sociological heresy...(mine, of course)

RE: deviance...I have never understood the reason to have any entire class devoted to "deviance." deviance is pretty simple to explain and then it's just a parade of different forms of deviance — like a freak show. i always tell my students that deviance and conformity are two sides of the same coin — they fuse when one takes into consideration how they are both relative and neither is absolute; you can cover that idea in one class period.

RE: SP vs Social work...i made this statement some time ago on the list (or the SAS list, rather) and it seems to make the distinction for me. SP/AS should be about changing/modifying institutions — patterns of social behavior, on whatever level. Social work is not about that, it is about assisting specific individuals; yes, they might do some advocacy for groups, etc., but their focus is not on collective, institutional change(s), it is one individual change.

I think the reason that we continue to be bewildered about what AS/SP is, is the fact that, as far as I know, we have no established theory nor methods for effecting different kinds of social change — we don't have a science of social change. IMO, to be a "real" discipline, we need to have some general principles or ideas about how we go about creating change, what works, what doesn't etc. We do not have a systematic body of knowledge like this. Again, IMO, it goes back to my suggestions about developing manuals or handbooks on how to create social change(s) at different levels of social reality. You want to change your familial behavior? Do this. You want to change your classroom behavior? Do this., etc. We don't have a tested, agreed-upon body of work to build on. Other disciplines do, but we don't.

This, however, is how I see our entire discipline — disparate and fluffy — no grounding. Yeah, we have data on everything social, but we still think (and teach) students about these three perspectives all of which are much more conceptual than empirical. You can't build a science on concepts alone. Functionalism is a conceptual scheme; conflict is, too. This is not to deny the evidence of inequality nor of stratification, but do we really believe that patterns of behavior are responsible for this? Patterns of behavior are "disembodied" ideas; we are really talking about people and what people are doing. Seems to me that is what we need to find out more about — how and why do people change? Once we know that, we might be better able to begin building some testable ideas about how to change the social behavior of those people.

I recently finished reading Skinner's Walden Two and am now reading Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Skinner was ahead of his time, IMO. He was not the monster I understood him to be. Many of his ideas have tremendous relevance for sociology and AP/SP. I think he was found to be distasteful because his perspective pulled back the covers of social/human reality — something that no one wanted to see or seriously consider — we are all controlled by something, mainly through fear, so it is an issue of who is doing the controlling, not whether or not we are controlled.

Skinner knew about how people change and so do many people who adhere to a behavioristic approach. I think it is very worthwhile to investigate. After all, what are "social rewards/benefits" and "social sanctions" but reinforcers and punishers?

Hmmm, maybe I'm going to start calling myself something else...

do the right thing, Duke-Stir!

I heard Rep. Cunningham on the radio this morning, tearfully admitting guilt for bribery. He said that he would, with whatever time God grants him to remain on earth (or something similar), he would make amends for what he did.

Hmmm, how about telling law enforcement about all the folks he knows in government who are corrupt? All of those nice, wrap-me-in-the-flag, slide-me-the-payment-under-the-table-to-influence-my-vote, people?

I think that would be a swell way to make amends, don't you? In fact, that seems to be the only logical way of making amends to citizens.

the pottery barn edict comes back to haunt us

Recall that Colin Powell cautioned Sr. Bush about Iraq using the Pottery Barn policy -- you break it, you buy it.

So, guess what? He broke it, we bought it...and are still paying for it.

God Bless America (the Fascist Empire of, that is)

Umberto Eco has a nice discussion of "Eternal Fascism" here; yikes, it all sounds so familiar! He wrote it in 1995, so no one can accuse of him of tailoring his discussion to reflect present circumstances.

To everyone, be afraid, be very afraid.

PLEASE DO NOT SPEND YOUR TIME READING ANY OF THE COMMENTS BELOW, THEY ARE ALL SPAM. I THINK I MIGHT HAVE OFFENDED SOMEONE'S SENSIBILITIES ABOUT THE SYSTEM OF CONTROL OUR GOV'T USES ON ITS POPULATION.

personal responsibility (for everyone else but me)

i finally figured out that this is what conservative Republicans mean when they moan about personal responsibility. all this time i have thought that they were personally responsible, hence their admonishing others to be the same. actually, many are not yet they apparently feel justified to compel others to do so.

damn, another one of those double standards! hmmm, power does have its rewards, doesn't it?

published

my Visceral Verstehen article has been published at the Electronic Journal of Sociology. the article (in .pdf format) can be found here.

i welcome feedback on the article and the method of intervention for self-discovery that i propose.

talk to me(s)

earlier, i posted about a guided experience of kensho that Genpo Roshi facilitates. i started reading more about the procedure he uses to engage that experience. even without the kensho part, the voices dialogue technique is quite fascinating and revealing.

sociologists have, for years, posited that individuals have different selves that emerge in response to the different situations they find themselves in. traditionally, this has been understood in terms of the definition of the situation and the different social roles that we play (i.e., a particular self for a particular role). the voices dialogue technique takes this much further and is a very cool way of discovering the different selves that exist "within" oneself.

tie the emergence of selves to Zen, and you have a very fine, Western understanding of what pure consciousness is.

variety is the spice of life

driving to work one day last week I was thinking about all of the different kinds of cars, their various features, costs, gas mileages, etc. if you stop and think about it, cars serve one real function...personal transportation from point A to point B. with that in mind, what we need is one brand of car that gets us from point A to point B as efficiently, comfortably and cost effectively as possible.

yes, i can hear the nay-sayers...but what about choice? what about variety? what you are suggesting is communist!

this is where we are misguided. we think that the beauty of variety lies in the differences between material objects. not so, yes? the beauty of variety lies in the diversity of us, the wonder of how we are so different, yet so similar, the wonder and variety of us as human beings.

by focusing on the diversity of things outside of ourselves, we are distracted from noticing the wonder of diversity (and unity) that is inherent in all of us.

we are the spice of life, not cars or clothes, or technological gadgets.

that's nice...

read today that the Prez would fire "the leaker" if a crime was committed.

it's reassuring to know that the President of the United States would fire one of his cabinet members if s/he committed a crime...as opposed to keeping said known law-breaker in the cabinet of the most powerful political position in the entire world.

that's nice; sounds like a sensible thing to do.

big mind

this is a very, very cool guided facilitation of the kensho experience. Quite a surprise.

sadly...

these London attacks seem to have blown the "we're gonna fight them over there [in Iraq] so we don't have to fight them here" rationale right out of the water.

nice, but...

raising the terror alert for trains and buses in the US is a good thing, but the chances are that whomever set off the bombs in London aren't going to do it here, at least not now. if they had intended to set off bombs on subways and buses here, they would have done it in conjunction with the bombs in London. they go for spectacular, not conventional. setting off bombs in the US on trains or buses now would be conventional.

note that terror-ism is specifically that, terrifying. anticipated attacks are not terrifiying as they are predicted; unexpected, unanticipated attacks are terrifying because they are unexpected and unanticipated.

i think we can rest assured that there will be no bombs on trains or buses in the US attacked (at least not anytime soon); having bombs go off in London and somewhere in the US on the same day, within enough time of each other for someone to notice that they were related, would be the kind of spectacular terror that they go in for. that didn't happen, so it ain't gonna.

note also that they do these kinds of things (9-11, Madrid, now London) to demonstrate that the greatest powers in the world cannot stop them. once the populace figures this out, their attacks will be even more terrifying because it could mean anywhere, anytime. they have demonstrated that ability and they will continue to do so.

i'm not sure that the powers-that-be have figured this one out, yet. could be that their hubris prevents them from seeing this truth.

when love came to town

this past sunday and monday, Amma was here. if you have never been hugged by an embodiment of the Divine, you need to, there is nothing like it...literally. check out the rest of Her tour to see if you still can.

being with Amma is very intense. if you practice spirituality, being in Her presence is like boot camp...relentless and rewarding, but very demanding. this is the first time i got a lot of things about how to live a spiritual life (not really happy with that choice of words because spirituality is so overused, but it will have to do for now) and i now realize why it is called a discipline...play time is over.

pray for me.

walking and waving

i was driving to my in-laws house this afternoon and passed by a mailman delivering the mail. i drove past him and i noticed that he waved. he had his back to me when i drove past (we were both heading in the same direction) and i thought he was waving to an oncoming car, except there was no oncoming car. then i realized that he was waving to all cars coming by, regardless of whether or not the occupants could see him.

when i realized that he was waving to be friendly, i had that feeling of when someone is really glad to see you and you know that they are sincere. now, this guy didn't know me from Adam, but he seemed to have a friendly attitude toward the world and that had the same impact on me. it was nice.

the best part?

i waved back to him when he waved to me when i was on my way back home.

liberal VS neocon

I think I got it...these are two different world views that can never be reconciled; one can prevail over the other, but there is no synthesis (at least in their extremes). All of the things necessary for their survival, i.e., logic, reason, evidence, etc. are all contained in each of them and never the twain shall they meet.

kind of depressing

still stuck on "nature-nurture"

yet another post of mine to a simluation list...

I am familiar with Evo Psych and their central ideas. I find it interesting in a discipline that values the scientific method as highly as they presumably do that they do not attempt to use any kind of experimental method to isolate what they contend exists. They use comparative studies, inferential works, logic, etc., all good things; however they maintain that something called "human nature" exists without any direct proof. All I am attempting to do wtih netlogo is model something akin to their notion to see what could possibly develop.

RE: defintion of culture being vague...I would define culture for purposes of the simulation I am developing as the "knowledge" of food that is healthy or unhealthy (thanks to XXXX for that) and the subsequent ability to pass that "information" along to offspring. As noted originally, this particular simulation would not address the issue of "what is human nature" but would merely test if having knowledge is useful for survival.

RE: the story about the baby being left alone...it could very well be, that if true, said baby died due to lack of nurture; certainly, there are those studies from the 40's or 50's about children not being held, etc., resulting in decreased life spans, etc. Your story raises an interesting point, however...if it is not possible to survive without nurture...how could one ever claim knowledge of what is inherent to humans, i.e., that which is separate and distinct from nurture and call it "human nature?" If nuture is required for survival, then how could we ever claim to have the ability to know what is inherent to humans?

If we cannot know, then why continue to talk about something called, "human nature?" I know that many people use the notion to explain much, but creating a notion and then attributing causality to it without ever really identifying what the notion is, is intellectually lazy, IMO. Also, if that is the case then "the devil made me do it" is on the same par with "people are violent because it is human nature;" no one has seen "the devil" nor has anyone seen "human nature," so how do we evaluate the veracity of one claim over the other?

RE: culture has too many components...so does the physical world, yet the complexity of it has never stopped any serious scientist from taking the time to examine it and report on findings. There is no doubt that humans are complex; so far we know a lot about our physiology and little about much else.

This is why I question the notion that something called "human nature" exists -- it is a scientifically unproven concept; purely mythical at this point, yet there are many, many people who claim to know much about it. IMO, this is not very good science (again if we use the traditional methods of scientific inquiry -- isolation, testing, controlling, etc. as the criteria for establishing knowledge). Actually controlling for culture is quite simple -- no contact with another human being; people are cultural vessels...no people, no culture. Practically absurd, but experimentally sound.

okay, so i'm stuck on the "nature-nuture" crap

My post to a simulation list (with some minor editing):

I think I agree with what you are saying about defintions in general, not sure if I do about "nature" specifically.

The nature/nurture debate, in my mind, speaks to things that are inherently within human beings (nature) and those that are learned (nurture). In my thinking, there is no way to know what is inherent in humans because all humans that we come in contact with have been exposed to culture. Again, there is no controlling for culture. If one could control for culture and see what is left, then one could talk about what is inherent to humans with some confidence.

On the face of it, "controlling for culture" might seem absurd; but if it is considered absurd, then one must also conclude that talking about human "nature" is absurd. Why? There is no scientific evidence for something called human "nature" -- at least not experimental evidence, which in my and others' view is the litmus test for scientific investigation. Without such evidence, all discussion of human nature boils down to speculation and inference.

Granted, I understand that many use human nature to speak to how we are different than other animals. I get that and I agree with that. But in that case, we have something to compare to...other animals. They serve as a quasi-experimental control group. We don't have that when we are talking about just humans and their "nature." My point is that if one wants to talk about something that is inherently human, then one needs to either provide evidence that they have a way of discerning what is inherently human or talk about it differently.

A classical experiment is the only way I can think of to identify what is inherent to humans. As a "real" experiment in human isolation is absurdly distubing even to consider, thought experiments or simulation seem like natural alternatives.

Note that I agree that we come with some things built in; I don't know that those things are specifically, but I don't refer to them as being "inherently" human because I don't know that they are without any proof.

defeating the terrorists????

our Prez tonight talked about defeating the terrorists. Impossible. In their minds, they have already won. They have managed to get us in a local country where they can kill Americans indiscriminately. The first time they killed any American, they won. There will never be a defeat for them, no matter what happens.

We stay, they kill more of us, they are victorious. We pull out, they have killed a bunch of us and they got us to leave, they are victorious.

Where is the defeat?

publication

I have an article coming out in the Electronic Journal of Sociology pretty soon; it is entitled, Visceral Verstehen (scroll down under "accepted papers").

evolution and speculation

i was watching my cats fight this morning (nothing bad, don't worry, no kitties harmed in this observation) and noticed the flattening of their ears like all kitties do when they are fighting. I suspect that some evolutionary biologist would be able to say "why" they do this, i.e., provides a lower profile for hitting, makes them look meaner, etc.

My point is that just because someone provides an explanation for something and attributes it to evolution doesn't mean that is why somethign is occuring. for one thing, we don't know why a cat does that as we have no access to a cat's conscious awareness. we can infer reasons why, but that is all they are...inferences.

Second is that evolution has not stopped. What we could be witnessing in any behavior is a behavior that is not selected for, but is dying out; we just haven't been around long enough to notice it dying out. For that matter, I suspect that one could argue that all behavior is/was adapative at one time, hence it's existence. Granted, some could have been produced by mutation and serve no advantage, but within any one person's lifetime, we would not know this.