the plains (Custer) at the SAME time -- no one has the courage to make those two into a movie because they are TOO !@#$% real.

Update (today)...Let's see...why the f*ck does James Cameron have to make a g-d cruel, exploitive fantasy when it is playing out before our very own eyes, again? Oh, that's right, fantasy makes money and reality...makes people wonder...can't have that, right?

2010-05-26T18:38:00.002-05:00

It's all about timing...

Doesn't it just send chills up your spine when you are peaking on LSD, standing in the kitchen of a suburban home with your college roommate and his mom, thinking about synchronicity and the timing of things when the mom turns to you, looks you straight in the eye and with a seemingly manic smile on her face says, "It's all about timing, isn't it, John?"

What was that phrase? "Fucking eh?"

2010-05-26T18:31:00.001-05:00

Why free markets are neither

We'll start with the easy one...the idea of there being such things as “markets.” There are not, nor have there ever been any such things known as “markets” – there are people, period. A person is not a market, nor is a gaggle, nor a murder, nor a herd of people a market. There is a simple proof of this...if a “market” was a real thing, it would have, in the very least, observable properties (like people do), it does not. Subject it to this simple test; ask yourself if you can do any or all of the following to something called, a “market”: See it? Touch it? Taste it? Smell it? Hear it? If you think you can do any one or all of these things to something called a “market” you either need medication or you are an idiot – your choice.

So, first lesson...no such thing as markets. If there are no such thing as markets, it is not possible
for them to be subject to any kind of condition known as “free,” or any other condition for that matter (mixed, planned, etc.).

Second one...”free.” If we have determined that a “market” cannot be free because, first and foremost it does not exist, then it cannot be “free” either. Something that has no existence...has no existence and cannot be subjected to any kind of condition (re-read the first two paragraphs if you are having trouble with this notion of something that does not exist being subject to any set of conditions.) People, however are another story.

People do have properties and as such, are subject to various conditions, so presumably, they could be subject to a condition known as “free.” They are not free, however, nor will they ever be. It makes no matter where they live, where they have been raised, nor who has done the raising. Why? Because anyone who has been raised with, or by, other people has had (and continues to have) their behavior shaped by those other people. Put simply, they have been trained. Specifically, they have been trained to respond to the environmental conditions that surround them. Any being that can be or is, trained, is by definition not free. A person who has not been trained by other people is known as a “feral” person and the evidence for the existence of such a person is sufficiently, if not completely, lacking. Feral people (presuming that they do, or have ever existed) have been trained too, just not be other people. Feral people have been trained by their physical or non-human environment. The simple fact is that any organism, any animal, cannot and does not survive without training. Since animals are only capable of responding to their environment, they are not free; the environment sets the standards, the animal responds.

Simple test again...try washing your dishes without any clothes on, with no one else in your house. Try NOT eating your favorite food...ever. Try being honest with your boss. Try NOT working to earn money to by food, to pay bills, to pay a mortgage, to pay for your cell phone. Try any and/or all of these and you will discover, quickly that you are not free. You CANNOT be free; in fact it is because of your lack of freedom that you CAN read, think, tell yourself that this is complete bullshit and the author is a communistic-fascist (no, I am NOT Dick Cheney), feed yourself, etc.

And if anyone thinks that markets are free (regardless of any of the above), bankers, CEO's, and world leaders sincerely thank you for this belief as it fills their coffers on a daily basis. In fact, it is these folks who love it when those of us who are not in privileged positions like they are talk about how much we want free markets.

So, no markets...no free. Just people, just training, just exploitation of that training.

How it went down

2010-05-20T20:24:00.001-05:00

Powerbrokers: Okay, here's the deal. You get to be President, but we get to do whatever the fuck we want.

Dubya: Cool.

2010-04-22T10:33:00.002-05:00

Heresy? I think not

Sent the following to Common Dreams, but they didn't publish...I hope that they are not getting to the point where one cannot criticize "progressives" -- seems to run counter to progressive principles.

"Murder" in Iraq? A response

I, like many others, became aware of the military gunship video of the shooting of journalists, other civilians, and children in Iraq, released by Wiki-leaks earlier this week . I, too, was moved and horrified by the audio and video of the incident. I would hope that anyone with a conscience would have a similar response.

I differ with others, however, by characterizing this event as "murder" and by placing the blame for this incident solely on the shoulders of the men in the gunship and their superiors. Normally not one to buy the rhetoric of "it was taken out of context," I think this clearly applies in this instance. To be sure, people were killed who shouldn't have been and this is, of course, tragic. The issue of why they were killed can only be understood by orienting the actions of those who engaged in the killing within the proper context, however. Note that I am not attempting to deny the fact that the killings occurred, nor that someone should not be held accountable. Rather, I am saying that there should be someone (or rather some "ones") held accountable, but unfortunately, many are misidentifying who those are. My reasons for this claim follow.

First, it should be remembered that our soldiers are trained to successfully kill whomever has been identified as the enemy. Since the Vietnam war, they have been trained much more effectively to kill than ever before. This should come as no surprise to anyone as presumably, we have the armed forces to protect us and they do this by ensuring that when called upon, the threat is eradicated as efficiently and completely as possible. Put simply, they do this by being very good at killing. They are not more bloodthirsty than anyone else, they are better trained. As repugnant as this may sound, this is what we expect from our soldiers; we want them to be able to kill others at a higher rate than they are killed.

Second, they are trained to discriminate between the enemy and civilians, but since Vietnam, clear discrimination about who the enemy is has proven to be much more difficult. Why? Because many times the enemy does not wear a uniform. We are all familiar with the evidence that in most armed conflicts of recent memory, "the enemy," oftentimes are regular people who wear regular clothes. This is perhaps especially true in our conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Does incorrect discrimination occur, then? Absolutely. Should we simply accept that it does? That it is part of of war? No. We should continue to improve our soldiers' ability to discriminate. Easy to say, not easy to do. We should also, however, appreciate the tenuous situation that we place our soldiers in when we ask them to fight an enemy that is not easily identified.

Third, our soldiers are getting killed...daily. I have never been in an armed conflict, nor have I ever been in the military. I have read numerous accounts of those who have and as such, I understand that despite the fact that they have been trained to kill others, they are still human. They still feel fear, terror, frustration, powerlessness. They still experience these feelings (at rates and intensity levels most of us have never known) and yet they continue to do what we have asked them to do. To say we put our "troops in harms way" is nonsense. Our troops are commanded to fight and they are expected to continue to fight until they are ordered otherwise. And in addition to our expecting them to successfully dispatch the enemy, we expect our troops to die for us. We expect them to expose themselves to daily attempts to be killed. We expect them to witness the horrible destruction of their friends.

We expect them to do all of these things, while feeling fear, terror, frustration, powerlessness at levels that most of us could not withstand for a few moments, let alone for days on end, and then we hold them to a higher standard when they err. Of course the error is tragic; how can it not be given the situation? But are the women and men who make the error solely to blame for it? I don't think so, because they are not in control of the situation; they are only responding to the situation as they assess it (initial reports stated that the civilians had no weapons; more recent reports stated that several of the citizens were carrying AK-47's) and as they have been trained to respond...which is no different than anyone of us.

While it seems that some soldiers in the gunship were callous and devoid of empathy, I would suggest that really what occurred was that they simply had put their humanity on hold (In fact, I would argue that part of their training on how to effectively kill others required that they put their humanity on hold). I would suspect that when they return to civilian life, many of them will desperately regret this and perhaps other behavior they exhibited while on the battlefield. I have heard from many returning soldiers that they regret their mistakes, but they have to live with them, just like most of us do. Most of us, however, are fortunate enough to not have to make mistakes in such a hellish arena where the consequences are irrevocable, chilling, and tragic.

So, who is ultimately responsible for this? I strongly suggest it is the leaders who sent our troops to Iraq in the first place; the Bush administration and the feckless members of Congress who failed to stop them. They are the ones who commanded our troops to engage in this action, they are the ones who are responsible for all of the death in Iraq and they are the ones who will undoubtedly escape any consequence for any of it. Prosecuting the soldiers on the gunship for murder only serves to provide those whom are truly guilty more reason to sleep easier at night as they are not the ones who have to be held to account for their actions before the world.

2009-10-30T09:16:00.000-05:00

there ain't no escaping it

I would argue that any human being that has been subjected to a socialization process can never move beyond social control. This is an unavoidable outcome of living in groups and the fundamental requirement of having to learn things in order to survive. Learning is the same as social control...both are about behavior change in response to group pressures/forces/dynamics. Couple those dynamics with the educational system we have today and IMO, it is evident that there is no way to move beyond social control -- this is why I use the example of being nude in the summer. Even if someone did this, I would hazard a guess that s/he would have some kind of physiological response to being nude in public. I think we would characterize that physiological response as "shame" or "embarrassment" -- both are evidence of having been raised among other people; both are internalized mechanisms of social control.

I am in favor of students learning through inquiry and discovery -- both of these processes and their respective outcomes are not asocial; they both require some kind of context. As soon as we include a context for them to occur, we are back to living in groups, being consistently and unavoidably subject to social control. Don't forget that everyone engages in social control...students, professors, teachers, etc.

2009-10-29T10:11:00.001-05:00

The bible, science, and evolution..oh my!

my post to a sociology list

Couple of responses...If you read my initial email on this topic, I don't say that any traditional story should be/is accepted as source material for scientific inquiries. To be sure, myths, fables, fairy tales, etc., are just more data for analysis from a sociological perspective.

I also know that the scientific method, too, is subject to the same kind of analysis, i.e., it is behavior that humans engage in (both verbal and non-verbal) and, as such is available for analysis. I say this to acknowledge that although I endorse its methods, standards, etc., I am very much aware that the knowledge produced by it is not, "the truth," but is provisional. I think that we all agree that any scientific inquiry has limitations, no one claims that it does not. Hence, I am quite comfortable telling students that although there are limitations, this is the best method that we have come up with, so far, that permits the pragmatic utilization of knowledge, i.e., we use the knowledge developed through the scientific method and it appears to work as anticipated...planes do fly reliably. Much of the knowledge produced by the scientific method has proven to be both reliable and durable; note that these are some pragmatic criteria for the establishment of something called, "truth" -- if it works, it is true. Pragmatism does not provide evidence of an ontological reality, however and from a human standpoint, that seems to be just fine.

As to evolution then, I tell students that based on the methods of science, the theory is supported by the evidence. I remind them that the methods used to establish evolution as a reliably plausible explanation for genetic change and stability are the same methods that are used to develop life-saving medications. So, if they reject evolution because it is "only a theory" and it is not supported by the facts, then I challenge them to wonder why they don't reject the use of medications for the same reasons. Medical researchers are still not convinced about the causes of many diseases (just read the other day in New Scientist that there are some who are looking at the evidence that OCD, schizophrenia and several other, seemingly well-understood biological processes, might be caused by viruses), but they continue to develop interventions, based on the empirical knowledge that they have so far about diseases and although treatments are not perfect (i.e., they do not rid the person of the disease in many cases), they do provide relief, amelioration, etc.

RE: offending someone's faith...First, I just think it is wrong for me to use my authority (which is there whether I want it to be or not -- basic sociology, yes?) to tell them that they are wrong about what they believe. Hell, most Americans think that something called, "America" is a real thing, despite the lack of empirical evidence for its existence (consider how many have given their lives because of it. I especially am not going to tell students that they might, or that their loved ones have, given their time, energy, sacrifice, lives for a "social construction." Waaay to immoral for me). Heck, I bet that there are some on this list who firmly believe in "America." This goes back to the previous discussion about "shock and awe" in the classroom. I do shock, not because I want to shock people, but because empirical findings ARE shocking. I see my role to introduce students to the empirical evidence (after explaining to them the "rules" for the scientific method), however shocking it might be, and to help them make sense of it sociologically. If they choose to believe differently as a result, so be it. If they reject my explanations for the evidence, so be it. Not my role to convince them of the supremacy of knowledge based on science because of the reasons stated above.

2009-10-27T11:12:00.003-05:00

ignorance truly is a social disease

sent this to a sociology list in response to a colleague getting some grief about using "upsetting" material in the classroom...

I have to admit that I find it odd that anyone would suggest that any practitioner within a scientific discipline would employ specific pedagogical techniques designed to "shock or upset" -- sounds like your Dean is confusing reporting scientific information in creative ways with the idiocy that passes as substantive commentary in the media (think Glenn Beck et al).

I find it particularly ironic that a biologist would question (or characterize it as upsetting or shocking) the utilization of a heterosexuality questionnaire to point out how sexual orientation is entirely a human creation. Any biologist knows that "sexual orientation" in any species is a non-starter -- there are many species that display "hetero-, homo- and bi-" sexual orientations (for whatever those ridiculous characterizations are worth), why would humans (since we are animals) be any different? Many species are hermaphroditic...would a questionnaire designed to inquire about reproductive organs within a human population be considered shocking or upsetting? I am sure it would...but that isn't the issue. The issue is that we present scientific data/findings since we are part of the "reality-based community" and unfortunately, many students, parents, administrators, etc., have a hard time accepting social-biological reality.

Ignorance is a deadly social disease, IMO.

2009-10-13T11:04:00.000-05:00

It is all so disturbingly simple...

I approach the discussion of social inequality by providing a fairly simple definition that seems to permit most, if not all students, the ability to grasp the meaning without any personal association. It is a blend of several different concepts that are covered within our discipline:

Social inequality is the categorization and ranking of people that result in an unequal distribution of valuable social resources.

Starting here, I can then discuss and demonstrate how this process results in differential life outcomes based on a person's categories and ranking(s). I bring in real-world examples that, in all likelihood, DO result in personal associations, but this is done in the context of discussing inequality as an observable social reality VS something someone should feel ashamed and/or guilty about. Furthermore, I tell them that part of our job as sociologists is to observe this phenomenon and report our observations to the public; it is then THEIR decision to do something about it or not. I also point out that we have no (or very little; hunter-gatherer societies, perhaps) observations on what an equal distribution of social resources produces in terms of life outcomes, so we don't really know what difference it would make. I do point out what we do know about the impact of the unequal distribution in terms of human suffering and achievement, however.

Now, when I work as an applied sociologist (as opposed to a "professor" of sociology), I adhere to humanistic principles and strongly advocate for a more equal distribution of resources. I do my best to keep the two roles discursively separated, though, when I am in front of a class.

2009-05-23T14:26:00.002-05:00

can't i enjoy just a little payback every now and again?

posted to a sociology list...

Sometime last year when it was finally coming to light how complicit our beloved gov't was in the use of torture, there was a discussion on this list as to whether certain practices constituted torture or not and/or whether or not it would be appropriate for the U.S. to use these methods. I found it incredulous that an issue such as torture could be considered a reasonable topic of debate among any behavioral scientists, let applied sociologists list, but I know I am subject to fits of naievte. I recall at the time that I suggested that anyone who didn't think waterboarding constituted torture should subject him or herself to the technique and then make their assessment. For those on the list that chose not to do that, permit me to ask you to watch/read this.

I also recall at the time, that i argued that there are some things that are true regardless of definition. the effects of waterboarding is one of those things, as is persistent hunger, cold temperatures, physical beating, dehydration, etc. Definitions are for the privileged elites that are free from many, if not most of the consequences of their individual as well as collective behavior. Harsh reality is the privilege of those less fortunate.

Funny, this ridiculous notion of having to define things before actually doing anything about them...Blumer, arguably one of the fathers of symbolic interactionism, knew full well the limits of definition as he stated that there were "obdurate realities" that existed with our without definition. water being forced up your nose while your body is restrained strikes me as one of the obdurate realities...

IMO, this persistent knee-jerk reaction to having to define things before doing anything is precisely why applied sociology remains a stale discipline. that and the fact that there are some who claim to be applied sociologists who willing entertain the notion of torture as a viable applied technique.

2009-05-14T17:28:00.003-05:00

Tool Time

Was reflecting on how there is so much disdain toward educated persons among my American brethren...stupid fucks that they are (my American brethren, I mean). Dubya has to be the poster-boy for this. Stupid motherfucker bragged about being a "C" student at Yale. Imagine, bragging about how you squandered an education at one of the most highly respected institutions in the entire world. Now that is DEFIANT IGNORANCE if i ever heard it.

God, help us. we are fucked.

How to respond to right wing rhetoric

2009-05-13T20:57:00.001-05:00

Sent the following to Common Dreams, but was not published...

How to respond to right-wing rhetoric

The best way to respond to right-wing rhetoric (RWR) is to ignore it. Keep asking questions, keep presenting the facts, keep challenging; ignore the response(s) that you get. Why? Because RWR is designed to do one thing...get you to shut up. RWR has no basis in truth, accuracy, reality, etc. It is simply a tactic by the right-wing to get anyone questioning any of their actions off their ass. I know this because I used to work with felons.

For several years, I worked in a judicial treatment center for felony probationers. One of my responsibilities was to confront our clients wherever and whenever their behavior was in violation of our rules. As to be expected, almost all of our clients had “reasons” for why they did what they did. I quickly learned that their “reasons” were not reasons at all, i.e., they were not explanations for their behavior; rather, they were statements made with a specific purpose in mind...to get me off their back. Some of our clients did this knowing full well what they were doing. The vast majority, however, did this because it had worked for them in the past; they had found themselves in a situation in which they were at fault, did not want to suffer the consequences for being at fault, and continued to supply “reasons” to explain their actions. This was not done to responsibly account for their behavior, but to reduce the likelihood of actually receiving any consequences for their behavior. How did they know when to stop supplying reasons? When I or someone else stopped asking questions, stopped challenging their responses, stopped presenting them with the facts. Right-wingers do the same thing.

Need evidence for this? Consider the seeming myriad of reasons that Bush Co. gave for invading Iraq...Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the people needed liberation from Saddam Hussein, they had biological weapons, Saddam was in cahoots with Al Qaida, etc. None of these actually had any basis in known and established fact, nor did they need to be for the purposes that they were provided to the national and international public. They were simply attempts to get thinking people to stop asking questions.

Why write this now? Because it is easy to see the same dynamics occurring currently in regard to the torture tactics sanctioned by Bush Co. They employed torture...to extract valuable intelligence, to prevent another 9-11, to protect the U.S., because they were scared, etc. All of these are irrelevant and none reasonably account for, nor rationally explain why, the former administration gave the green light to torture people. They are stated simply to get us to shut up, get off their ass, and stop asking questions.

Let's not fall prey to the tactic. People who are concerned about our country and the

world, need the truth to be told.

You read it here first

2009-05-13T20:49:00.001-05:00

Industrialized countries are going to tank. Our current level of consumption, economic systems, and resulting organization procedures are unsustainable. There will be a massive infrastructural break down that will result in communities being isolated from one another, the loss of basic services, and a return to a subsistence economy. The lifestyle that many of us are living today will become legendary, i.e., the stuff of legend. Never again will human beings live like we do now.

2009-05-11T14:58:00.000-05:00

Kant and immaturity

so beautiful, it makes me want to cry!

2009-04-29T23:06:00.000-05:00

We don't live by the rule of law, we live by the rule of consequences. Laws without consequnces for violations are not laws; suggestions, guidelines, perhaps, but not laws.

Life

2009-04-05T15:38:00.001-05:00

i just don't get it...

2009-04-01T20:28:00.003-05:00

you want to be free?

then understand first that you are ALWAYS being controlled. there is no autonomous person. it is not possible for anyone to be fully free. the "freedom" that all the yahoo right wingnuts cry about (figuratively and literally...think Glenn Beck) DOES NOT EXIST. simple empirical test...go to work tomorrow naked. or ATTEMPT to go to work tomorrow naked and see what happens.

can't do it? coward...so much for your freedom...

Sin...seems to work

2009-03-30T10:35:00.001-05:00

In church recently, listening to the Pastor's sermon on sin. Started thinking that the notion of sin as supported by social contingencies certainly seems to be quite effective in maintaining social control. Of course it is not just sin, per se, but anything that can be characterized as “bad” by community members. Considering how seemingly powerful certain primary reinforcers are (sex, violence, etc.), we should really be more surprised that not MORE people are engaged in those behaviors than already are. Of course, there is good to reason to suspect that much “sinful” behavior is not reported, but apparently there is not enough to have a significant impact on the overall existing social order.

Republicans are out of new ideas...

2009-03-29T18:24:00.001-05:00

aren't they always? Why is this so surprising?

OMG!!! I'm one of them!!!!

2009-03-28T22:12:00.001-05:00

I remember one day when I was in college and it dawned on me that I had become one of those people that my mom had told me to be careful of. I actually felt sort of empowered by that realization. I figured if I was scary to other people that was a good thing...little bit of power, just in my appearance. Not bad.

2009-03-13T13:40:00.007-05:00

even further down the road of liberation through conditioning principles...

equanimity is the result of habituation; not responding to various stimuli as they appear in the environment. this can be accomplished with the DRI of attending to breathing.

2009-02-19T15:11:00.001-06:00

later that same day...

I think to determine if the example below would be considered entitled behavior would require some social validity work, i.e., how many people would see the behavior described below as "entitled." I can certainly see how it could be construed that way. The verbal behavior that the patient displayed seems to be in accordance with my noting that one would anticipate the use of mands at a higher frequency among those considered to be entitled. I would suggest that the patient is manding the nurse..."i ain't taking your meds...where [the fuck] is my yogurt...you treat me like this..." Similarly, this VB could be considered "verbally aggressive," yes? The question is, how is "verbally aggressive" behavior materially different than non-verbally aggressive behavior? Change in decibels? pitch? use of certain verbal operants as opposed to others, other bodily movements?

My attempt at this was to identify certain behavioral topographies that if demonstrated to a group of naive observers, the general understanding would be that at least one person (recall I noted that it needs at least two; in the case below it is the nurse and the patient) was engaging in "entitled" behavior. I see this as a way of grounding those fictions that we started this thread with. We all acknowledge that there is something called "entitlement," the question is how does that manifest behaviorally? There must be some kind of necessary and sufficient topographies that would result in people calling (tacting?) that behavior "entitled."

I don't work in the field of autism, but basically, there is some standard that BA's are using when teaching kids with ASD how to make contact with more reinforcers in their natural environments. I would suspect that aside from developing the specific behavioral sequence (chaining) that is done, there is relatively little thought given to why THIS behavioral chaining? In other words, when teaching kids (autistic or otherwise) how to make contact with reinforcers, we are teaching them a "standard" way of doing something. Many parents want to teach their kids to be polite. Polite is a construct. Behaviorally, what does "polite" look like? We all know it when we see it, so it should be easy to identify the material properties of it. What my little exercise taught me is that it ain't that easy!

2009-02-19T14:40:00.003-06:00

what is entitlement, really????

post to a behavior analysis list...(I'm getting braver)

I realize that XXX was posing the question below in jest, but it got me to thinking...entitlement is one of those fictions/constructs that is similar to pornography ("don't know how to define it, but know it when we see it"). certainly, the notion of "entitlement" is an explanatory fiction, but it does have certain behavioral topographies, yes? desirous of maintaining a behaviorological accounting of entitlement, I started wondering what those topographies might look like; specifically, how do we know that someone is entitled? or acting entitled?

I decided to use XXX's example of the landed aristocracy as a starting point. Not having spent time with landed aristocracy (that I know of!) nor having made any systematic, observational study of them, I can only speculate based on my imagination of what those behavioral topographies might look like. Since it takes at least two to "produce" entitlement, I will consider what behavioral topographies one might observe from the "entitled" and from the "deferential" (for lack of a better term). Note that I am not addressing the contingencies which produce the topographies, but merely attempting to identify those that would most likely be observed.

DEFERENTIAL

(when in the presence of the entitled) bowing, kneeling, head lowering, eyes lowering, eventually body/eyes becomes stationary, "flat affect," verbal behavior only in response to verbal/non-verbal behavior initiated by one of the entitled. Frequent use of verbal behavior such as "Sir, sire, madam, your grace, your excellency, etc." Rapid, yet precise movements when given a mand.

ENTITLED:

(when in presence of deferential) standing or sitting in positions that result in the least amount of physical discomfort, or walking, frequent use of mands, eye movement, movement of arms, hands.

Whew, that is hard to do! Incomplete due to my inability to find precise terms (and not constructs!!!) to describe the behavior. Maybe others can continue, edit, etc.

I am interested in this as a form of analysis as in my Soc courses, we of course discuss "normal" behavior. I tell my students that normal is just a description and what it generally refers to is behavior that a seeming majority of people engage in at one time. Hence, "normal classroom behavior" for students is sitting, not talking, facing the board, and other bodily movements that are restricted to a particular area of the desk or table. "Abnormal" behavior would be jumping up and screaming. Many times when I ask what is normal behavior in classrooms, they say, "listening" -- I always laugh and say I can't tell if you are listening or not! Unless one is deaf, there is good likelihood of the vibrations coming from my mouth are vibrating bones in your ears, but beyond that, I have no clue what might be happening.

Interesting exercise to try and capture the topographies that are associated with the constructs that we use daily. Difficult to do (at least for me).

2009-02-19T14:39:00.000-06:00

Wait, you mean I don't exist?

"I" is not an independent variable.

2009-02-19T14:35:00.002-06:00

exorcise those reified demons and be healed!!!!!

post to a sociology list...in reference to this article.

That said, I do think that we owe it to our students (especially those taking soc courses) to explain to them how arbitrary a "grading system" is. I mean, why do have a 100 point scale (generally)? Where did that come from? I don't know, but I do know that it was not a command from on high and it does not represent any particular human property that can be measured with any precision (learning, knowledge, information, etc.). We forget that a 100 point scale does not mimic anything in nature; in other words, nature doesn't care about our grading scales, letter grades, IQ tests or any of the other stuff we have created over the last few millennia. Nature produces human beings which are subject to "learning" but there is no "grade" for that learning in nature other than the ability of the human being to survive. It seems that we have forgotten that grades are human creations; we have reified them so much so that we really believe that they are accurate measures of something related to humans, something that has discernable, material properties. They do not.

If you stop and think about it, how do we know that our students have learned anything? We "know" because they are able to respond a certain way (by answering questions, "correctly," i.e., presumably differently than that would have absent our "teaching"). In other words, it is a behavioral indication. We presume (without any empirical evidence) that this behavioral indicator is representative of some kind of immaterial property of the brain/human called intelligence, learning, knowledge, etc. These things are not amenable to empirical investigation as they have no material properties; like many of our colleagues in other behavioral/social sciences, however, we are pretty much convinced that they DO exist. This is our error.

I understand that we have an expectation of students getting an "education" (whatever that is and however that manifests behaviorally), but I think many students are savvy enough to know that there is a particular, material object that is going to provide them with tangible benefits that may far outweigh whatever it is that they learned in school and that is, of course, the diploma...a piece of paper that we have reified as yet another object that supposedly is evidence of something called an "education." Is that a bad thing? I don't know. I do think that we have an obligation to discuss these things (including "grading systems") with our students, however.

2009-01-20T16:31:00.001-06:00

wow...

i honestly never thought i could ever say these words and mean them, but today, after seeing Barack inaugurated, i can honestly say that i am proud to be an American.

God has indeed, blessed America.

2009-01-09T13:54:00.000-06:00

by jove, I do think he is serious!!!

follow up post to same sociology list:

couple other ideas came to mind today after listening to a lecture on sustainability...seems to me that we need to be literate in areas outside of our traditional ones. areas that were once included in soc (early American soc), but have been neglected. these include evolution, biology, genetics, ecology; all of these have implications for sociology and sociologists. if we are not aware of the developments in these areas, then we cannot be great teachers, IMO. many of the non-social sciences are making claims about social behavior and social organization; they have more traction than we do because they come from a strong materialist-naturalist orientation. this is not going to change. this has been declared the century of the brain; we need to understand many of these topics much better than we do. in fact, i thought about writing a paper making a case that really what sociology should be interested in is how brains interact with each other; forget about selves or any of that other stuff.

i am sure someone will write such a paper someday; it would be nice for the discipline if it came from one of us rather than from a neuroscientist or a psychologist.

2009-01-09T13:52:00.003-06:00

hmmm, do you think he is serious?

my post to a sociology list asking for what qualities constitute a great teacher:

specifically, for us professors of sociology, i would say a fundamental and consistent understanding of the sociological forces that result in us standing in front of a classroom of students on a regular basis. i would argue that if one is not intimately familiar with these forces, then s/he is not going to be a great sociological educator; i suspect that one could still be a great educator, however.

i would go so far as to say that we should be able to teach an entire course of sociology with us as the subject of discussion; starting and ending with how we come to stand in front of a group of students on a regular basis. It's all there...stratification, inequality, conformity, deviance, socialization, status, role, etc.

2009-01-05T09:18:00.002-06:00

linguistic isolation

not necessarily a new thought, but the notion of different communities of people using different words (i.e., traditionally attributed to different ethnic groups) seems similar to genetic isolation. minority groups, historically, have remained fairly isolated behaviorally and it appears developed idiosyncratic ways of speaking (use of particular words that those outside of the group may not understand). due to a lack of inter-group interaction, these words remained within those groups and didn't spread to other groups (as in genetic isolation).

foshizzle

2009-01-05T09:13:00.003-06:00

father down the behaviorological road toward enlightenment

desire-craving occurs when reinforcers such as compulsive thinking are denied, when those reinforcers are place on extinction. presumably, then, what occurs is allowance of the craving to occur without reinforcement -- craving is the behavior of seeking -- and due to classical conditioning principles, eventually, the craving will subside and calmness will arise.

of course, the time frame for all of this to happen is unknown. given that much of modern, industrialized life requires constant immersion in verbal communities and thinking, the opportunity for this particular craving to extinguish is remote. all it takes is one intermittent reinforcement and it persists. hence, the reason for isolation as in a monastery, ashram, etc.

2008-12-17T18:17:00.001-06:00

i have the audacity to actually keep posting!!!

has anyone considered that "catching students at cheating" is ritualistic (i.e., Merton's ritualism) behavior? have we not lost sight of what teaching in general and sociology in particular are about? and since when did students become the enemy and/or a population that we need to be on guard of? are students really that different than any other population of people? i learned that lesson quickly when working with felony probationers; really not that much of a difference between them and others.

curious, the derision that students are afforded by many; almost as if there is a distinction between a "good" student and a "bad" student...where in my sociological training did i miss out on the notion that MORE categorization and ranking of peoples is a good thing? i understand the "in defense of elitism" attitude, but i much prefer those that embrace such an ideology to be upfront about it rather than masquerade as caring educators.

"catching students cheating" is not about education, it is about preserving an institutional relationship that is more reflective of the 19th century than the 21st. or at the very least, more reflective of elementary school than college. truly a bizarre notion, really.

2008-12-17T18:14:00.003-06:00

i hate it when i can't shut up

the world is tanking and academics are worried about plagiarism...

i haven't been following this thread that closely as i sometimes do as my semester has been ending and student plagiarism was not on my mind. so i don't know if anyone has offered this idea yet, but has anyone considered offering assignments that are difficult to plagiarize? it seems quite clear that threat of punishment, actual punishment, clarifying "how to write a scholarly paper, " etc., are efforts that are not working. why continue to create division between students and faculty by providing opportunities to plagiarize? it is obvious they will continue to do so when presented with an opportunity. why not develop assignments where plagiarism is virtually impossible?

second subversive thought...as someone else noted, this is indicative of the trend starting with Napster...why pay when you don't have to? why exert the effort to recreate what has already been done by someone else? this is not a trend that is going away anytime soon. i think that to the extent that we see ourselves as a bastion of morality, we are not going to connect with students. note that i am not saying that we should encourage plagiarism; rather what i am saying is that if what we are doing is not working, why not try something entirely different?

simple intervention (borrowed from the psychologists; something called spitting in the soup)...at the beginning of the semester, simply ask students how many of them are planning on cheating during the semester? get them to do a show of hands (I have done this and hands were raised). great opportunity to discuss consequences (not just institutional, but real life). similarly, before assigning a paper, ask how many are planning on just cutting and pasting from Wikipedia? tell them that you are not interested in regurgitation (i prefer a term that they can understand, so i just say, "puke") nor are you interested in their ability to utilize a search engine (unless, of course you are...). of course before doing this, you MUST know what it is you are interested in; of course, this latter point begs the question..."what IS the purpose of writing papers?"

is it not odd that we spend a considerable amount of time and effort in ensuring that we maintain this unproductive division between us and students? i got tired of the "gotcha" game when i was in college. i only like to do it now when i have some entitled kid who is damn sure that s/he is going to pass simply because they pout and sputter quite a bit.

2008-12-17T10:04:00.001-06:00

it's the schooling, damnit 2

was thinking more about this yesterday (a bad habit of mine...thinking about things) and i know that this will sound heretical (i prefer the term honest), but really what we are trying to do with our students, at least in terms of getting them to think critically, is resocialize them. i find that i have to contend with years of conditioning about world, self (mentioning the distinction between brain and mind -- how many students, let alone professors, eagerly embrace the news that mind does not exist? unsettling, yes, but that is what the empirical data indicate), economics, politics, etc. it's almost as if we say, "okay, you know all that crap you've learned about virtually everything in life? yeah, well most of it is mythology, propaganda, and most importantly, dead wrong...welcome to sociology!!!" seems like a real waste of time to "educate" students about the world for 12 years and then when they hit college tell them what is really up. and those twelve years of "learning" are not comprised of mere content, they represent at least 18 years of social conditioning...and we are supposed to get them to think critically in a semester or two??? something wrong with this picture.

anyway, here comes the heresy...maybe we need to learn some of the strategies that are used in total institutions to resocialize people since this seems to be the business that many of us are in. having worked in an institution of that sort, i know how effective they can be. so...classroom as total institution...interesting idea...?

2008-12-17T09:58:00.001-06:00

it's the schooling, damnit!!!

i was reflecting on the seeming differences between student learning in soc courses and student learning in the natural sciences (for example). my observation is that successful student learning in soc represents increased awareness about the social world, the relationships between individuals and collectivities (how narrowly or broadly they may be defined), and the impact of systematic categorization and ranking of peoples on those very same people. it would seem that in the other sciences, there is much more emphasis on memorization of material and less emphasis on any specific expectation of an increase in personal awareness about the world (granted, there is increased awareness of how material objects work, their properties, etc.). in other words, the other sciences focus more on content and less on changing thinking.

i suspect that this presumed difference is characterized in sociology by terms such as "increased critical thinking ability" or "evidence of obtaining a sociological imagination;" indeed, these are fit characterizations. what they seem to gloss over, however, are the institutionalized challenges that those of us who teach sociology must face. for instance, it appears to me that much of public schooling (elementary, middle, junior HS and HS) trains one to do fairly well at memorization (natural science approach) and provides little or no training to increase awareness of self in relation to others. as such, when students hit college and they take their first soc course, they might find it intellectually challenging (i certainly hope that they do) as i suspect that most teaching sociologists are not as concerned about students memorizing sociological terms as much as developing that soc imagination/critical thinking. having little or no experience in employing these skills, students are oftentimes confused about "what we want" as professors. of course, what "we want" is for them to think differently; not knowing that it is possible or desirable for them to do this (nor knowing HOW to do this), they may flounder. not necessarily a bad initial outcome, but one that can be stressful.

not wanting this to turn into a monograph, i guess my main point is that it seems to me that we have a much bigger task than perhaps other sciences do in terms of student learning. our goal is to (in some, if not most cases) reverse/change years of reinforced thinking about self and others. yes, we do this through presentation of "facts" and data; but many of our facts and data run counter to what most people are taught (just think of social construction of just about anything, but most especially gender and race, for example). most students will not be "surprised" to learn how a cell functions, but think about how they might respond when (if) they truly grasp how they function, e.g., the notion that we have no permanent self; that who we are, what we think, what we do, etc., are all conditional. suddenly, observations about how an item of intellectual interest functions (like a cell or a human being) becomes very personal. and, as noted, students usually do not associate personal with academics (with the exception of grades, of course).

2008-11-14T10:20:00.003-06:00

approaching enlightenment or simple dissociation?

sometimes i can't tell if i am alive or not.

quite odd.

the odder aspect of this is that it feels most liberating, almost natural when this awareness comes over me.

2008-07-11T11:28:00.003-05:00

actions or results?

occurred to me this morning that conservatives like to see their leaders take action in line with their stated values, regardless of the consequences of those actions. liberals, on the other hand, seem to be more concerned with the actual outcomes (which makes way more sense to me).

hence, Bush's swagger and action informed "by his gut" is, in the eyes of a conservative, the epitome of a great leader; while those same behaviors are seen as reckless and imperial by liberals due their consequences.

2008-07-04T22:09:00.002-05:00

behaviorological liberation

to continue...place all responses (operant and respondent) on extinction to reduce the strength of all discriminative stimuli and S-delta's. Attending is the only behavior that should remain. attending to what is the question, though. at present, it appears to be attending to all possible stimuli without responding; so attending to "nothing and everything." presumably after a time, attending becomes self-reinforcing.

2008-06-26T14:10:00.002-05:00

the behaviorological path to liberation

place all responses (respondent and operant) on extinction; retain only awareness.

2008-06-10T15:18:00.001-05:00

the man behind the curtain

(sent this to Common Dreams; we'll see if it gets published)

There have been and continue to be many critiques of the mainstream media and rightly so. Most of the critiques have focused on the MSM simply repeating the current administration’s talking points, their lack of challenge to the run-up to the Iraqi war, their lack of journalistic integrity, etc. The following is a critique of a different kind (although related to all of the above). It hopefully will demonstrate how much more complicit and insidious the MSM (and others who employ the same strategies) is in maintaining the status quo as opposed to challenging it.

As we all know, the cost of oil has reached obscene proportions. It seems to reflect the surreality of life over the last 8 years; just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it skyrockets to new heights. Those of us who observe human behavior as a profession are oftentimes amazed at how the general public fails to seem outraged at what is happening. Indeed, they may be privately fuming, but publicly, collectively, they are invisible.

I began thinking about this the other day when reading that oil was now $130 a barrel. The next day, on an internet news site I frequent daily, there was an entire story devoted to saving gas. The day after that, there was an article on different ways that we waste gas while driving. The following day, there was an article on how tires contribute to gas guzzling. All of these stories at first glance seem to be helpful; but herein lays the insidiousness. Indeed, the MSM are attempting to help us save gas, but what they should be doing is asking very hard questions to government and industry leaders about why we need to save gas, why the cost of oil is so perverse, and why no one seems to be doing anything about it. But, they aren’t. Instead, they are being paternalistic and complicit by simply telling us how to save gas.

The MSM always seems ready to give us advice on how to respond to changing social conditions, but rarely, if ever, give advice to those who manipulate the social conditions. They claim objectivity about reporting, but apparently feel no compulsion to be objective in dispensing advice; the selective dispensing of advice, that is. They only give advice to those who they know can do nothing in response; they never give advice to those who can and should do something.

So, why aren’t people in the streets? Why aren’t truckers blocking highways as in Europe? Why aren’t people refusing to go to work at oil companies until the cost of gas comes down to manageable levels? Because we have been, and continue to be duped by the MSM and others into thinking that we are the problem. If only we would slow down on the highway, if only we would fill up our tires more, if only we would shut our vehicles off when waiting for someone, then the bite at the pump wouldn’t be so bad.

By making the problem about us, the real source of the problem is obfuscated; the status quo is maintained, oil prices continue to rise, profits continue to be made…and all is well. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

2008-05-30T20:34:00.002-05:00

ya know why fiction is called fiction?

because the good guys always win.

2008-05-29T14:09:00.002-05:00

CNN spins and doesn't even know it

checked the CNN website this morning to see how the McClellan book fallout was going. the caption for the article was...

Bush-bashing

if CNN had any stones and/or any real commitment to journalistic integrity, they would have titled the article in accordance with what they were actually reporting on. it is obvious to anyone who pays any attention, that it was not Bush-bashing, it was...

McClellan-bashing.

"he who controls the environment, controls the population" - you read it hear first.

2008-05-25T10:30:00.003-05:00

who makes the goddamn rules, anyhow???

much of behavior analysis is concerned with the impact of environmental events on the behavior of individual organisms. for humans in highly industrialized countries, most of the contact we have with the environment is with the social environment. as such, we are under the control of social stimuli.

no argument with any of this.

the question, however is where do the social-environmental stimuli come from? in many cases, these stimuli are intentionally promulgated and diffused within the social environment because of their effect on groups of humans; for both, they serve as SD's and reinforcers. for the group disseminating the stimuli, they are reinforcers for continued dissemination of stimuli as they provide reinforcement in the form of money. for the group making contact with the stimuli, they serves as renforcers because they, themselves are reinforcing -- they are "goods" as Skinner says. these two interlocking contingencies maintain the behavioral repertoires that comprise the system. the outcome of the system is what is problematic (global warming, loss of resources, inequality, etc.).

the issue that is frequently overlooked is the notion of stocking the social environment with stimuli. advertisers and marketers do considerable work to determine which reinforcers are most preferred by the buying public. why? to keep the public buying so that they can continue to profit from the behavior. who stocks the environment with reinforcers? how do they do that?

on another level, when it comes to rule-governed behavior, the question is not only how people follow rules, but who makes the rules? in smaller groups, the rules might be self-generating and stem from contact with both physical and social environments. in highly industrialized societies, the rules stem from these same dynamics, but much of the time are less concerned with species-specific behavioral outcomes like survival, and much more concerned with systemic behavioral outcomes, like continued purchasing of products and services.

2008-05-21T12:01:00.002-05:00

putting some things together...

we respond to environmental stimuli based on learning history, principles of classical and operant conditioning. these are principles which apply to all organisms that have a nervous system (although this may turn out to not be necessary). allegedly, humans have the most articulated brain on the planet and much of our brain is a replication of other animals with our cerebral cortex being the most recent development. presumably it was with the development of the cerebral cortex (and other physiological features) that permitted speech to occur. of course, speech is nothing more than sound, so this is where the conditioning principles come in to determine what different sounds "mean" -- in relation to consequences paired with different stimuli or consequences that occur after presentation of certain stimuli.

as it is generally agreed that sensations prefigured (and occur developmentally prior to) speech, one wonders if when encountering certain stimuli, the first reaction/response is due to the principles of learning on a sensational level. this seems to account for how there is some evidence that the brain responds before there is any "conscious" effort to do so. this also seems to account for humans not being aware of "why they feel a certain way" and then finding a "reason" for their feelings. the reason found would be influenced by prior learning history, and principles of classical and operant conditioning; in other words, the reason why one feels a certain way is related to the response-generating stimuli if it has been tacted; if not, it is perhaps intraverbal behavior and nothing more.

2008-05-16T16:44:00.003-05:00

collective obedience

the easiest way to get masses of people to do something different is to identify the institutions that already control them and then revise the content of the institutions. like what Bush Co. has done the last eight years. they knew that Americans were obedient to the government, so all they had to do was to provide the populace with the words most associated with America and the American government (freedom, liberty, God, evil, good, sacrifice, etc.) and then do whatever they wanted under those auspices.

brilliant, really. evil, despicable, criminal, and certainly not planned (or maybe so), but brilliant nevertheless.

this is the fundamental problem that people don't recognize. we see ourselves as humans that have special qualities (like reason, cognition, etc.) and as such, are not susceptible to the same conditioning dynamics that other animals are; but we are wrong. we are first and foremost biological organisms and consequently, are subject to all of the dynamics and properties associated with biological organisms, hence our ability to be molded, manipulated, shaped, etc.

to the extent that we don't recognize how easily we are conditioned, those who benefit from our conditioning remain happy and content. feeding us words like freedom, liberty, choices, etc., keeps us from seeing the unfortunate reality of our condition.

2008-05-15T09:53:00.001-05:00

pre

walking into work this morning, i saw a law text in someone's car and immediately started thinking, pre-law, then went to pre-med, then went to...

pre-dead.

that makes sense; another way of saying still alive, yes? sort of Buddhist, perhaps.

2008-05-15T09:47:00.002-05:00

idol thoughts

biology allegedly is the study of life; but it's not. it is really the study of things that fit the definition of living. the study of the structure and function of these things. notice how this is not the study of life, but the study of material objects. not a bad thing, but not the same as life. it is easy to see how a complex, multi-cellular organism like humans are alive. what is more of a mystery are those tiny little red spiders that are the size of one of these letters that scurry about.

life, how it is possible that such things, on a such small scale (and even smaller scale), can have structure and function, move about, etc. still remains a mystery in my mind.

2008-05-09T09:15:00.002-05:00

redistribution of wealth redux

in the last few years, Bill Gates has turned from software mogul to humanitarian. not a bad thing. sadly ironic, though. he earns billions of dollars, and now he wants to use it to benefit the world. wouldn't a better system be one in which instead of one man earning billions of dollars, his wealth is capped at say, $100 million and the billions that he could have earned are actually used earlier and more comprehensively to help those people he is now interested in helping? is there a difference in quality of living between possession of $30 billion and $100 million? i can't imagine that there is.

one wonders what the world would be like if wealth had a cap of some kind. i am sure at some point wealth becomes self-sustaining. maybe someone should do an analysis of that and then let all of the up and coming billionaires know.

it doesn't all come down to money; it all comes to down to worth and people are not worth as much as money is.

2008-05-07T09:51:00.001-05:00

OpenLearn

very nice site for FREE distance education.

2008-05-07T09:27:00.000-05:00

slow-cooking the frog

i frequently tell my students that they need to pay attention to the way things are organized instead of just their response(s) to the way things are organized. for instance, most of us have to work longer, take on more than one job, reduce vacations, etc., just to make a decent living. students today understand this, so they are looking for a career in which they can, "make a lot of money." understood. the problem is that they will be sucked into the long days, longer weeks, less time with family and friends, etc., in their pursuit of this career.

my point to them is that doing all of the above is simply a reaction to the way things are organized. another response would be to question the way things are organized and ask, "wait a minute, why do i have to do all of this just so i can have a decent wage?" in other words, instead of adapting to the environmental conditions, why not change the environmental conditions? yes, i know, it is hard, impossible, etc. these are just ways of reducing the anxiety of the awareness that our lives are really not our own; somebody is going to establish the environmental conditions, how about if we have a say in that?

2008-04-28T21:37:00.000-05:00

Rove was right

Rove was right when he said that they are not part of the "reality-based" community anymore, that they shape and create history (i don't know of anymore definitive Orwellian statement than that). the problem is that WE have to live in the world that THEY shape, so we ARE in the reality-based community, but it is not one of OUR making.

on the efficacy of propaganda.

2008-04-28T21:31:00.000-05:00

well, okay, i actually had more to say

another colleague suggested that torture depended on motives (paraphrasing); my response:

no; this is the current Bush argument -- "all that we do is justified due to national security" -- no different than the arguments used by the powerful for centuries to excuse mass murder, torture, etc (on other and on THEIR OWN populations). Bush, et al are too cowardly to state what they are actually doing -- torturing people; instead, they obfuscate by using the euphemisms (harsh interrogations, rough interrogations, etc.) to maintain the appearance of morality. "The US does NOT torture people" -- we just waterboard them, electrocute them, hang them by their wrists for hours at a time, subject them to extreme temperatures, etc. Since these techniques are not torture (by THEIR definition), we can continue to strut and beat our national chest about how "moral" we are.

bullshit.

the very least that they could do is be honest about the fact that they intentionally harm people because they can and because they like to. as noted previously, torture doesn't work and they know this. why do they continue to do it then? because they are sadists, because they are vengeful, because no one has the power nor the will to stop them. it is the naked abuse of power, pure and simple.

how can we condemn torture in all instances? easy, it serves no purpose other than the ones i just listed, so why do it?

again, i am clear on my humanistic orientation and am committed to same. situational/relativistic morality is scary and dangerous, as evidenced by all that is happening today.

IMO, if there is anything frightening about this thread, it is that the use of torture is even being debated.

2008-04-28T21:29:00.000-05:00

i conclude...

actually, what i have been trying to argue (apparently unsuccessfully) is that there are certain behaviors that result in pain regardless of whether there is an audience, regardless of how the behavior is defined. the things that the U.S. has been doing result in pain; the people who have been doing them KNOW this, that is why they are doing them. it doesn't matter what they are called, they will always result in pain.

worrying about what to call the behavior obfuscates the impact to the victim; this is what is astonishing to me, that people are actually concerned about what to call hanging someone from their arms for hours at a time. what the !#$%??? does it matter what we call it? isn't it outrageous and abhorrent in and of itself, regardless of how it is defined?

while in graduate school, i took a family violence course. the prof told us about a survey she had conducted several years before about sexual assault. one of the questions was, "have you ever been raped?" there was little response. the question was changed to "have you ever had sex against your will?" the response was greater. the wording issue doesn't change the fact that the behavior occurred. it does demonstrate how definitions can be used by the powerful to control and harm the less powerful...

2008-04-28T21:26:00.000-05:00

exasperating!!!

my challenge stands...those who are in favor of torture should undergo it; if it only exists by definition, then what's the problem? no one is afraid of a little pain, are they?

in other words, it if is not defined as torture, it's not torture, right? that's the argument, yes? that hypothesis should be easy to test...get those who advocate for its contextual properties as the ONLY ontological reality to stand in the middle of ten people outside in freezing temperatures and then allow the onlookers to slap them, strip them naked, insult their religion, poor water over their heads, force them into stress positions, for at least an hour. at the end of the hour, the onlookers declare that what just occurred wasn't torture, it was just good fun.

voila! no torture occurred.

RE: the Spartans...of course it wasn't considered brutal or immoral by the Spartans -- it was THOSE WHO LIVED THAT DEFINED IT AS ANYTHING BUT THAT!!! Those who possibly could have called it immoral or brutal were dead! The "collateral damage" casualties can't challenge the definition of collateral damage as the cause of their death because they are dead! Forced sterilization was not considered immoral, slavery was not considered immoral, honor killings are not considered immoral, gassing Jews was not considered immoral -- do i need to go on?

wow, this has been a most revealing exchange. i honestly never thought i would hear an argument for might makes right on a sociology list.

2008-04-28T21:23:00.000-05:00

mutter, mutter...

if you want more evidence of the complicity of our "trusted servants" in DC in the authorization of torture, watch this segment from ABC News.

the absolute stupidity of these yahoos even debating the use of torture is characteristic of the administration's entire approach -- defiant ignorance. from what i have read, it is quite well established that torture doesn't work. the Nuremberg interrogators didn't use it. they simply sat down with the accused, gave them cigarettes, talked with them and managed, through the use of non-"enhanced interrogation" techniques, to get these guys to disclose all kinds of atrocities.

my speculation as to why the "principals" authorized the use of torture has more to do with revenge, sadism, and power than any serious attempts to get information. the waterboarding incident (discussed in the above video) involving Zabaydah (sp) is inaccurate; he had already disclosed the information to the FBI, PRIOR to being waterboarded. the CIA learned little, if anything of value by waterboarding (which, BTW, we condemned when used by the Japanese) yet they claimed that he only disclosed this info AFTER he had been waterboarded; not true.

but hey, why let the facts get in the way of behavior influenced by a sadistic ideology?

IMO, they should all be charged with crimes against humanity; i guess we will know if there really is a God, when/if anyone out of this administration gets indicted for the same.

2008-04-28T21:15:00.000-05:00

and the debate continued...

you're kidding, right? this needs a definition? it is not patently obvious? like pornography, do we not know it when we see it? the downside to context is it presumes that at some point in time/location some behavior is going to be acceptable by a group of observers. when it comes to:

hitting, "simulated" drowning, electrocution, slapping, sonic assault, microsecond burning by microwave transmission, exposure to extreme heat and cold, etc., no definition is going to change the impact of these behaviors, regardless of what any observer says, thinks or defines what is happening. i think it is pretty clear that virtually all biological organisms with a nervous system would experience any/all of the above as painful.

if you (or others) would like empirical evidence of the impact of these behaviors on human beings, read this.

calling the death of people due to the impact of a bomb "collateral damage" does nothing to alter the absolute outcome of the bomb on the people -- they remain dead.

2008-04-28T21:11:00.001-05:00

and the debate started

a colleague suggested that torture depends on the audience...i, of course disagreed.

no, it does not. intentional infliction of pain on another human being is beyond definition, it is NOT in the eye of the beholder. it is the debate about the definition of what constitutes torture that muddies the water, blurs the lines, etc. this is why the debate is morally bankrupt.

not unlike the Wizard of Oz..."pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" -- stuffing a man's head in a bucket of water and striking him in the stomach so he will involuntarily inhale is not torture, it is just:

rough interrogation
harsh interrogation
aggressive interrogation
coercive interrogation

bullshit, it is freaking torture and all of the media yahoos (and anyone else who equivocates on the issue) that fail to call it such are complicit in its practice.

history will indeed by the judge and i pray that it judges us harshly. we deserve it since we have allowed this to happen; ignorance is no defense at all in this case because we are absolutely clear on what is and has been happening. hopefully history will un-equivocally condemn what has happened in the last seven years.

2008-04-28T21:05:00.000-05:00

then it started getting weird...

i DON'T say this in my class, but it seems to me that the simplest way to resolve this issue of whether or not any method constitutes tortures is to have those unsure of its effects undergo it. if all that the U.S. is doing is NOT torture, why has (to my knowledge) only one non-military person actually undergone water-boarding? one yahoo said that you swallow more water when swimming; of course HE did not volunteer to be waterboarded. just like Rummy thought that standing as an interrogation practice should not be limited to just 4 hours a day because he stands 8 - 9 hours a day. fine, Rummy, you spend a few months at Gitmo, in the role of enemy combatant and see why standing for ONLY 4 hours in those conditions is just a bit discomforting.

as you know you and i fundamentally disagree on these issues -- it has always been clear to me what hunger, suffering, pain, thirst, torture are -- i don't really care what anyone else thinks they are, not do i really need to discuss how each is defined. i am clear about my humanist orientation. i do not suffer from the morally bankrupt, privileged, academic position of worrying about definitions or social constructions. this latter point is the main reason why i left the AACS -- 20 years after the establishment of the CSA and members are STILL trying to define WHAT clinical, applied sociology/sociological practice is.

the luxury of the privileged...fiddling with definitions while world burns...

2008-04-28T20:59:00.000-05:00

i posted some other, relevant info

i heard Doug Feith on NPR this morning, attempting to wiggle his way out of any responsibility for Iraq. Really embarrassing that this man had ANY position of authority in our government; but again, not surprising. no one seems willing to hold any of these people accountable which is just maddening, IMO. Bush keeps talking about his legacy as if it is going to be positive. first, it would be nice to have a Prez that is more concerned about the devastation he has wrought and trying to rectify it than basking in the glow of his "legacy fantasy" and second, it would be nice to have a Congress that is not bowed by DC pressure to not impeach. but, alas, we do live in America after all, where despite all of the propaganda, dreams really don't come true.

(rant over)

The UCS is documenting all of the "interference" in science by this administration; it is a sad list of events:

The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science

2008-04-28T20:53:00.001-05:00

It all seemed so simple...

it all started when i submitted a link to a video clip on the issue of torture to a sociology list as an example of how power plays a role in defining deviant behavior; it went somewhere i never would have imagined. the initial post:

as you might suspect, whenever i introduce the concept of deviance in my classes, i talk about not only how deviance is defined, but WHO gets to do the defining.

this week's topic in my Intro class is deviance, and i happened upon this link to a preview of a 60 Minutes story to be aired this coming Sunday. i thought it was a perfect for a discussion of deviance, defining, deviance and labeling.

"Docke says the police report was sent to the Americans. And Kurnaz claims his interrogations at Kandahar turned to torture. He told 60 Minutes that American troops held his head underwater. They used to beat me when my head is underwater. They beat me into my stomach and everything," he says. "

2007-12-19T09:40:00.001-06:00

Some retorts to the "Why do you hate America?" question...reprise

for the quasi-intellectually sarcastic: "I'll answer your question after you answer mine...have you stopped beating your wife?"

2007-12-14T11:39:00.000-06:00

hmmm, i wonder if it will fly?

i just recommended Naomi Wolf's new text as a potential Book-In-Common for the Spring semester. of course, i agree with the premise (bought it, perused it, but haven't read it yet; i have actually misplaced it and might have to buy it again -- this aging crap really sucks), but i would do a critical analysis of it for the B-I-C program.

i would love to know how much students are aware of this kind of thinking and the extent to which they can even entertain the notion of the US being a fascist country (empire, actually).

2007-12-14T11:24:00.000-06:00

we need to talk MORE about the entrenchment of social problems

my post to a sociology list...

prior to teaching FT, i worked in the human services field for a total of about 15 years. i worked as a grant-writer, substance abuse counselor, facility director, family educator, trainer, administrator, and director of program evaluation in the fields of urban youth service delivery, substance abuse and family violence. i learned much.

one of the things i learned that is relevant to me as a sociologist is that social problems and social solutions to these problems are insitutionalized; i.e., the services that are offered to allegedly ameliorate the social problem(s) are simply insitutionalized responses and never truly end the social problem. if they were meant to do this, then every human service agencies' mission statement would be the same..." to end (social problem)." of course, most human service agencies do not have this as a mission statement and/or if they do, they don't really work towards ending the problem, because the problem is something that is far greater than any one agency can address. why? because any social problem results from the way the entire society is organized; fundamental sociology, yes?

i see this insight as being the main lesson for students to learn; they are not going to get this anywhere else.

from here, i think it is important for them to begin to understand how certain ideologies support the structures that maintain the problem(s). in other words, what do we say individually and collectively that allow us as a society to NOT change the way that we are organized? inasmuch as social organization creates and maintains the problems (and the responses), then it is the fundamental organization that must change. of course many students care about others, but they are going to be sucked into the maw of "adult" responsibilities like everyone else and are, in all likelihood, not going to make a career of human service work (and if they do, they are still NOT addressing the actual issue). can they increase their awareness of how they, like everyone else, maintain social problems simply by participating in the organization? i think so.

i think that young adults are able and willing to see their part and understand that it is not merely their part that contributes to the problem (so they don't need to feel guilty), but it is all of our parts that do (to the extent that we, collectively continue to reproduce the structures everyday); subsequently, it is fundamental organizational change which needs to occur. i also think that young adults are acutely aware of the hypocrisy, duplicity and ignorance that characterizes much of "adult" life and these insights should be validated by us (Bush says that Mike McConnell comes to him in August to tell him he has news about Iran's nuclear program and Bush doesn't ask him what it is???? And we are supposed to believe that and let that lie there??? My students know bullshit when they hear it and I am grateful that they do).

i also think that is important for them to understand that we are all under social control and this contributes to what maintains the structures from day to day. does anyone else think it odd that the only time we talk about social control is in reference to deviance as if it was never in effect any other time? students, like most people believe that they are autonomous agents that seemingly exist independently of other people and are not influenced by anyone else (like the GAP add..."be an original" -- with the 30 million other kids that wear GAP clothing).

to me the hope lies in the awareness that we can build a different society; that culture does change. the notion that social problems are somehow going to disappear by hard work, without any consideration of the fundamental social organization that perpetuates them, is inadequate and incomplete. i don't want to offer my students false hope; i want to offer them compelling information on what is happening.

rant suspended for now...

2007-12-14T11:05:00.000-06:00

Some retorts to the "Why do you hate America?" question...

for gutter mouths: "Go fuck yourself; have you forgotten that this IS America and I can hate anyone or anything i want???!! Read the fucking constitution, dumb-ass."

more for gutter mouths: "You stupid, shit-for-brains, i don't hate America, i hate stupid pricks like you who have to politicize everything and in the process destroy everything that this country was allegedly built on...stupid fascist."

for the intellectually minded: "How can i possibly hate something that has absolutely no material existence? Cretin."

2007-12-14T09:13:00.000-06:00

Resumption

a colleague of mine told me to keep my blog current. i was inspired by his remarks, hence i will resume observations, commentary, rant(s); they have been building for some time, so i do suppose the time is right.

textual vomiting to ensue shortly...

2007-07-15T20:51:00.000-05:00

the world doesn't need sociologists, the world needs to change.

the media, corporations, and elected officials have been in control of our collective mind for many years. no conspiracy theory here, just reality. if you doubt me, read Propaganda by Edward Bernays, the "father" of public relations -- he boasts about controlling the masses. funny thing is that sociologists, some of the alleged "intellectual elite" have collectively failed to recognize this. i suspect that some will guffaw when they read the above -- more evidence of precisely what i am talking about; the best kind of social control is unsuspecting, ingrained, automatic, knee-jerk. happens to sociologists, just like anyone else.

we know that there have been thousands of young people who recently have died for "America" and we also know that America has no material existence (no, i am not willing to argue this point; if you feel compelled to challenge it, please regard this as more evidence of social control). does anyone really think that the politicians who put them "in harm's way" (such a noble phrase; reminds me of "collateral damage") give one goddamn about them? other than making sure that they master the requisite "sorrowful" persona they parade around in public when the topic comes up. they don't lose any sleep over their loss. we all know that GWB is in bed, asleep, by 10 pm every night...hmmm, one would think that he might be losing SOME sleep over the situation he has gotten us into, but apparently not (sociopaths are like that, so no surprise).

here is a Nobel prize idea for ensuring that wars are brief(er)...make every official who voted for the war, view a picture of every soldier killed that day, everyday, every soldier, everyday, every soldier. they are always so concerned about the financial cost of war, how about getting close up with the real cost of the war?

the world doesn't need sociologists, the world needs to change.

here is a potentially powerful change initiative...one wonders how many sociologists are guiding this (rhetorical question, please, no one tell me how many). one wonders who cares? people without food don't give a goddamn who gives them their food; kids who are dying of malaria don't give a goddamn who gives them their medication nor mosquito nets; African AIDS orphans don't give a goddamn if a sociologist or someone with no education whatsoever comforts them -- why are sociologists so concerned about being recognized for what they do...which is, what exactly? and why are sociologists not MORE concerned with actually acting to change things, screw who notices?

this has confounded me for years (going on 20); hence my decision to throw my lot in with the behaviorists. they actually have applications, based on years of empirical research and use them. they don't spend years agonizing over precisely what IS behaviorism or behavior analysis (and THEY have a bad rap).

i really think it is time that sociology grew up; privileged primadonnas who wring their hands in existential angst over the "meaning" of some ridiculous idea...while over 1 billion people live in urban slums. hey, no need to lose sleep over them, right? i mean the President doesn't, why should I?????

2007-06-20T13:45:00.000-05:00

i am reading Chomsky's Media Control and he is articulating many of the observations that i have had about the public's lack of action in light of the insanity that we are engaged in -- throw a rock (Iraq, unchecked federal power, over-consumption, depletion of resources, etc). i used to listen to Chomsky, but wasn't too compelled by his arguments; despite his use of facts, time-lines, and specific events, i thought they lacked a firm empirical foundation (in other words, i thought he was being a knee-jerk radical). i now realize that i was wrong in this assessment; the Media Control text provides some of the sources that he draws on that can be independently verified. One of those, Edward Bernays' Propaganda is available here. I just downloaded it this morning, so i haven't read it yet, but i will. if Chomsky is correct in his reading of Bernays and the influence that he and this work had in the United States, then the public really is being intentionally manipulated, seduced, and reinforced for and through distraction. a very sad state, but good to know.

i am also re-reading Domhoff's Who Rules America (5th edition); i read the 4th edition last summer and want to re-read it in light of all that i have learned since. if you haven't read it, i would highly recommend it. if you are unfamiliar with Domhoff, i believe that he was a student of Mills' (if not, then heavily influenced by him) and he has been studying power and power structures in the US for the last 35 years. i think he knows what he is talking about; his work is empirically based, rational, and very, very compelling. this past weekend, my daughter and i spent the weekend at the Heifer Ranch in Arkansas where we took part in something called the Global Challenge. it is a simulation of how much of the "rest of the world" lives...no stable source of clean water, no water at all, no stable source of food, etc. my daughter spent the night in a simulated urban slum, complete with dirt floors, tin roof, discarded cardboard for walls, lots of heat, bugs, and one cup of rice for dinner to feed seven people. i slept in a simulated Thai house (quite an improvement from the urban slum) with way more food for the four people we had there, so we shared our food (and other resources, like a fire we had to start) with the urban slum folks and some of the others in the global village (varying housing arrangements and resource allocations).

bottom line...the majority of Americans have absolutely no clue how privileged we are, the impact that the amount of disposable items that we don't need but consume voraciously anyway has on the "those folks somewhere in Asia," how we take for granted many, many things that other people have to fight for. here we go back to Chomsky again -- why do we do this? because of the ubiquity of propaganda that infuses our social world.

lastly, i have adopted a behavior analytic (formerly known as behaviorism) perspective to understanding and accounting for human social behavior (as well as for developing interventions). it is a very powerful, historically empirical, and inherently sociological approach. Skinner, in fact, provided a superb analysis of social control and formal agents of social control in his Science of Human Behavior -- waaaaay better than any i have read in sociology, with possibly the exception of the Frankfurt school. the difference between Skinner and the Frankfurt school is that his work is based on science rather than philosophy -- a plus for me.

2006-10-27T10:19:00.000-05:00

Just believe...

i was listening to the Prez last month during his Rose Garden press conference and i noticed that he seemed to be saying the word, "believe" quite a bit. being a proud member of the reality-based community, this made me wonder a couple of things...how often did he use that word and what does that tell us about his approach to things?

well, we all know that he likes to use his "gut" to make decisions (actually, an interesting notion in lieu of an argument for bacterial intelligence; but really, to blame those little bugs for his decisions, does seem a bit unfair), doesn't really care much for facts, etc. so, being an empiricist, i decided to see what the data said about his use of a word that seems to support things like gut decision-making, faith, belief, etc. just stating the frequency of that one word (believe), however, can be misleading, so i also counted the number of times he used words that someone who is part of the reality-based community might use; here is what the data say:

WORD FREQUENCY
believe 23
fact(s) 3
information 12

to be absolutely fair, i did remove from these totals any use of these word(s) out of the context i was looking for (talking about what other people "believe," the use of the word "fact" in the phrase, "matter of fact," etc.).

well, it happened again, the other day, i was listening to another press conference and noticed that he continued to use that word over and over again, so i did the same analysis; here are the data from that press conference (using the same exclusion method as described above):

WORD FREQUENCY
believe 20
fact(s) 6
information 0

the reason that the use of the word information is less here is because the press conference held on 9-15-06 was specifically about the passage of the "toture bill" and how using those "aggressive methods" of interrogation would result in more and better information from the tortured folks, er, i mean the enemy combatants.

unequivocal proof of the "belief approach" over the "reality approach?" dunno, guess you can draw your own conclusions. certainly makes me wonder...and frightened.

2006-10-16T15:48:00.000-05:00

TEDtalks

I came across an interesting site today called, "TEDtalks"

"The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference is an annual event where leading thinkers and doers gather for inspiration. (More at TED.com) The TEDBlog covers the same ground, on a rather more frequent basis."

There is a neat lecture by Dawkins here.

2006-10-16T15:41:00.000-05:00

SEA Commercial

This looks like fun...!

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Please include the SEA logo at least once in the piece, preferably at the beginning and end. You can download it HERE. You can use video, FLASH, whatever you like. To enter, load your commercial onto YouTube with the tag SEforA and e-mail them to us at AdContest@SEforA.org.

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2006-09-29T11:16:00.000-05:00

It is finished...

With the signing of the "Torture Bill" into law, we will now officially have a dictatorship in the U.S. The President has demonstrated that he can effectively ignore, work around, whatever you want to call it, the Judicial Branch of the government; his party's complete control over the Congress assures him control of the Legislative Branch, and HE is in complete control of the Executive, so what's left to challenge, check and assure accountability? Nothing.

Once the bill is signed, he will be able to detain whomever, whenever, for however long, without letting anyone know. In other words, he will have the powet to "disappear" people as well as subject them to various forms of torture. All of this, of course will be legal.

In the past I have posted about not knowing what is like to live in a fascist country; I now need to amend that and say that I have always wondered what it is like to live under a fascist dictatorship...guess I will find out.

Given that daily life has continued virtually uninterrupted due to the masses remaining ignorant of this most recent development, I am sure I will not be able to tell much of a difference between post-dictatorship and pre-dictatorship.

2006-09-23T12:18:00.000-05:00

last bit of hell for awhile...

if the fundamental structure(s) of society do not change, then all we are simply doing is assisting previously un-privileged people become privileged. this is the current model of social change -- helping the "disadvantaged" (however that manifests) become "advantaged," i.e., privileged. we are not, however eliminating privilege. we will never do this until the structures that dole out privilege change. under the current model when we are successful in our efforts all we have
succeeded in doing is increasing the number of privileged people.

not a bad thing, as we know (and as all the data indicate) privilege has
it's advantages, that's why so many people want it.

2006-09-23T12:13:00.000-05:00

even more hell!

i'm not referring to those who watch TV all the time, just those who do...consistently. in my estimation, for things to change, the very foundation of social organization must change. it cannot change, however, as there are those who are convinced that this organization is the best, the most civilized, etc. how does this view continue despite massive evidence to the contrary? one way is by the constant consumption of news, information, images, etc., that reinforces how great the organization is.

letting go of privileges is like letting go of one's own identity; not easily forsaken. i think we would have a chance at change if people could, for a period of time, get relief from the constant bombardment of notions about how great things are. one way to do that is to turn off their TV sets for, what, a year? can you imagine that? no one would do it, even if it meant that there was a really good chance of improving their situation. "take away my TV? that's, that's, jihadist!!!"

In the US, we are a hair's breadth away from legalizing torture. anyone upset? not really. those powerful people who want to see something different, are they able to do anything about it? apparently not as it is going to pass. we have, for all intents and purposes a dictatorship in the US, and life goes on gleefully, just so long as I can shop, shop, shop; no worries, mate.

let them eat cake has been replaced with a teflon Marie Antoninette who now espouses, "give them their X-boxes, their cell phones, their 165 channel cable TV, their GAP clothes, and let them continue to think that they are free in the land of liberty" while i usurp their power, trash
their constitution, and elude accountability -- all in full view of the entire goddamn world.

this is the model of morality presented by "the moral leader of the free world" and we think that the masses are going to what, rise up and demand something different? hell, no, college football is on and i am too damn tired from working all day.

here in the good old US of A, no one gives a goddamn about social change, about improving living conditions for others; at least not at the level that will make any REAL difference. sure, we'll donate money, do some volunteer work, write letters to the editor, talk about how there is no social justice in the world, but we will never actually create anything resembling an equal and just society because so many people are convinced that it ALREADY EXISTS here.

hell, we don't need nobody to brainwash us, we do it to ourselves, gleefully. Marx wouldn't have a chance in the world today, especially now that "we know that Marxism doesn't work, just look at what happened to the Soviet Union."

2006-09-23T12:11:00.000-05:00

more hell

for anything to change barriers to inequality need to
be more than confronted, they need to be removed. not going to happen. i
truly cannot forsee that. in fact, i am unaware of any culture in which
there is no division, no categorization, no inequality. would love to
hear/read about one that is in existence today.

study revealed today that there are more TV's in American homes than
there are people in those same homes. it is estimated that the average
person watches about 3000 ads/day on a typical day. think about
it...that many TV's, bombarding people with propaganda about "the way
things are" day in, day out for years at a time. note my previous quote
about "...voluntarily accept this position as his or her own" -- the
mcmasses (ourselves included) consume these ideas, and accept them as
our own, despite the fact that they are simply one version of things.

consider the amount of $$ that is spent annually on advertising,
marketing, etc. check out The Merchants of Cool to get a sense of the
insidiousness of mass marketing.

in other words, there are people who are suffering due to structural
inequality (in its myriad manifestations) and will defend the very
structures that create and maintain that inequality to the death, THEIR
death, because they have accepted the "...position as [their] own."

Goebbels had nothing on Viacom, AOL Time Warner, Vivendi, and Disney.

2006-09-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

welcome to hell

i think it is noble to consider new ways of assisting people; I have been trying this for years. Recently, though, I have to admit, I have been asking towards what purpose? Having new resources implies alleviation, not eradication; and if all we are doing is alleviating (not a bad thing in itself), then aren't we really colluding in the process of keeping the organizational constraints going? Again, not a new thought.

I am not convinced that people will act any differently just because they have more or new resources. There are many resources that are available today. I would further that thought by noting that many people may not know about them, may not see a reason to access them, etc., and so they never use them.

I think that this latter points speaks to social control; we are all under its' effects whether we acknowledge it or not. Social control serves to maintain the organization. It is irrelevant what the organization is, who it benefits, what the purpose is, social control(s) continue to maintain it. Ironically, social control lies in us, not in the ether somewhere. Seemingly, since it lies within us, it should be easy to change; but that's the rub, isn't it? It's not.

Certainly there are insitutional arrangements that work overtly toward its maintenance, but there are those other, covert mechanisms that are far more pervasive, subtle, and insidous. Those mechanisms are utlized each day, buy us, but how many of us recognize the part we play in the maintenance of the existing social order? The same order that requires new and innovative resources to counter its effects? How many of us pay attention to our own efforts to exert social control?

I do a lecture in my Intro class on propaganda; I reference "Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion." Note the following quote:

"Propaganda is the communication of a point of view with the ultimate goal of having the recipient of the appeal come to volunatarily accept this position as if it were his or her own."

Sound familiar? Internalization of cultural ideas, beliefs, norms, etc., that we "accept as if [they] were [our] own" — hmmm, we call that socialization, don't we? And once those ideas are "ours," we can become willing to die for them; pretty powerful stuff.

If we essentially, participate in our own collective restraint, and we are completely unaware that we are doing it, how is anything supposed to change? I don't see any practical way of accomplishing the structural changes that are needed to eradicate the need for alleviation.

2006-05-15T15:25:00.000-05:00

Intelligent design…why it upon more thought seems to be neither

The ID folks claim that, for example, the human eye is too complex of an organ to have been shaped purely by evolutionary processes. Their claim is that the complexity of it is proof of some sort of divine intervention.

Not a bad thought on the surface, but think about it…God has the opportunity to intervene and make something related to humans better somehow. Why choose the eye? Or for that matter, any other sense? What is the value of improvement to senses? If God had the opportunity (and certainly, one would conclude that God has any opportunity God cares to have), wouldn’t S/He have chose something else to improve? Like our ability to get along with one another? How about intervening on our inherent selfishness and self-centeredness? Wouldn’t that have been a better, more “intelligent design?” Instead of programming us to be inherently selfish, why not program us to be more considerate of others? To be more compassionate? To be reinforced for behavior geared toward helping others?

So, out of all of these possibilities, to improve the human being, we are led to believe that God chose the human eye???? Just doesn’t make sense, especially if the God that many ID folks claim to be, the one true God is that of a Christian nature, whose greatest commandment was to “love others.” What good is a better eye when our most blatant, characterological flaw is selfishness and self-centeredness?

2006-03-31T11:49:00.000-06:00

damn, liberal, trouble-making sociologists

Vietnam 2 Preflight Check.

where is David Horowitz when you need him???? Or those Bruin Alumni folk????

2006-03-31T11:43:00.000-06:00

social control and institutions

can't say i disagree with this.

2006-03-31T11:39:00.000-06:00

BISCUITS

read this today and had to wonder about a couple of things...first, talk about utilizing human science to inform interventions; second, you know that these folks are collecting data on the outcomes of these strategies — I wonder if anyone will ever see the results? right? i mean, if they are doing this in the name of science (and i can't imagine someone with a behavioral science background NOT being at least VERY tempted to collect data), where do they publish the findings? seriously, if anyone knows, i would love to read about this; curious to see how they frame their ethics and their humanistic philosophy. hmmm, something tells me that they didn't have to get IRB approval to gather these data, either, if that is indeed what they are doing (in addition to the interventions, I mean).

i just wonder what some of the article titles would be...

"On the efficacy of extreme illicitation of fear response as a means of extracting information from unwilling subjects" or something of that nature; seems like the title alone would belie the violation of scientific ethics.

brief summary of what they are doing from the referenced (above) article:

"Now, just in case you've been living on Pluto for the past year or so, BISCUITS - Behavioral Science Consultation Teams - consist of military psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, and other health care professionals. Their role, it has been charged by former Guantánamo interrogators, is to advise the military on ways of increasing psychological duress on detainees, sometimes using their medical records to find ways of exploiting their fears and phobias, to make them more cooperative and willing to provide information. In one example, published in the New York Times, 'interrogators were told that a detainee's medical files showed he had a severe phobia of the dark and suggested ways in which that could be manipulated to induce him to cooperate.'"

2006-03-02T13:09:00.000-06:00

just !#$%^ do it!!!

my responses to three introductory questions from an e-conference i am participating in:

Q1 RE: related terms for the method?...I think the focus shouldn't be on the method and said definition, it should be on the outcome of the application of the method. WHY are we engaging in sustainability work? What is the purpose? I think that this is worthy of inclusive, definitional work, but defining the process that allows us to get to the outcome is secondary, if necessary at all. The difference, IMO is between an academic exercise (do we really need more of those?) and tangible outcomes.

Q2 RE: different trajectories?...this is where Luis' framework and the above suggestion come in. Having a clear, stated goal, an agreed upon framework and a commitment to adhere to that framework is what is necessary. Getting disparate people togther is not inherently problematic; in fact, it should be a strength. Entrenched difference only becomes a problem when project members do not adhere to the commitment to the framework.

Q3 RE: new form of science? new skills?...I don't think it matters what it is and what it is called - that is for a much later analysis and definitional process. What matters is whether or not it successfully pulls off the intended outcome. As to skills, sure there is necessity for different skill sets, and I would think that having people from different backgrounds would bring different skill sets to the project. The only new skill that I would forsee would be the ability to temporarily suspend prejudice (and ego as Luis says) and consider new ideas, new perspectives, etc. That and keeping the final outcome in mind when doing any work would be the only new skills that I could imagine.

2006-02-27T16:07:00.000-06:00

panopticon

the panopticon works; people do what is measured and don't do what is not observed. unless, of course, they are deviant-minded and then it is just the opposite.

the bottom line is that people do mind when they know they are being watched; this is how the collective conscience works. with the diversity of groups, the collective conscience is now going high-tech -- surveillance cameras, wire-tapping, videotaping, etc.

we think we are so smart and so free...

2006-02-27T16:03:00.000-06:00

impeachment fatigue

i think one of the reasons the "I word" is not being discussed is because of the proximity of the last impeachment process. that, and i know that many in the halls of power (media included) realize that if an impeachment process took place, all hell would break loose. people, as a collective, would begin to see just how "seat of the pants" this whole damn democracy operates and would also lay bare all of the incestuous relationships between bidness and gover-ment.

people couldn't handle that kind of truth; the whole friggin country would go up in flames.

2006-02-14T14:09:00.000-06:00

seriously, am i the only one that this makes sense to????

(in response to a colleague about who decides on social interventions):

I won't attempt to reply on behalf of everyone (no pun intended) RE: who decides about the interventions. I will, however, argue that if we are a social scientific discipline that embraces a humanistic perspective, then we should advocate for and work towards realizing positive social change(s), IMO. We have a pretty good idea of what is best for the vast majority of people — health, nutrition, safety, opportunities, support, etc. — why not develop interventions to realize these in as broad a manner as possible? Certainly, we don't have to; we can be satisfied with just conducting research on the factors that contribute to their emergence and manintenance.

This, however, strikes me as similar to just studying viruses to see how they work and leaving it at that. "hmm, interesting how viruses work, let's look at bacteria, now" and stopping there. where would millions of people be today if researchers stopped right there?

The Scientist article is based on thorough analyses of the environment, what contributes to environmental degradation, and how WE contribute to environmental degradation. Sure, the McDonnell Group could have just stopped there..."yup, we're killing ourselves, environmentally; isn't that interesting? maybe i'll publish an article on it." I suspect because a) they are sane, b) they actually care about other people, and c) they feel a moral obligation to do something to try and prevent global, environmental collapse, they took the next step (which is where they bypassed us because we, as applied sociologists, do not have the next step) and decided to do something about it.

Stop and think about how people are "manipulated" by different agents daily, hourly, — watch "The Merchants of Cool" to get a visceral understanding of this process. hell, we are ALL brainwashed by our respective exposure to culture. Right now, we are self-destructing due to our engaging in "normal" habits, i.e., habits that are environmentally unsound, yet are popular and typical, and supported by the media, the gov't, by religion, etc. Makes sense to me to try and promote (social marketing is great at that, yes) alternative norms that might actually extend life on the planet a few more centuries.

lastly...i think it IS important to engage people in social change and include them in the process. i don't necessarily think it is so because of a moral reason, but because that increases the likelihood of the success of the endeavor.

I guess it comes down to this...do people have the right to self-destruct? sure, watch any alcoholic drink him/herself to death. one alcoholic is not the problem, however, especially if s/he drinks him/herself to death in the privacy of his/her own home. when s/he gets behind the wheel of a car, then his/her problem is no longer personal; it becomes my concern, too.

Similarly, if there are compelling data that I and my collective partners are killing the environment (and ourselves in the process), isn't it wise to do something about it? of course we can self-destruct, we have the moral right to, but why should we? talk about "irrationality!"

2006-01-31T15:07:00.000-06:00

common misconceptions

dawned on me the other day that i keep getting sucked into some common misconceptions. these have to do with the types of words that are used to describe a particular phenomena. so, to clarify for myself and to have a record of this so I won't forget (or rather, when i do forget to come back and remind myself), here are some corrections to common misconceptions:

mind is a verb

self is a verb

group is a verb

society is a verb

self is a verb

identity is a verb

personality is a verb

ah, much better.

2006-01-17T19:12:00.000-06:00

bad-mouthing my discipline again

(to a sociology list)...

I wanted to call to your collective attention, to an article written by a leading zoologist and evolutionary biologist (Paul Ehrlich and Simon A. Levin), entitled, "The Evolution of Norms," published in the Public Library of Science Biology Journal (see link below). It is a fascinating article (brief in length) about the evolution of social norms with an eye toward understanding the process so that some can be changed. Both Ehrlich and Levin fear the consequences of some unchecked social norms (WMD, environmental deterioration, global collapse, etc.).

I find it very interesting that two "natural" scientists are engaged in this kind of endeavor; I suspect that they don't think it is that unusual as they see it as an extension of human evolution, in which they are well-versed. They bring their best thinking, their best simulations and their best reasoning to bear on the problem.

Applied sociology? IMO, you bet, at its best. Do they mention sociologists anywhere in their article? No. Why? IMO, because we have current connection to "evolution" nor anything having to do with the biology of humans. Our loss, IMO.

From an evolutionary perspective, what is occurring? Scientists are adapting to the changing social environment, posting new ideas for new problems. Which scientific perspective will survive? Dunno...but ultimately, it will in all likelihood be that perspective that is best suited to the environment. And, what is that environment? "Science-speak," both popular and professional, and are we "household names" in science speak? Not in the reading that I am doing.

So, are we modern-day Neandertals?

The link to the article (.pdf) is here.