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...

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."

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...

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?????

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.

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.

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.

SEA Commercial

This looks like fun...!

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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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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?

damn, liberal, trouble-making sociologists

Vietnam 2 Preflight Check.

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

social control and institutions

can't say i disagree with this.

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.'"

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.

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...

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.

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!"

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.

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.

Practicing Sociology Podcast

I have started interviewing sociological practitioners and rendering the interviews as podcasts. So far, I have one completed and posted; another interview completed that needs editing and four or five others lined up.

The URL for the site is here.

If you have any ideas for a show, recommendations for the site, etc., feel free to drop me a line.

whammer-saucer!

my son has come up with a new phrase...whammer-saucer! you can say it in reference to just about anything -- a person, an object, an action, a whatever.

Feel free to use it as you wish; the correct way to say it is with much enthusiasm, hence the exclmation point at the end (this is a requirement whenever you write the phrase).

If you say it and someone says, "what's that?" just roll your eyes and shake your head and walk away; they'll get the picture.

You can also say it when alone, it's fun.

remember, you read it here first.

whammer-saucer!

rewarding craving

i realized this morning that craving and the satiation of craving are two entirely different phenomena and don't have the relationship with each other that we think they do.

sating a craving is NOT actually sating anything, it is actually reinforcing craving as a behavior. craving can never be sated as it is merely a sensation; it arises due to conditioning, and is reinforced when "rewarded" with the object of desire.

hmmm...

now, there's an idea!

(from a list; me talking)...

makes sense to me; i think that the approach shouldn't be, "look at what sociology can do for you and your students," though. really, what we need is to have the ENTIRE discipline adopt an "applied" perspective. if you stop and think about it, all serious scientific disciplines have an inherent "applied" aspect to them. this is the product of the enlightenment — we want to understand things so we can change/manipulate them.

we seem to be content to just "study" how things change; we really need to take the next step and then utilize that knoweldge to DO something. i and others have argued that sociology is a humanistic endeavor; as such, the manner and direction of change is in the improvement of the human condition.

A colleague argued at a recent SAS meeting that we need to re-embrace evolution as part of our perspective. I agree entirely; i also agree that we need to understand how our science fits in with the other sciences. if we don't understand the links, what we can offer, how we can fit into the dominant paradigm, then we will be left behind. i think we have been left behind already to some extent. whenever i read popular literature and/or news, and they are discussing human endeavors, they inevitably mention psychologists, anthropologists, biologists, geneticists, etc. rarely, if ever do i hear about sociologists in that mix.

imo, we are not considered because we have become so "disembodied" from the study of humans — what the hell are they? we're interested in systems, processes, institutions, etc. most of the people i come in contact with really don't care about that stuff — they care about themselves, their family, their workers, their colleagues, etc. in other words, they care about "humans" — maybe it is time for us to do the same thing. we can still be concerned with the social at that level (as well as all the other stuff); what we need to do is frame our findings in ways that people can immediately use/apply.

we lost much credibility with our embracing of post-modernism, hermenuetics, narratives, etc. personally, i love that stuff and think it is quite compelling — all of it has certainly influenced my thinking and still does. we lost the masses when we went with it to the exclusion of other things that they could readily understand.

sometimes it appears to me that we are a discipline in search of a purpose; i think we should understand that our purpose is to be a humanistic social science that investigates social reality, discerns sociological principles, and then tells people how to use them to improve their lives.

principles of social change

(from a list)...

To demonstrate what I am talking about with developing principles of social change, i will use Rokeach's values test as an example. The overriding principle is something like:

When people's awareness of contradictions in their personal values is increased, the likelihood of changing one or more of the values also increases; the value that changes is in all likelihood one that is liked least (or something to that effect).

see, with something like this, we have a generalizable proposition that we can use to develop specific interventions; we can take something like this along with us when we are encountering different situations that someone wants changed. let's develop some more!

caveat(s)...of course, this will not necessarily apply to ALL situations; it is predicated on several underlying assumptions that I don't know that we have data on -- people prefer values consistency to values inconsistency, people are uncomfortable when their values are in conflict (i think this is where cognitive dissonance comes in), etc.

more sociological practice thoughts (so i wont forget)

in response to a colleague...

I do think that there are social change principles that can be identified and then interventions developed in concert with those principles that will result in social change. I think this is a very realistic and reasonable goal for applied soc/soc practice.

in response to another colleague...

I am familiar with Rokeach's work -- even used it in a class; I am also familar with how values change. My point (in these apparent last 90 days) that a trip to the library WON'T assist, because it doesn't exist, is empirical applied sociological literature on the efficacy of these methods to facilitate change.

I know that there are numerous disparate interventions that exist; to my knowledge, they do not exist in a "social change" handbook, nor have they been empirically evaluted for their efficacy. I am simply advocating for the development of both of those things.

If you recall (I guess it was 90 days ago), i posted a little test...i'll update it using your example -- ask an applied sociologist to provide you with five empirically validated ways that they can change values in 30 seconds or less and see what happens. Other professional change folk (physicians, counselors, etc.) would probably pass a similar test in their respective disciplines. I wonder how many of us could?

Yes, I know that the discipline is young, however, like much of our parent discipline, we seem to lack some agreement on how to proceed in regards to developing it as a science. Maybe some don't want it to be a "scientific" enterprise; that's fine, too. I do because otherwise we have only anecdotal and experiential data to fall upon in determing our course of intervention. Not bad things, but I feel much more comfortable when working with someone, attempting to facilitate change with/for them, when i know that the methods i am using have some empirical backing.

i know this FROM experience working with substance abusers -- it was a heck of a lot more reassuring using evidence-driven change methods than just shooting from the hip using theory and or a smattering of "this seems to have worked in the past;" also nice for liability purposes.

"What are the principles of social change?" seems to be a good place to start. Finding out what they are, through empirical means is IMO, the way to go. I am planning on proceeding in this direction; if others are, too, maybe we can build something together.

skype

in case you haven't heard about this, there is a free VOIP program that allows anyone to talk with someone else who has the software (anywhere in the world) for free. i got it yesterday.

give me a call, my "number" is johneglass. oh, and i have voice mail, so if i'm not there, leave a message.

it's called skype.

a real holiday gift

these folks make very good use of the money they get. All of the people in the service need some care packages from us, especially now.

give till you feel like you've done something good.

simple, but not easy (a reprise)

this is in reference to a new book by Theodore Roszak...

Okay, so much of what Rozsak says is not really new, is it? World dominated by a small group of people intent on securing self-interest above all else? No surprise, eh? What else is new?

What can we do with this info as far as informing an intervention to THIS social problem (there's one that is NEVER recognized, right)? IMO, it is getting people to REALLY realize their sociological imagination. How? By getting them to realize that they are indeed a collective and have the power of a collective IF they act as a collective. Those yahoos intent on world domination only have power if WE permit it. This is what is conveniently forgotten all the time.

The issue is NOT education, it is REALIZATION. I KNOW that I am part of a greater collectivity (my education has given me that), but I haven't realized it yet; if I did all of my daily actions would be fundamentally different. Realization speaks to a profound change in behavior; it is an action, it is not mere knowledge that one can retain. So, what we need to do is to create an opportunity for ourselves and other people TO realize it. I think it would only take one event to achieve this kind of realization.

So, what to do? This is where having established, testable (as Mindy notes) methods of intervention would come in REAL handy. Lacking those, however, here is something that I bet would work. Not a new idea, just never been successfully pulled off (that I know of) on any signifcant level (with the one exception of the Harmonic Convergence back in the middle 80's — this event managed to get over 140,000 people, around the world doing the same thing, at the same time, on the same day).

The intervention is to get millions of people to do something that will jerk our leaders' chains (and voting is NOT it); we need to get their immediate and undivided attention. Some suggestions...get millions of people to not buy gas for a day, get millions of people to boycott anything made by General Electric for a day. Nothing violent, nothing anarchic, just something to demonstrate that we DO have power and we WILL use it. IMO, the best demonstration would be economic — don't mess with us or we will stop buying X. Would that get someone's attention? Yup. Would people then have a tangible, visceral experience of the sociological imagination? Yup. Would it put those in power on notice that they DO, indeed work for US and not the other way around? Yup.

Now, before you say, "that will never happen, imagine what would be involved, that's naive, yadda, yadda, yadda..." think about all of the other seemingly insurmountable problems that other sciences have encountered and succeeded in overcoming. We can't rely on the "we lack resources" argument, not in this day and age of the internet, instant, world-wide communication, instant online payment, etc. If we lack any resources, it is in figuring out how to use what we have — the resources are there, we just haven't figured out how to tap them.

Our job is not to figure out what the specific action would be, our job should be to figure out how to do it. How to get those people to do the same thing, at the same time, on the same day. Would that be a method of social change? Yeah, an IMMEDIATE one.

Now, IMO, we DON'T know how to do this or else we or someone else would have done it already. IMO, this is one of the things that we should be figuring out. We need a Manhatten project on the science of social change (to paraphrase some wise person making the same observation about poverty in the US).

my little boy is #@!$% smart!

Last night, my son ask me what "ours" meant (recall, that he is 3 years old). I thought he meant "hours" so I started talking about time, the passage of time, etc. But then he clarified (I don't recall how) that he meant, "ours," like possession.

I explained to him that if we had something, then it was ours.

He then asked what if we stole something, put it in our car and drove it home...would it be ours? I told him, no, because for something to be ours, we have to get it the right way, by buying it, receiving it as a gift, etc.

He thought for a minute, then said....

What if someone else stole it, gave it to us, and we drove it home (we were driving, so I assume that this where the whole, "drive it home" thing came from). I told him that if we knew it was stolen, then it wouldn't be ours; if, however, we didn't know it was stolen, then it would be.

Nuances aside, that is one hell of an example of some serious logic. That boy was thinking.

Am I proud? You bet your $#@!% ass I am.

i think i finally got it!

a colleague writes...

"Objectivity is not mere culture. Objectivity is "making individual sensory experiences social experiences."

And this is where the rub is...how those sensory experiences are transformed into social experiences. as each of us is embedded in different social realities, mediated by differing linguistic and experiential histories, there can not be universal agreement on what those "sensory experiences" are. Furthermore, it is a SOCIAL process in which they become "social experiences," even when this occurs within us.

IMO, any SOCIAL process is inherently contextual, inherently cultural, inherently definitional — these limitations, by their definition, deny any kind of sense of universal objectivity. Now, this is not to say that we cannot suspend our own bias, prejudices, beliefs, etc., when we are conducting an analysis. Furthermore, this is not to say that others when reviewing our methods, engaging in the same suspension of these things, agree with our findings that we have not achieved something that is commonly called "objectivity." What we forget is that this notion of objectivity is defined, through cultural means — it is a process that we engage in, a process of bracketing (if you will). It is still bounded by cultural/inguistic parameters, however; if it were not, we would never know if we achieved it.

It is assumed that objectivity is a particular stance that is somehow inherent in any situation, i.e., it is there and can be accessed if one simply looks for it or aligns oneself with it. It is assumed that this stance is independent of any other considerations, a "univerally true" assessment of what is under observation. Presumably, when learning how to do science, one learns how to access this objectivity in any situation. How? By letting go of preconceived ideas, suspending beliefs, etc. Note that in order to attain objectivity, we must DO something; it is not a "natural state." In fact, it is supposedly an unnatural state, hence the need for extensive training ob how to conduct reserach. If we look at the process of how objectivity is achieved, however, we notice that we can never be sure if we have actually attained it and that others will attain the very same stance that we attained when conducting our observation.

I guess what I am saying is that it seems to me that unviersal objectivity, when considered phenomenologically (and how else COULD it be considered), is essentially what Husserl referred to as the transcendental ego. From my reading of this idea, it is purported to be something that exists independent of culture, as objectivity, in its purest definition is.

If, however, we must go through a bracekting process to get to it, and everyone else who is interested in attaining objectivity must go through the same bracketing process, how then do we know that whomever is interested in observing the phenomena that we did, bracketed the same things that we did? We don't and we can't.

I am not suggesting that we abandon the heuristic of "objectivity," but merely note that it is not as fool-proof nor as "universal" as we think it is.

Now, some REAL freakin' heresy

RE: Intelligent design...I like it for several reasons. 1) It challenges us, as scientists to be very precise in defining what we know, what we are talking about, how we arrive at knowledge, etc.; I think that is a good thing 2) It notes that an underlying assumption of science is naturalism, i.e., that all things have natural (VS supernatural) causes; inasmuch as we are bound by our language, we cannot reject any notion of God, Creator, etc., as we cannot know if these things exist indepdent of culture (or at least by linguistic methods; personally I think Buddhists and other meditators hit on a non-ordinary reality that sounds like a hell of a place to live - screw science at that point! Hell, if I can live in peace, equanimity, and universal compassion, I'll take it, even if it can't be "empirically verified") 3) I think if they have what they think are reasonable data on intelligent design, they should be allowed to present them 4) evolution IS a theory after all; granted it is widely accepted by many scientists, but big deal, acceptance doesn't mean accuracy and 5) I don't think it should be taught in school until it has been thoroughly vetted in the public-scientific discourse, which if everyone automatically rejects it, it will never have a chance.

I don't think "real" scientists should be afraid of it; if they are pissed about it because it smacks of religion, that is a different matter. Lastly, I think the real issue is the powers that are pushing it - promoting something that has not been thoroughly vetted as having equal standing along with their persistent attacks on traditional science and scientific methods.

All of the above said...until I am enlightened (!!!!), I consider myself to be a humanistic, evolutionary, behavioral scientist and promote all of that in my teaching. God, religion, etc., are not relevant to science as epistemologies because they cannot be empirially verified. And yes, from a cultural standpoint, these are my biases/prejudices, and I am aware of that.

it all depends on how ya look at it...and that sucks

a colleauge writes...

"My concern is helping people with and preventing them from experiencing social problems. Social problems such as date rape, AOD problems and "mental" illness."

I don't think it is that simple. Can we all agree that date rape is a social problem? On the surface, the answer is YES! However, think of the people who commit date rape...do THEY think it is a problem? No. Most of them don't even think it happened, right? "it wasn't rape, it was consensual." Of course for the person who suffered the rape it is a problem, a serious, life-changing one.

The intervention then seems obvious, right? Get people to understand that date rape does happen, is wrong, and they shouldn't do it.

Herein lies the problem; there are several "work-arounds" to that in the mind of a potential rapist which increase the likelihood of occurrence. He doesn't see it as wrong, because he doesn't see it as rape; he might see it as wrong, be he thnks he won't get caught, so he proceeds anyway; he intends to rape someone, so he drugs her to increase his likelihood of committing the rape and decrease his likelihood for getting caught afterwards; he knows that if he is caught, SHE will be put on trial, too, and in all likelihood, will drop the case (think Kobe). All of these increase the chance that rape will occur and continue.

Fear of jail time does NOT deter people who are intent on crime from committing crimes. That is why they commit the crime — they aren't concerned about getting caught. Fear of jail time probably works for many people (like ME!), but for those people who are interested in doing something illegal, it is just another problem that needs to be overcome before the crime is committed, hence the work-arounds.

These are the actual realities that need to be intervened on. When looked at this way, the target of the intervention becomes much clearer and it takes on a different tone entirely. Since we know that men rape, we must target men; not only that, but we must target the way men can and do make sense out of situations; we must target how men use power and force, etc.

So, the social problem, when carefully analyzed moves from DATE RAPE to MEN RAPING WOMEN AND NOT BEING THAT CONCERNED ABOUT IT FOR ANY NUMBER OF REASONS.

Hmmm, is THAT going to be recognized as a social problem as easily as "date rape?"

I doubt it, yet that is much more accurate of a description of what is happening. And, again, is illustrative of the need for behavior change, IMO.

geez, I can be wordy...

I wasn't joking when I said you could take a sentence as a way to introduce students to sociology and use an entire semester to do that. IMO, THAT is the sociological imagination at work. Allow me to demonstrate...

take the word...ME

first how do we understand that word? those of us who speak English, understand it because of the joining of the two letters, M & E.

Our understanding of those two letters speaks to our individual embeddedness in a linguistic/social reality; a linguistic/social reality complete with millenia of history that links us (through the understanding and internalization of those two letters) to millions of people who came before us; those people who "brought forth" our language, that same language (having gone through countless iterations) that we now use to create meaning in our lives. The soc imagination is the intersection of biography (me — this body which sits here and types this in 2005) and history (all of those people and all of those iterations of our current language). My personal experience of life is mediated by thousands of years of social history and in some respects is ONLY possible because of that past history. so, I use something thousands of years old, that has been passed through millions of minds, to understand MY CURRENT EXPERIENCE. Pretty freaking amazing, if you ask...ME.

Then think of how you learned those letters — how they were taught to you, in what situation? in school? in your family? why is it that those two letters, in particular represent something that we find to be so personal? what is about those two letters in particular...why not S & E? what were the consequences you received when you misused those two letters?

Moving on to the word itself, ME...think of this personal and social history of this word. How many millions of people have used it? What were they referring to when they used it? was their ME the same as my ME? if not, how did they differ? what do I currently think about ME? as a word? as a sociological concept? as part of a theory of self? as a reference to this thing, this "self" that allegedly inhabits my body? how are the different ideas of ME that i have had reflect my social situations? how about the ME's that others have had?

IMO, we can do this with any object. Granted it is a rather micro use of the SI, but I use it to demonstrate how pervasive social reality is. it is inescapable. and it inflitrates ALL of what we do, who we think we are, how we make sense, how we think, etc.

in sum, the fact that we can even talk about something called, "the sociological imagination" is evidence that it exists.

more heresy...(I can't stop it!!!)

yes, I am familiar with the work and some of the approaches (of clinical sociology). My contention is that we don't have a coherent body of knowledge about how to effect social change. Nor is much of it empirically validated. I am all for pragmatic, "the proof is in the pudding" strategies; to my knowledge, however there is not a substantial body of work that demonstrates the utility of specific interventions.

Little test...ask three applied/clinical sociologists to name, off the top of their heads, three established intervention strategies to increase family bonding/attachment; give them each one minute to do it.

Compare this with a physician who can tell you three ways to decrease your likelihood of having a heart attack, in less than thirty seconds.

This is what I am talking about. This is why, IMO, we have an identity crisis in this field.

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.

BTK = entitlement to the max

i listened to brief excerpts from the BTK killer's testimony yesterday on the radio. he was telling the judge about how we murdered one family and in the course of describing what he did, he said (to the judge), "if you have read anything about serial killers, then you know that when was I was doing XYZ, I was in the XYZ phase..."

Amazing, the guy has admitted to ten murders and he is lecturing the judge on serial killers. That is entitlement.

Also, he is not crazy, he is (and was) very rational. I know that many would describe him as a sociopath and according to the defintion of sociopath, he would fit the profile quite nicely; no conscience, no remorse, etc.

The interesting thing, however is to pay attention to how he makes sense out of what he did. He was extremely rational in plotting and in killing people. His rationality in carrying out what he did is really no different than the rationality that many of us employ in caring out daily tasks. Indeed, the commentator on the radio described him as a "technician" when it came to killing people.

So, mix rationality with entitlement and in most cases you just get a self-centered jerk; in this case, you got one scary bastard who enjoyed killing people.

so much for rationality and entitlement...

over there, over there...

our Prez recently has been talking about how we are "fighting the terrorists over there [in Iraq] so we don't have to fight them here."

The thing that seems to escape him and all of the others in the Admin is that this is precisely what the "terrorists" want us to do! They want to be able to fight us in their land(s), they want to kill as many Americans as they can, and we are, inadvertently playing right into their hands by continuing to provide them with people to be killed. And because the Admin is hell-bent on "staying the course," this is precisely what is going to continue to happen, over, and over, and over again -- there will be absolutely no shortage of willing volunteers to kill Americans.

Ironically, and sadly, by invading Iraq, we will now have to settle for an uneasy truce with the "terrorists" as, at some point we will have to negotiate with them (yes, duly noted that this is already happening) so that we can pull out. If we had not invaded Iraq, we would still have world-wide support to challenge and dismantle their networks; we wouldn't have to settle for negotiating with anyone.

so, if we had not invaded, we would still be in a one-up position; now we will always be in a one-down position because this thing ain't gonna be over anytime soon and there is no way that we can regain our original position.

oh, and as soon as all the other Repubs figure out that they ain't gonna be re-elected because of this war and their gravy train is pulling into the retirement station, they are gonna cut and run as quick as they can, leaving Georgie out in the cold.

(note that I use the term "terrorist" not because I agree with the notion of a "war on terror" and a terrorist under every bed; I use it because this is how the Admin is framing the conflict).

saying sorry is easy when you're not corrupt

I was listening to NPR this morning and one of their editors came on the air to apologize for a freelance commentator who apparently had been plagarizing others' work (too bad, I liked the guy, Gabe Wisdom). The editor gave the facts of what happened, stated what NPR did in response, and aplogized for the entire event.

made me think...

if you honestly made a mistake in doing your job, and you have nothing to hide about your behavior which led up to the mistake (and afterwards, your response to the mistake), then you have no reason NOT to apologize for it...it was a mistake. You were doing your job to the best of your ability, something happened, you noticed it, took responsible action, and are sorry for any fall-out. pretty simple.

if, however, you are not being straight with what you were doing when the "mistake" occurred, and if you were not straight about what you did about it, then you can't apologize as it would open you up to all kinds of scrutiny, lawsuits, you name it. most people understand that mistakes occur and that if you can demonstrate that you took reasonable action to respond to them, then they are going to be accepting of it.

if you are dishonest with them, and deny what happened, or deny the outcomes of what happened, then that seems to be a sure sign that you are "cooking the books" regardless of what the "books" are.

if it can't stand the scrutiny of daylight, there is something very, very wrong.

common sense, eh?

i think

i screwed up my formatting...

subverting, yet again

i have a wild idea about starting an online journal or database of sociological applications that anyone could use. like, if someone wanted to know how to change the culture of an organization, or how to assist someone in changing him or herself, etc. here is how i envision the format for the entries:

Name of intervention

Purpose of intervention

Potential uses

Sociology behind it (theory, concept, research, etc.)

How to do it (list steps and brief commentary)

Limitations

Cautions

References

seems simple enough. i'm sure that someone will get upset about it, though; accuse me of rocking the applied sociological boat by doing something like that. i know this sounds strange, but i think that applied sociologists should be developing applications for people to use. but, then again, i know that i have some strange ideas.

troy duster

president of the american sociological association, prolific intellectual, wise man interviewed about the senate's decision yesterday to publicly apologize for their lack of intervention in lynchings during the last two centuries. well worth a listen.

the jackson verdict

some were speculating during the trial that jackson would have a hard time as it was an all-white jury. i think this was to his advantage. why? that county is pretty wealthy and i suspect if it is like other wealthy counties in the u.s., most, if not all of the weatlh is in the hands of whites. so...an all white jury, in a wealthy county could probably relate to the idea that someone is out there trying to steal your money and/or set you up so that they can sue you. in short, i bet that they could relate to a poor person (the accuser and his mother) preying on a naive wealthy person (jackson). wealthy people are fearful of being victims; the evidence seems to indicate that jackson was "set up" by the mom.

so, if michael was a poor black man, it would have in all likelihood, worked against him. but, michael is a very wealthy, international celebrity with millions of fans, so his wealth and his status, in this case helped him.

so, the speculating after the trial begins (and ends, i don't plan on saying anything else about it).

i understand road rage

i don't agree with it, but i understand it.

consider the amount of frustration that current urban living consists of. consider, also, how due to our "it wasn't me!" attitudes about responsibility and accountability, there is no way to vent our frustrations over others' mistakes.

now, someone cuts you off, someone runs a red light in front of you...tangible, immediately identifiable blame ready and able to be laid on that person. and what happens? all of that simmering frustration finds a focal point to come out. and you get? road rage.

no timing, no cry (sung to the Bob Marly tune)

the other day, out of the blue, my seven year old said, "dad, i've never seen you cry." that's true. i don't know that i have cried in seven years or if i have she was too young or was not around.

she then asked me why.

my first thought...no time. i don't have time to cry. crying takes time, energy, space, etc. all of those are in short supply now. i get up, i take my triglyceride medication, make my daily ayurvedic tea, make my lunch, settle disputes among the kids, take a shower, go to work, get home and repeat of much of the morning, just different names for similar tasks.

and we don't watch TV except on rare occasions.

i wonder how anyone who is a parent has time to cry?

we're going to have a book burning!

the following list was posted on a sociology list; my response follows:

I think the "giveaway" in this list is in the title...the notion of associating "dangerous" with a book. An exploding book, perhaps, one that secretes poison upon contact with human flesh, perhaps, but the information, knowledge and ideas in a book being dangerous???? Wow, better get those parking lot bonfires started, cause there be a lot of book burnin' going on soon.

Surprised that the Sinclair Lewis novel, It Can't Happen Here, isn't on the list; it is a fictional accounting of how the US becomes a fascist country (written 70 years ago).

Required reading, IMO.

That said, I agree with XXX that we are lacking in our ability to empirically demonstrate our overall worth. Note the fairly recent discussion in Teaching Sociology about the "core" of sociology. My takeaway was that, in some respects, we have no clothes. At best, we are a practice VS a science. Not too bad, IMO, but not what we promote to the world at large.

Yes, we use empirical methods to collect and analyze social data, but do we have any well-founded theoretical propositions and/or axioms that we teach as the foundation(s) of sociology? The closest I have seen is exchange theory ala Homans, network exchange theory, and possibly network analysis. These theories have some possibilities of testing and building on axioms as is the case in other sciences.

Is anyone else getting kind of tired of regurgitating the 3 perspectives in Intro classes? Isn't it odd that we still talk about Durkheim, Marx, and Weber as if they are deities? This would be like modern physics touting Newton as the preeminent natural scientist (which he was, but physics has moved well beyond Newton by now). Granted, natural science predates (at least in the West) social science by a century or two, but they have moved on considerably more quickly than we have. It's like we are stuck in the 19th century. Some of the best material about things social I have read of late comes from outside the discipline. That strikes me as odd.

In any event, I will continue to promote membership in the reality-based community.

huh?

I just read the following (from the AP) and found it interesting. Sec. Rumsfeld apparently cited this as a defense for how the Administration is responding to allegations of detainee abuses; the ironic part is that I think it substantiates the allegations, just by the sheer number of investigations. In short, IMO, evidence of a systemic problem:

"Yes, there have been instances where detainees have been mistreated while in U.S. custody, sometimes grievously, but consider these facts," Rumsfeld said Wednesday. "To date there have been approximately 370 criminal investigations into the charges of misconduct involving detainees" since Sept. 11, 2001.

I just wonder when these Admin guys will figure this out; actually, I should save myself the energy...they never will.

a progressive post...

to a sociology list.

RE: What is being progressive?

I think what defines “progressive” is irrelevant. I suspect that many people would consider me “progressive,” “liberal,” etc. I don’t use those labels in addressing myself. I don’t think that they are useful. If I do use a label to describe myself, I use terms like, “sane,” “reasonable,” etc. I know that these can be debated about me, but I do strive to be those things.

I think that being “sane” and “reasonable” is taking into consideration all of the known data of a phenomena, being respectful of others, and not pretending that I know everything there is to know about something. In past times, this was known as “humility.” Now a dirty word, I think. I also think it is worthwhile to consider how actions have consequences and paying attention to what those consequences might be prior to taking action; being aware of the limitation of resources, etc.; making judgments based on all of the above with the hope of having the best impact on the greatest number. Again, to me this kind of approach seems sane and reasonable; apparently now this kind of thinking is considered “liberal.” Go figure. But seemingly traditional American values (that I try to adhere to and naively expect others to do the same) like respect, honesty, integrity, accountability, and personal responsibility are also apparently now “liberal” values, too. Go figure again.

So, what constitutes “being progressive” is irrelevant, IMO. What matters is how people act. What can I say? I think pragmatism got it right.

RE: politics, religion, values…to answer your question, I do those things that you mention and am not in conflict with my religious belief system. I suspect that some would argue that I have a very “liberal” and/or “progressive” religious belief-system. I consider myself a Hindu-Buddhist-Jesus (-ist?), although when asked what my “religion” is, I will deny affiliation with any; all of that makes complete sense to me and does not run counter to my “beliefs.” I was raised Catholic, but the whole no birth-control, “homosexuality is bad”-thing is just ridiculous, IMO. Although, I do have to admit that my presence on this earth is entirely due to the rhythm method, so I guess I do, on some level, owe the Catholic Church for my corporeal existence (man, what a freaking institution to be beholden to!!!). I agree with their stance on the death penalty, war and abortion, however (I do think that abortion is the taking of a life; I do not think it is my role to pass judgment on those who do that, however).

So, yes, IMO, one can be spiritually/politically/religiously “progressive” all at the same time. In fact, the people I admire the most are those who did/do precisely that.

But, hey, I’m just a damn liberal sociologist and my opinion ain’t worth @#$%!