Lewis & Clark Moodle

1) Do children play out different social structures in play groups? Do they try out different forms of power structure or is it all modeled after what is seen at home?

2) How does our banking system effect our social lives?

3) Do we have a "good" banking system?

4) Do different countries have difference levels of social time? If so , why?

5) Why do people sometimes like to be alone, and sometimes like to be surrounded by people? Is this because of upbringing or is this feeling innate?

6) How have dogs influenced our social structure? Is it possible that the domestication of dogs is the one common tie all cultures share?

7) What percentage of our culture is shared with other countries? Is this a good thing? How has globalization effected this?

8) Do other animals have complex social lives like humans, or is it all based off gut reactions?

9) What roll does time spend outdoors play on our moods?

10) Can "one kind act a day" really make a difference on society as a whole?

I think proposition 64 will be great for multiple reasons. First, is that, because marijuana is now legal in California, continuing to punish prior offenders is cruel and unnecessary. Having an arrest for a marijuana related incident, can make it harder for people to get a job, obtain a loan, go to college, or get housing. The war on drugs was an unjust war centered around underprivileged minorities.  Someone with a simple marijuana violation will now have the chance for that incident to be erased off of their record. The arrests featuring African Americans increased by 20% between 1999 and 2000. The war on marijuana was a mistake, and we owe it to those who are incarcerated because of a marijuana arrest to fix it. There is no reason for someone to be unable to get a job or properly support their family because of something that is now illegal. The rest of california, and even the nation should follow San Francisco's lead.  

This blog entry is going off of our class study about marriage rates. I was reading an article by the Pew Research Center that talked about how only half of the United States' adult population is married. Just 50 years ago, 72% of the adult population was married. Now, people are marrying later, raising a family outside of marriage, and getting divorced later in life. The statistic I found most interesting was how 47% of people who make less than $30,000 a year are married, while only 21% of people who make more than $75,000 a year are married. According to Statista, over 40% of the adult population make $75,000 or more. Coming from a broken family myself, I looked into the divorce rate in the United States. Sure enough, it has spiked over the past few decades. Divorce has become so normalized in our society, and I would love to delve into why that is. I think some of it has to do with the fall in religion in our country. 50 years ago, it was a sin to get divorced, and if you weren't married, you were probably in a convent or a seminary. Women needed to marry men because they couldn't make it on their own. With the little rights they had, the chances of them being financially comfortable on their own were slim. I think another reason the divorce rate has gone up is because of technology and how our world is becoming smaller and smaller. If a man wants to leave his wife and kids and start over, he can pack up and move to a place where nobody knows him. Our society has made it easy for people to give up on their responsibilities. Through the media, government welfare, and high incomes, most people feel like they have a safety net underneath them, and I think that's why the top 40% of our population don't consider marital commitments to be important.

Yesterday, I was watching the Superbowl, and I found myself cynically thinking about what a money vortex the NFL is. Why do we worship these men? Why do we dump so much money into this monopoly? Why do people in the NFL make more money than I ever will, even if I've never heard their names? It's kind of crazy, if you think about it. What good is the NFL doing for our society? My friends got sick of hearing me banter, so I've had the past 24 hours to think about these questions. Surprisingly, my conclusions aren't all that cynical. I started thinking about the ancient Roman Empire; thousands of people would go to the Colosseum for entertainment. People need some form of fun and entertainment; it's in our human nature and our social foundation. On top of entertainment, the NFL provides a sense of belonging and community. Being from New England, when I was walking around town on Sunday mid-day, I felt so proud to be from their, as I saw people wearing Patriots hats and shirts. I've never been a football fanatic, but for some reason, I felt a sense of pride in my hometown and for my team. So basically, I just proved my own argument wrong. The need to belong and find some community is ingrained into the foundation of our society. And despite how I could still argue the NFL is a waste of our money, it's an important part of our society, and, I believe, it's needed entertainment.

I was shocked to find the Hallway Hangers firm belief in the American Dream. They have been shown more clearly than any other social class that the American dream is dead. They have nearly no hope of moving into the middle class and what hope they do have requires a different education system than the one provided. My only thought is that they cling to the ideals of the American dream in order to feel as though they have a chance of one day making it big. Or they believe in a micro-scale American dream that they will move up in their jobs and generate more street cred. Either way it is clear to the reader that these boys have no betting chance of making a life for themselves which anyone else would be satisfied with.

This past weekend, my friends and I watched the documentary, Hypernormalisation. This documentary attempts to explain the ways in which the financial, political, and social spheres interconnect to create a false perception of the world. Adam Curtis explains the habit of oversimplification of abstract and extremely complex problems in order to feel comfortable with the world in which we live and the kind of decisions we make. This is the definition of “Hypernormalisation”, the film’s title. This struck my sociological brain when the filmmaker discussed how people are often so immersed within a system that they cannot even recognize that the system exists. This got me questioning the role that the process of hypernormalisation plays in my own life, the structures and institutions that influence my life, and especially whether or not I am aware of the full extent to which my actions are being influenced. The process of normalizing a complex problem is something we do daily. Curtis’ film made me want to strive to further understand the complexities of my life without copping out to a comfortable stable mental state, but I recognize that this is easier said than done.

I find it difficult to be a minority in this environment at Lewis and Clark because everyone is white. When I look around the majority of classmates, teammates, and teachers are white. I always count the number of colored classmates when I walk into the room. Is this an unusual observation or is there more at play? Lewis and Clark prides themselves on being diverse and when I was thinking about coming here it was under the pretense that this would be a diverse campus. I even asked my coach if the team would be diverse, and he replied “yea, there are a lot of athletes that are from different states.” Why did that answer shock me as much as it did? Why did his automatic response not relate to race when my first thought about diversity is about race? I think that there is a sociological problem with diversity in institutions.

Lots of advertisements pride themselves on having a diverse group of people in the workplace, school, or in certain jobs. There was a presenter during one of the opening activities for first year orientation, and he talked about the common ad that shows at least one black, Asian, Hispanic, white, and guy in the wheelchair on a college website. We all laughed, but what is weird is that sadly that is the truth. The advertisement is completely different from the reality of what college often looks like. Here, Lewis and Clark do have great opportunities for diverse pupils on campus to be included with a diversity program. The program is called Inclusion and Multicultural engagement, IME for students that are part of a minority. I understand that the college wants to be diverse and it has symposiums, it has classes, and it even has an essay portion when you apply that asks about diversity. But, do I ever see someone not a part of a minority or the group come to any diversity meetings? No, I only see the people that identify as a minority, but that does not help the people that have no clue what diversity is/means. A school, work place, or ad can claim diversity all they want, but it does not count when not everyone is learning about the importance of the word. I know that if a school did not promote anything about diversity then it would automatically be cast out by students who are people of color or it would be called a racist institution.  

Lewis and Clark is a private liberal arts college, so of course there are not going to be as many people of color here. That is not me stereotyping, it is a fact in society that people of color tend to not continue on to higher education. Institutions have made the pathway to higher education continuously hard for minorities to succeed. A study by Young Invincibles posted their findings in USA college today that in “2015, 36.2% of white students, 22.5% of black students and 15.5% of Hispanic students had completed four years of college.” The finding is two years old but judging by the number of colored students I see around campus, I would agree with a statement that there is a limited amount of diversity on campus. Institutions, especially one like Lewis and Clark are pushing more for diversity because minority students like myself, who decide to go to a majority white school would feel ostracized. People have realized that diversity and inclusion are more important now because minorities are slowly rising up and wanting to be seen more as equal. Minorities want to see that educational gap get smaller and institutions are recognizing that so they push for diversity and advertise it to convince people they are. 

Recently the Grammy award ceremony was celebrated and there has been a lot of talk about who won. I personally have never paid much attention to these awards and I only know these ones happened because of the huge commotion surrounding Neil Portnow. This man, the President of the Recording Academy, sparked a huge backlash when he said that women in the music industry need to ‘step up.’ This caused a huge up roar in the community especially since the movement #MeToo is going on. A lot of women are arguing that it is not the lack of women ‘stepping up’ but more that women are being shut out of the industry. Women did exceptionally well in the Grammys this year with many of the categories having female artists. The category for best pop solo performance was dominated by women with Ed Sheeran as the only male artist who ironically won. There were many other categories like, best new artist, best rap/ sung collaboration, and song of the year that had notable women artists being nominees and the majority.

With this offensive comment hitting the headlines alongside the #MeToo movement happening, it makes me wonder what makes it normalized to subject women to inferior levels. There have been many comments made at or about women for not having what it takes to make it in a certain industry but there is not as much criticism against men. Yes, there are some jobs that men are not the majority in like nursing or teaching, but we do not see someone saying that men are not trying hard enough to succeed in that. Women who are trying to succeed in fields like science, music, or the film industry have been trying for many years. It is not women’s lack of effort but rather there seems to be a bigger thing at holding women back from succeeding. I think that it is because of how history has always viewed/ portrayed women. For centuries, women are having to fight for their place at the head of the table. Women had to fight for their right to vote, women are fighting for their rights to their own bodies, women are fighting for equal pay and many more things. Women are continuously creating movements because they are being put behind men, being put down on the social order, and institutionally shut out. The percentage of women that hold CEO positions is less than 5% based on the American Association of University Women. This number is ridiculously low and begs to ask what is going on in society that has made the women the minority.

 Why is it that women are not seen as capable enough or pushed aside when we have proven in history that we are equally as good if not better. This off hand comment made at women in music is a bigger issue because it is addressing an institutional problem that needs to be faced.  With comments like these made by men that are in influential positions in society, it keeps women subject to being inferior. It keeps women from rising up into higher positions because men already view them as not as good. 

Over the course of this past weekend, I started to pay attention to the order in which I ate my food. Dinner often began with a plate of whatever the entree was (often chicken) paired with a glass of water. After this I would walk to the salad bar to make my own salad, then lastly, i'd have a cookie for dessert. I began to notice that other too followed this series of events. At first I didn't give this much thought, dismissing it as a shallow observation of sociology in my daily life. However, I began to think about eating as a whole, more specifically constructions that I have formed around eating and institutions that have influenced my eating habits. Beginning with constructs that I have around my eating regiment, my perception of dining, i’m almost positive comes from my mother. She instilled in me everything that I know about dining, from silverware to etiquette. I’d be curious to see how these things range between cultures. I am almost certain I have been subject to corporate manipulation in my eighteen years on this earth. It's honestly hard to begin tracing back the influence of marketing on my habits even as a human.

Everyone has heard of the gay rights movement. The news, social media, and word of mouth has made it nearly impossible to be over the age of 15 and not have some sort of opinion on the matter. Just as with all social and political issues the nation and world is divided on the matter. There are those who adamantly oppose the idea of gay marriage, or for that matter all sexual activities or lifestyle choices which don't revolve around a classic sense of the word family. There are also those on the other side of the issue advocating for a more progressive idea of family and sexuality. This issue has blown up in pop culture and has been a huge debate in political campaigns. While there are many questions packed into this revolutionary  social uprising, the only one I ask is, who cares? Why should we care who has sex with who? Why do some people get so defensive and uncomfortable when spoken to about gay sex, while others get excited about a chance to discover themselves? When I consider these questions, I think of two things, evolution and religion. Religion is an obvious consideration in regards to sexual oppression. It has been discussed in class a lot, and while it is a far from exhausted subject, I would prefer to delve into the evolution of sexuality. Now, I don't mean the biological evolution. When I say sexual evolution I am referring to the social evolution. I understand that religion oppressed sexuality, but I don't understand why. Sexuality does not seem like low hanging fruit for the church to use as a means to control its members. It seems as though the members of the church could still get away with whatever dastardly things they wished behind closed and locked doors. So, I think that sexual oppression came on naturally and that the culture at the time was pro- sexual oppression, and that the church used this wave of thought as a means to control its members as an afterthought.