Bad Cats and College Drinking

Cats are very cute.

But, as anyone with a cat knows, they can be wolfs in lambs clothing.

Unlike dogs, cats are virtually un-trainable, and have a reputation for being very egocentric and "stuck up". They like to be the authority on every matter, and, you as people, are just there willing slaves to feed them and pet them when they want it. I know this, because I have had cats my whole life.

However, my cat Bob sits when he is fed, comes when he is called, knows his name, and asks to go outside.
My friends that were here over their break got much entertainment from the fact that we had successfully trained a cat. Why is this so unusual? Why should this be a shocking realization? We know cats are relatively intelligent, so why is it so strange for one to be trained?

Because they have the reputation of being stubborn, and can not be trained. For cats, this attitude and reputation is there norm, and is accepted by society even though it is not necessarily true. This is a good representation of similar things that take place within the human species as well. We have these social norms that are what dictate what we do and how we should think, and then are rewarded or punished based off of the societies understanding of the action. For instance, the norm in Barrington Society is to graduate high school.. If you don't, the repercussion of that is the idea that you are unprepared for college, and can not get in. This is an actual social norm. There is a different type of norms however, and these are perceived norms. One example is that it is normal for a cat to be un-trainable- in actuality, people just assume that and therefore, don't try. Another is that college students drink- a lot. However, a study at SMU showed that students didn't drink nearly as much as their peers perseived.

see study here

Even though these "norms" dictate what we as a society perceive as normal, they can very easily be a misconception or simply not true. We judge people based on weather or not they follow these certain set of rules, when the rules are not actually rules, we just see them as such. So why do people care so much about following these rules? They supposedly make society function but doesn't that mean society functions of falsehood?

Pet Food

When I was in third grade, we had a paraplegic class pet named Chester. Over the weekend, we would all take turns taking Chester home with us and taking care of him. Here in the United States, we call Chester’s species Guinea Pigs, and keep them as pets. In Peru, They are called Qui, and are raised and eaten for dinner. This disjoint between our two cultures takes a certain kind of Cultural Relativism to rap your head around. Usually when I tell people that I’ve eaten Guinea Pigs, they give me a weird look and say “Ew. Did it taste like chicken?”

To this I inform them that No, it does not taste like chicken, it tastes like Qui.

People also find it strange when I inform them that there, they have soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In America, we have such a strong sense of Ethnocentrism that the idea of eating Rodents and Potato soup at 8am is weird, strange, and kind of gross. But is simply because we do not know what it is we are calling weird, strange and gross. It’s the same concept as “don’t nock it before you tried it.” Qui is actually very good- an unusual taste, but good. And when your up in the Andes mountains, a nice warm cup of soup is welcome at any time of the day, and fits very nicely with the rest of there food palate. But we have trouble seeing things from their perspective. To us it is weird because we don’t know it and don’t care to understand, which causes us to miss a lot of truly wonderful things in life.

This disjoint doesn’t stop at their food. Something very, to us, interesting, about the culture of the Peruvians living up in the rural mountainous areas is that they always welcome travelers, and are always very friendly to everyone. While we were there, our bus broke down, near a farm where a family was building a house out of mud bricks. Our guide spoke a few words with the family, and we ended up spending the good part of an hour learning how to make mud bricks and helped them build there house. This was their HOME, the place where they were going to live. But they still allowed us to help them build it, because we were curious and they were nice. That is something you would not see here.  We were told that in there culture, you took strangers in, and were kind to everyone, and helped each other out when in need. It was common place that if there was a traveler that needed food and a place to stay, you let them in, fed them what you had and gave them the best bed (these people are very poor, keep in mind), then in the morning, point them in the right direction, and wish them luck. Here, our values are too much on our own success and well-being, while there’s are on kindness and hospitality. We can learn a lot from other cultures, and many conflicts would be avoided if we just looked at things with a bit more cultural relativism. 

Imagine the Green is Red

There are always many different ways to look at things.

In fact, it is not just possible, but probable that people will see the same thing and think of it differently. 

Sociology is no different. There are various ways that someone could look at a sociological situation, or, if you will, perspectives. These different perspectives allow a person different insight into the sociological nature of a situation based on these different ways of perception. The three main ones are Functionalism, Conflict, and Symbolic Interaction. Functionalism can be broken down into three parts: Manifest function (Why does it exist?), Latent Function (Other functions by a social structure, though not it's main one), and Dysfunction (negative "side effects" of a structure.) It's main view point is that social structure exist to fulfill vital functions for society. 

Conflict theory states that everything is a result of conflict over scarce resources, and emphasizes the role of conflict and power, like recrutees competing for spots on a sports team. 

Interactionism is a perspective that believes social interactions are results of meanings we as a society places on aspects of our life; that social structures come about because of repeated interactions.

based off these three different view points on social interactions and social structures, we are able to look at the same situation various ways, allowing us a more holistic idea about how we as a society work.

Sociology: Governments Secret Weapon.

Sociology is a lot like oil. Why do I say this, you may ask? Because today in Environmental Science my teacher said something about oil that fits sociology perfectly.

"Oil is everywhere. It is in everything you do. If someone can tell me one thing they do in their life that has no connection to oil, I will give you an A for the class and tell you to leave. You are covered in oil, right now. The clothes on your back- they came from machines run by oil. Everything you do comes from oil."

Okay, so maybe the clothes part didn't fit exactly. But the rest of it did. 

"Sociology is everywhere. It is in everything you do. If someone can tell me one thing they do in their life that has no connection to Sociology, I will give you an A for the class and tell you to leave.  Everything you do comes from sociology."

And this, I believe, was the most important thing we learned this week. We did spend time talking about the history of early sociology, with Karl Marx, and class struggle, Emile Durkheim, and Population growth and other social forces, and Max Weber, who believed that social life is based on the accumulation of different interactions. Each with there own interpretation of how sociological forces impact us, But they all said essentially the same thing. "Individual choice is always determined to some extent by the persons environment."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA

And while all that IS important to understanding exactly what sociology is, I feel the most important aspect of this weeks lessons is WHY sociology is important to us. 

and the answer to that?

"Sociology is everywhere. It is in everything we do."

A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Science, and the Matrix

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure. 
-Agent Smith, the Matrix