From my experience so far, I have been to parties that are predominantly white people and I really didn’t feel like I didn’t belong there. To me, what matters is being with people you feel fine being around them. It doesn’t matter what ethnicity or color they are. I’m pretty relaxed with this situation I guess, but in the same time, I got to admit that when I went to a Middle Eastern’ party, I felt slightly more welcomed. Probably because I knew more people in that party rather than being with people who look like me. However, I could relate that to me being with people who speak Arabic and so it was easier for me to communicate with them.
Today in Penn State, there is such an immense amount of diversity. We have students from all ethnicities and countries. Forming relationships from other ethnicities has become as easy as making friends from someone’s own group. If we were to look for a white student in PSU who doesn’t have colored friends, it would be an almost impossible task.
Nowadays, when I go to parties, I see all kind of people including Whites, Brown, Asian and Blacks. I pretty much think that most of the students, especially in Soc119, wouldn’t have a problem with going to any party if they knew friends there.
From my point of view, people’s morals aren’t determined by how they look and what ethnicity they are, so if you are afraid of going to a party because they might assault you or harm you in anyway, then you should be afraid of people of your own ethnicity that you don’t know. I wish Sam did a clicker question that day on how many people wouldn’t go to other ethnicities’ parties, because even though I believe most of the student would have no problem with it and that’s what we say in the show of hand question, some people might have raised their hands so they don’t look like assholes. However, with the clicker question, identities are not revealed so that would give better and more accurate results. Finally, I just want to add that some students might be afraid of a certain group because the stereotype surrounding it, but I liked what the kid said in the class which is go out and got to know people; if you have a classmate from that group, them get to know them and see what they think and how they live their lives. Of course, what would serve that purpose better than going to their parties and socializing with them.
To celebrate the end of the semester, I will invite Sam to Middle Eastern’ party and see if he feel comfortable with it.

First of all, I want to say that the lecture was awesome and thanks Sam and your wife for such a good time. Second of all, I don’t really see an obvious reason why males shouldn’t ask their partners if they enjoy it. As a male preferring relationships over one night stand, I think when two people hook up with each other in a one night stand, they don’t really care about each other, and don’t really care if the other is having a good time, but in a long term relationship, people start asking their partners what they like and so on and that might partially explain the statistics Sam showed us in class. Some males confuse being a real man with being violent in bed and that sex is meant to be enjoyable experience for the man. Although, a real man in my opinion is who pay attention to his partner and do what it needs to make sex a joyful experience for both.
On the other end of the stick, females could be responsible for these statistics. I mean it’s not that males don’t know how to please women or let’s say don’t care in the first few hook ups, females could be not fully emotionally attracted to her partner. As Sam said in class, females care so much about foreplay and that emotionally connection with the partner and I think any female wouldn’t be fully emotionally connected to any guy in first few hook ups. In the long run, as emotions gets deeper between the two, each other would certainly feel more relaxed being with the other and that leads to better sex.
Thirdly, living in such a community where sex is consider somehow taboo, males and females don’t have a background on how sex should be and don’t know what pleases the other gender.
Finally, most of the hook ups happen after a wild party and both are probably too drunk to have proper thinking. They might not even know that they had sex last night, so of course they wouldn’t bother asking in such situation.

By looking at the data from these countries, we observed that they have high rates of gay porn searches. Although some of these countries don’t tolerate homosexuality and few of them give death penalty to gays. I remember talking to my friend that day and since I don’t support gay equality, I said that back in my country we have less gays and there’s a problem with the American community, but then he replied that in my country, we don’t necessarily have less gays rather than we have less openly gay people and that made me think about it and that what he said might be true. In a country like Iran where government execute homos, these people would resort to the Internet to satisfy their needs without risking being killed. Second of all, in a community where being gay brings shame to the family and death is the only thing awaits you when you be the cause of it, people would prefer to silent themselves. Lastly, in such extremely religious community as Iran where watching porn is forbidden, people wouldn’t watch straight porn, but since being gay is such a big sin in Islam, gays wouldn’t mind watching porn, which considered a less of a sin than being gay. On the other side, heterosexuality is seeing as the natural way and people tend to get married relatively young, so they don’t need to watch porn. I remember a speech of the president of Iran and he said that in Iran they don’t have gays, but looking at the data, He should have said that they don’t have openly gay people in Iran. Even though I don’t agree with homosexuality and I consider weird and unnatural, I don’t agree with what the government does there, because Clearly, when you try to oppress the people and stop them from doing something, they would find a way around it. If not in real life, they would turn their faces to the Internet, and if you censor the Internet, they would use proxy.
However, these data aren’t necessarily true because the Internet is censored in Iran and some other parts of the world, so people wanting to watch porn use proxy, which changes the IP address of the user to some other IP like an American one. This way, the user would look like he/she from US instead of Iran. The same thing goes for Oman because I tried to look up the top 10 searches and they had no data whatsoever and I suspected that’s because the censorship of the Internet. Finally, I want to tank Sam for introducing to us such a website, because that was interesting and fun in the same time.

The lecture that day meant more than empathy with Native Americans. To me, it meant empathy with white people as well and by that I mean white people of this generation who has absolutely nothing to do with what their ancestors did. Putting yourself in native Americans’ shoes make me realize and sympathize with them. Being born with almost no chance of succeeding and whatever you do wouldn’t help you gain enough money to have a family and plan your children’s future. Most of these families don’t even know when their next meal is going to be and of course in such conditions, education is not a priority whatsoever. In nowadays America, people don’t tolerate domestic violence and prosecutors don’t hesitate in assigning the harshest charge to violators. However, Native Americans live in a community of the highest domestic violence around the country and nobody seems to care. All these factors lead a lot of the teenagers to commit suicide, and the other who keep living end up in gangs. If we take a minute to look at them and see how they live and how much oppression they have had, I believe that would change a lot and if not now, we could plant the seed of accepting others in the next generation. On the other side, when I heard white people saying to Sam that remembering the past makes them feel bad, I got confused, because I couldn’t understand how what their past makes them feel bad. I mean I can understand easily these words coming from a black guy, but it didn’t make sense coming from a white guy. However, when I looked at my people’s past and read about how we occupied Africa for century and were deeply involved in slavery in Tanzania, I felt really bad. I was asking myself how I would feel and react if a Tanzanian person said to me that I should be ashamed because my people enslaved his/her people, but in the same time, I have nothing to do with it and I don’t agree with what my people did whatsoever. Then why should I be judged of being bad?
Talking about empathy, I don’t think empathy should be only talking and writing a blog. In my opinion, I feel if you really want to understand how these people live, then you should go out a meet them and listen to their problem. Although we learned a lot about Native Americans and Haitian in this course, most of us would stop think about it and forget most of these facts, but if we went out and actually met some of them, that memory would stay with and would remember it every time we here their names.

Alright to be clear, I don’t think anyone on earth would turn down such an opportunity when giving to him/her. People consciously or subconsciously believe that they didn’t get that unless they deserve it on some level. For me, I’ll definitely take it because I believe that I’m not the only one doing that and if I didn’t take I know that my uncle or whoever is offering that job would just give it to someone else he/she knows. Although I know that if everyone thought the same way, nepotism would never go away. Second of all, I think nepotism is not that body. Moreover, it’s somehow justified if we look at the human behaviors. At any time, I would prefer benefit my son, family and the people around me over stranger. Somehow, I don’t see that as racism because my view of racism is causing direct harm to people on the basis of race. Nepotism is kind of different because you got to choose between a family and a stranger and you give the upper hand to the family when racism you prefer a stranger over a stranger only on the basis of race. When it comes to the affirmative actions, I feel like people should accept the opportunity because people wouldn’t be given some offer unless they really need it. And rejecting the opportunity wouldn’t put them in a better position. Moreover, someone else will take it at the end and he/she might be even less qualified than the first person. I would love to see what the students would vote on in class. I mean if am asked people who are against nepotism to vote if they would take the opportunity or not. I’m pretty sure most people would and I believe whoever would vote not to take it have not been in a such situation, but when that happens, they would take it without a doubt and leave every thing behind their backs and keep living, or they would try to convince themselves that even though they got it because that had connection, somehow they deserved it because of other people didn’t work hard and didn’t look for the job. Finally, I don’t believe people should turn down opportunities because I believe that in any field, you could probably find someone better than you so be glad of what you have and work hard to prove yourself worthy. Also, believe that if you didn’t have any talent whatsoever, even your father or uncle wouldn’t give you the job because after all, that would cause they loss and since you are all family that somehow would affect you as well. So you not being working would be better for you. So have faith in yourself and work hard.

I used to think that US giving aid to countries comes from the a good intention, but what I learned on Thursday shifted my thinking and made me realize that people would never do good unless they expect profit. Somehow the aid giving to Haiti has the same bad aspect of it as well. The aid giving to Haiti might sound beneficial to the Haitians but on the long term, it actually tears down their economy and social structure because as people lose their jobs they might start militia to make a living and that will definitely ruin the society order. From what I see, it doesn’t benefit anyone, and by that I mean neither the Haitians nor the Americans in general. US government subsides the prices using the taxes money and then export to Haiti and sells it even cheaper than the local rice. That leads to the close down of many farms Haiti and the people shifting to complete consumers relying on the imports. I believe the real aid should come in the form of helping the local farmers growing rice and then marketing it. The same applies for any country that US gives aid to. Sam addressed that people in America accuse China on doing that to them because as the wages are lower in China, products comes from China are cheaper. While American consumers are better off with cheaper products, relying on imports would mean the shut down on production lines locally and higher rates of unemployment as more people lose their jobs. Similarly that’s what happening in Haiti now with the American aid.
Moreover, that day I was reading an article saying that shipping aid to Haiti is actually profitable in the first place to the American shipping companies. So from a different point of view, giving the aid is not only a good deed out of pity rather than an excuse to give the taxes money to American companies that experiencing a depression; even though that might somehow do more harm than good to the targeted country. In general, I’m not completely against this kind of aid, however, I believe it’s necessary when a disaster strikes but the harm comes when people accept it as their reality and completely rely on it. People need to earn their living and work hard to survive because the aid wouldn’t be there forever. The time would come the US will need to stop their aid due to the public opposing this policy or because shortage in rice production, and then Haitian would be left alone with no production nor aid. That’s the long-term harm that people initiated the aid failed to see or ignored because of profit they are making.

On Thursday, we talked about what happens when you die or that is what Sam claimed to know. We would not know for sure if that is true though because that might be different from the real death. I mean when there’s no comeback whatsoever. Anyway, I feel like the fear of death is important to restrain and control people’s actions. Fear of death makes you think before you act and makes you plan ahead. People who have no fear of death tend to be violent, crazy and suicidal. What I heard in the lecture didn’t alter my prospective of death and did not cause me to see death differently. The fact I am going to die one-day makes me try to get the most of my life and enjoy it. Religion was made as an attempt to explain what happens when we die and to make people more comfortable about it. So people of faith constrain their actions because fear of death and what comes after it cause them to., but as an agnostic person, death does not mean anything more than an end to my awareness. On the thinking level, death makes you think that no matter how wealthy we are, or how arrogant we have lived or lives, time would come when we die and nothing would remain except the influence we had on other people and that thing could make you humble and considerate of others. To be honest, I feel like I’m running out of thoughts because of the sensitivity the subject holds. I mean death is such a touchy thing and people don’t like talking about it much. Someone said that the people love life and hate death because life is a sweet lie and death is a bitter truth. Thinking to much about death could drives you crazy ands puts you in the middle of nowhere. Seeing someone dies especially when you are young might have the same impact. Sam talked about how he saw his old man dying in front of him and he didn’t feel anything. I believe that incident still has some deep wounds buried deep inside of him though. When someone from the family dies, you feel like a portion of your soul was taken away from you. Someone once said, the man is still child in his mother’s eyes till she dies, then he gets old immediately. As I said above, people tried to counter the fear of death by faith and believing that we will go to a better place when we die and no matter how you see it and how much you cheer yourself up, the bitterness of death will always present when a beloved one passes away.

Religions and faiths are pretty complicated issue and it’s so controversial. Being an international student, coming to US altered the way I think about life in so many ways and that includes religion. I don’t really see myself as a faithful Muslim rather than an agnostic Muslim, so I have my doubts in the existence in that Holy Spirit. Looking at how messed up the world is and reading the stories religions narrating caused me to think how come god approved that. Having this passion to seek the truth caused me to watch and read but both sides have and by that I mean atheism and theism. If someday I arrived at realizing that god really exists, that would make me have more questions than what I have now and would push me to ask if god really care about the human species. Of course knowing that god actually exists means that I would become more religious, but the questions I have would never go away. I think science- religions relationship would change a lot. Scientist would take in consider the “divine plan” and would analyze accordingly. Even If god existed, I believe his attributes would be so much different, because what we have today causes some paradoxes in the whole system. Moreover, god doesn’t need to be all good and kind. My relationship with god would not actually be a denial rather than boss-employee relationship. You don’t want to get hurt then watch your moves.
In someway, the world would be so peaceful and conflicts-free because apparently everyone would convert to the true faith, which would be evident by now, and since people have no different opinions anymore, conflicts would disappear.

Since I identify myself as an agnostic, I take in consider the other side of the story which is god doesn’t exist. When it comes to this, I don’t fell like it would change anything on the personal level. I might only be more confident and more certain of what I think, but other than that, I don’t think I’d alter my actions. Somehow, I don’t think religions would go away because proving that god doesn’t exist is much harder than proving that he exists. I mean god only needs to come out and people would believe him but how could you possibly prove the opposite. When it comes to faith, it doesn’t matter how much evidences scientists on evolution and the existence of the universe, people would keep hold to their faith so tightly and would come up with all kind of excuses. Although If somehow everyone came to realize that god doesn’t exist, I believe science would a huge leap forward and people would see how ridiculous they were.

In so many generations, we could have the chance to end the racism in the world. Our generation could be the first one to show interest in sociology, bringing cultures together and understanding others. Being in a diverse community where you could have friends from all over the world makes you see how people are similar in the essence. I mean before coming to US, I used to think of Americans as ignorant people with desire to steel people’s resources, but my mind changed when I made friends and talked to them and saw how they think and how they view their government.
For certain, the racism would not vanish that easily, but it will be less and less and generations come along. On a different level, we would have a different understanding on how people act the way they do and how we can show respect the their culture. Taking courses like soc119 teaches us how to apply empathy when interacting with people and that makes us think that people do what they do for a reason and we need to understand it before we act. Of course when my generation comes into power, that will help stop wars and end poverty. Last week in my discussion group, we brought up this question, which is how our generation would cause change in the world, and then we had a guest from the group that helps Haitians people and that made me think how much chances we have nowadays to make a difference. Many of my friends show interest in going to Haiti to help and we are still students. When we would come into power, we would be able to make more critical decision. On a personal level, I really do believe that religions are the cause of all misunderstanding and conflicts worldwide. Each religion thinks that they superior to others and “god” chose them to be his favorite. However, our generation is experiencing more and more agnosticism and I certainly believe it makes us understand our differences. Back in the days, racism was normal and was practiced by almost every body, although, this generation developed a different mentality. We somehow see racism as abnormal and racist people as sick people.
This mentality my generation has will be passed to our children and we would raise them on understanding others. Moreover, we would have less control on what friends they could have, and as we move along, the same mentality would be passed to their children until at some point, we get to a community with almost no racism.
I might not be alive when that time comes but I would love to be a part of what caused it.

When that guy asked in the beginning if you would consider joining the military, I didn’t quite see the reason and I was one of who raised their hand. However, he got my intention later when he said that it’s our job and we are not very proud of it but someone needs to do it after all since otherwise how could you provide security to people. Now I understand that it’s dirty job but someone got to do for you. Although that was kind of impressive point of view, I still don’t feel amazed or attracted to military for some reasons. On the personal level, I don’t see myself as someone who likes to follow orders and who commits to a routine. I don’t really like to be enforced into doing things I’m not actually convinced of. Moreover, during the service time being away from your country, you wouldn’t see your family and your kids and every time you kiss them goodbye, you have these thoughts that you may never get the chance the see them again. On the other hand, on the moral level, for me military means destruction and killing. I believe once you join the military, your empathy and reasoning thinking is taken away from you, and I could understand that. I mean you can’t be questioning every order you get. It’s more of acting first and questioning second and that’s not my way of doing thing. However, I’m not arguing that it’s wrong because if the soldier needs to understand everything he/she told then we wouldn’t strategic expert in the army. Moreover, sometimes the order might not be “evil” and could be reasonable judging from the circumstances provided and later turns out very badly. For instance, the reporters who were doing interviews with terrorists in Iraq carrying RPGs and the commander gave orders to the troops to attack assuming everyone there including the reporters were terrorists. Of course it turned out very ugly later, but nothing could be fixed anymore. I just don’t feel like I could bear such burden as killing a human being. Moreover, I feel like soldiers represent hatred and superiority of a race over other races and being in a place where people hates you and want to kill you in any second is not a pleasant feeling. Going back to what that guy said about the importance of military, I agree with him but in the same time, I believe the army is protect the citizens of your country not to interfere in other countries policies. I mean I cant see spreading democracy is a good excuse to move troops and invade other countries because somehow, enforcing people to accept democracy is not democracy in the first place. Democracy means the freedom of choice and if you are using force then you are contradicting yourself. I believe democracy should come from the inside when people are convinced that it’s the solution. Otherwise it wouldn’t work.