Taking soc 119 has definitely opened my mind up in many different ways. I find myself doing everyday things and thinking about it from a sociological standpoint. Like I am trying to read peoples minds. No not really. I learned about this class from one of my close friends and actually attended the lecture in the Fall about Sandusky and I knew after that I had to take this class.
Some of my views have changed considerably since taking this class. Most dramatically is probably my opinions on other races. I wouldn’t say I was “racist”, but I grew up in a family where prejudiced thoughts and words were around. Like at the dinner table if we were watching the news and a crime about a black guy raping or stealing something came on my dad would make a snide comment about black people . But after the lectures on the prison systems and all of the drug data, it kind of opened my eyes to the injustices that the white man puts on others. It is a constant battle with the white man standing on top of the mountain trying to keep his superiority. I can’t believe I am actually saying this but I am now a supporter of affirmative action. Minorities deserve a little boost. Putting myself in the shoes of an Arab Muslim living in the middle east today also had a considerable shift in my views. Instead of seeing them as violent extremist trying to kill Americans because they hate our freedom, I now see it how it is. They have religious extremist on their side, as do we with radical Christians. I would imagine that if the script were flipped, and we had all the oil and they were a world power, those radical Christians would be resorting to similar measures against the Muslim invaders, if not worse (can you say crusades?). I haven’t had any “faith” in any religion for a year or three now, but this class has definitely confirmed to me that religion is basically a bunch of bullshit. Do people really believe that their god is the true god and all the others ones are false? Especially people who gain their religion from their parents, just because their parents and their parents before them believed in something that doesn’t make it true, and neither does a book that was written without a copy of a copy of a copy of the original religious script (bible). I feel like religion was just created by the ruling powers who knows how long ago to keep people in line with the promise of salvation after death for those that followed the rules. I loved taking this class and have been trying to recruit as many of the freshman in my fraternity to take it in the fall. Thank you for a great semester.

I was incredibly surprised that only 100 kids are kidnapped in America each year. I think we build up in our heads how scary and dangerous kidnapping can be, but its really not a problem in our society. I mean, how much of a joke is it that people walk around with their kids on a leash? Americans watch so much television and movies that we are bound to believe that our country is like an episode of The Wire with people running around committing crimes, when in reality its really not that bad. A good example of the media building a story up in our minds is the 9/11 terrorist attacks, obviously after that happened no one wanted to fly and no one wanted to be associated with airports or the middle eastern community. They kept showing images of what was happening and how poor our airplane security was. I’m not saying that the media shouldn’t have reported on that cause it was a great tragedy that affected the U.S. What im saying is that I can guarantee you that the safest time to fly anywhere was right after the 9/11 attacks. Security was at its highest and a lot of the nation was on the lookout for suspicious behavior, yet people were petrified to fly. What the media did was make people fear something that they probably shouldn’t have, but maybe that is their job. Who knows. Americans have become so up tight and border line obsessed with how dangerous our world is when we really have it better than 95% of the world. This all coming from a kid who was jumped while walking home alone in one of the safest towns in America and was jumped for basically no reason. All we hear on the news is about rape, murders, and violent crimes and we roll ourselves into a little ball being so concerned about it. No wonder my parents still want to hear from me every single day. This lesson kind of reminded me of the video we watched in class about the Africans who were shocked by certain aspects of American culture. They were amazed that you couldn’t just walk into someone’s house and say hello. If anyone tried that at my house, I’ll admit I would assume the worst like they are here to hurt me or rob me. It is sad that is the world we live in, that I just have to assume strangers are trying to harm me in some kind of way. I need four more words. So yea I really don’t have too much more to say on the topic, the blog questions from this week kind of suck.

The lesson on ethnocentrism basically just summed up every class that we have had. Taking yourself out of your own shoes and attempting to look at the world from the point of view of another person, especially from a different culture, really isn’t that difficult to do, we choose not to most of the time. Since I’ve started taking this class I have found myself trying to understand why we act the way we do and how much our environment is a cause for our actions. I watched a video of Sam a few weeks ago where he did a lecture about how Americans would feel if 60 years ago China found coal in the United States and began shipping it back and oppressing our country, and essentially do all of the things we are doing in the middle east. And I have never really thought about it that way. I’ve always just assumed that America is the good guy and never really thought about how I would feel if I lived in Iraq or Afghanistan for instance. I’d be pissed. I’d want to fight for what is rightfully mine. I am not saying that the terrorists are right in what they are doing (I think a suicide bomber is the lowest scum a person can sink to), I’m just saying that I can see where they are coming from I also really enjoyed the video of the guys from Africa being introduced to American culture and how clueless they were. What really caught my attention was how they were perplexed that an American family would be startled if a random stranger walked in but in their country, they would be greeted. Here we just assume strangers are dangerous, but in third world countries in Africa that are undoubtedly more dangerous they are given the benefit of the doubt, and I think that is kind of sad. I also found it interesting that it was okay to laugh at the Africans for being clueless, but laughing at the Asians who didn’t know sports was racist.
We as Americans always want to be rah-rah and we’re the best country in the world land of the free home of the brave, when most of the world basically resents us. Like what are we just too cool for the metric system, the whole world uses it but us, noooooo we’ve got a better system that doesn’t make any sense. When you look at us from the outside, were kind of dicks. We police the world like were on some higher moral ground, when in fact most of the policing has alternative motives (OIL first are foremost.) I love being American, wouldn’t choose anything over it. But I do think we are a bit overzealous when we try to tell the rest of the world that we are the shit.

The aspect of class that has intrigued me the most this semester has been religion. I went to CCD and am a “confirmed” Catholic, but for the past few years my Christian beliefs have fallen precipitously to the point where I am agnostic. I won’t even receive communion during family weddings or funerals. Does it make me look like an outcast? I’m sure it does. But from my point of view, I get to watch my entire extended family go eat a wafer and drink wine from some old guy in a hat pretending it’s the body and blood of a guy who supposedly died 2000 years ago. I find it to be an awfully strange coinicidence that when science disproves something that is stated in religious text, the churches first response is (as it always has been) to renounce it and tell everyone who believes in the new science is a sinner. Then more and more people believe it and the church is all “ohh it’s a parable, it didn’t really happen”. Evolution happened, let’s all get real here. I got into a pretty interesting conversation with my brother on the topic yesterday actually. While we were grocery shopping he mentioned that he wasn’t going to be eating meat today (Friday). I was like come on man what is your imaginary space daddy going to get mad at you for indulging in a nice chicken cutlet. He responded by telling me that he doesn’t necessarily believe in the church teachings hes just doing it to show respect for a higher power. Which I also think is kind of dumb. The only reason I (was) and he is Catholic is because that’s what our parents told us was true, if I was born in Afghanistan, you can pretty much rest assured I would be Muslim. The whole thing just doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t understand how people can’t see through religion. Its really just brainwash if you think about it. What Sam said about how we don’t have a copy of a copy of a copy of the original scripts of the Bible, and millions of Americans base a pretty good percentage of their lives around it! I think people do it just because they are scared of burning in hell for the rest of eternity, but I think that’s a pretty shitty excuse. Just because some old guys stand in front of a building and preach things does not make them true, no matter how scary they are. I really love when people say that religion never hurt anybody? How about like every war ever? Although my brother did have a good comeback to that point. He proposed that religion is used as a cover for what the rich and powerful really want (wealth and more power).

I think there are a multitude of reasons certain sports are dominated by certain ethnic groups. This is especially obvious in basketball and football (in America at least). It goes back to that stereotype that everyone knows is true that black people are faster and jump higher, on average at least. It really bothers me when people think that I am a racist for realizing this. Look at the NBA, its almost all African American in a game where speed and jumping ability are absolutely essential. Almost every corner back, running back, and receiver, is black in the NFL. Growing up I heard all types of different answers why, ranging from an extra bone (did some research, not true), to stronger leg tendons and so on and so forth. For what it’s worth, I think that’s awesome. As a white guy, I respect athleticism regardless of a person’s race. Being faster and being able to jump higher is something to be envied, so I’m not sure why I received angry looks and a buzz around the room when I asked this question. If having African genetics makes a person run faster and jump higher to deal with the more strenuous lifestyle (running from lions, climbing trees) that’s also awesome. All the power to you.
What I believe is more of a factor is where you grow up. Canadians dominate in hockey, not because their white people are better ice skaters than our ice skaters, but because that’s what their best and most gifted athletes choose to play because of its popularity. I always say that soccer is the hardest sport to play professionally (on a world scale) because by far the most people worldwide play it. I also think it has to do with the cost of playing a particular sport. Sports like soccer and basketball require very few pieces of essential equipment and therefore is inexpensive to play. This makes the game more available to youth who grow up in or around poverty. One of my friends always says that the best way to promote soccer in the United States is to roll soccer balls down the streets of our country’s streets. Can you imagine how good our national soccer team would be if even half stars of the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB decided to play soccer while growing up. How easy would it be for Derrick Rose or Chris Johnson to take off with a ball down the wing and cross it to LeBron James or Calvin Johnson in the middle? Like Sam talks about, it is important to take ourselves out of our own shoes to try and understand the world around us, something about egocentrism or something.

I have always been kind of skeptical about shamans and the way they practice “medicine”. But after the discussion in class and hearing Sam talk about the man healing his ankle, I’m starting to believe. Sam’s word holds a lot of merit I guess. I have never used mushrooms or acid or anything like that but I recognize that they make different neural connections possible, but taking you to another world, I’m not so sure. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates admitted to using it while they were being geniuses, so if they can do great things in technology all spaced out, I don’t see why it can’t be similar to medicine. We’re all brought up and are told that drugs are bad and you’ll die and this and that, but Shaman do hallucinogens and cure people. I guess it’s all about context. I wouldn’t compare it in any way to sitting in class and paying attention vs sleeping. Medical practice in our culture definitely has more merit and science behind it, but that type of education isn’t readily available throughout the world so people have to resort to spirits and psychedelics (all the power to them). These men devote their lives to healing, and there is no substitute for experience. I also do not believe in going to “another realm” or another reality. I think it is just the chemicals acting on your brain and altering this reality. Maybe I am just nieve. I’d like to try out one of these alternate practices of medicine for myself. That’s the only way to find out after all. Its important to not get too caught up in thinking that the American or more modern way of doing things isn’t the only way of doing things. Medicine through spiritual beings has been used throughout human history, definitely on a much larger scale than actual scientific medicine. Just because I do not understand it and have never seen it, does not make it fake. A previous poster blew up Sam’s spot calling it “a croc of shit” and referring to the shaman as stoners and druggies. That persons thinking has been way too jaded by all those dare lectures growing up. They’re not getting high and eating all the popcorn, or dropping acid and going on adventures, they are trying to heal people, and the people they help swear by it. How is that a bad thing in any way? All of that being said, I’d still rather have my medical work done by someone with a medical degree over a shaman just because I am more comfortable with it and actually understand what is going on. Were all afraid of what we don’t know.

I think that America will always be an English speaking country, regardless how many Spanish speakers immigrate here. But to make it our “official language” is a bit of a joke if we want to call ourselves a melting pot. I did a little research and found out that Spanish is the second most spoken language on the planet (besides mandarin Chinese). If I were to learn Spanish, I would be able to communicate with approximately 500 million more people, that’s huge! No wonder people who speak it get paid more. We are not going to stop people from Mexico and other Latin American countries from coming here, yet we spend billions on fences and border patrol to “control” it, which I feel is 100% necessary. We’re not going to stop it, but if the border was not difficult to cross too many illegal immigrants would flood the job market and it would put too much of a strain on tax paying Americans to bear. These last few lectures have convinced me that learning Spanish is definitely worth it and incredibly advantageous in the job market. The chart of where people are moving to and away from in this country was a real eye opener, with Florida, Texas, and California growing the fastest due to the amount of immigrants. Whether you think illegal immigrants should be deported or not, they are an integral part of our economy. Look at what happened in Alabama. Americans don’t want to do the back breaking labor that immigrants do for ridiculously low wages. We’re too soft. Maybe making the naturalization process easier would help. I took the citizenship test and barely passed after 7 years of social studies classes. That is absurd. I don’t know what the best barometer is to measure a person’s “American-ness” but that test is not it. The fact that most Americans think having a bilingual president is a bad thing, kind of makes me embarrassed to be an American. How wrapped up in ourselves can we be? Even though we have an economy in decline, a failing educational system, along with a laundry list of other issues most people here think being able to communicate with non English speakers makes a person less American. That’s gotta be one of those Southern thing. We are jaded by the notion that we are the “greatest country in the world”. I love people who say that and have never been to another country. Lewis Black joked that would be like walking into work every day and shouting “I’m the greatest f***** here, and you would all die without me.” You’d hate him. Don’t get me wrong, I love being American, I am blessed to be American, but it doesn’t give us the right to tell people what language they should speak. I think Spanish speakers should make the effort to learn, but it’s their problem if they don’t, no skin of my nose.

This year at Penn State has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Our school has been in the national spotlight since November because of horrific events that are alleged to have happened here, and much of the media attention has been focused on Joe Paterno for not doing more. As always on an issue as explosive as this, opinions are varied and often conflicting. One girl I know from home ended a status update with “I hope Joe Paterno burns in hell”. Being a proud Penn Stater, I naturally came to his defense and posted an article about Paterno’s relationship with a player who had been left paralyzed during a game. But it made me realize, we are all jaded by the situation we are in, and how things are portrayed in the media. I am naturally inclined to run to Joe Paterno’s defense because of the connection I feel to him being a student here. On the contrary, this girl feels no connection to college sports or the university and believes he had a moral responsibility to make sure the perpetrator was brought to justice. She is thinking about the kids over all else and placing heavy blame on the most convenient source possible.
The so called “riot” after Joe Paterno’s firing also taught me a few lessons about human nature. As soon as the word broke he had been fired, everybody here knew the world would be looking for a reaction. There were true Paterno supporters, there were drunk kids who wanted the attention of tipping over a news fan, but the vast majority were people there with a case of FOMO (fear of missing out) just chilling. It made me realize how much American teens and kids have become social fiends. We do things for no other reason than because other people are doing it. Facebook and Twitter have become so commonplace that we have become obsessed about what other people think about us and scan other peoples profiles for hours on end trying to build friendships off a webpage. I also believe the national attention the “riot” after Bin Laden was killed put it in our heads that rioting was acceptable and a good way to attract attention to ourselves.
It is so easy in all of this to forget about the victims of the crime because they have faded to the background while the spotlight has been placed on the university as a whole and especially Joe Paterno. The average citizen won’t think twice about doing something to prevent child abuse, but will deliver blame to others for not doing more. I think that’s the biggest shame in all of this.

The American Dream is an idea that applies to everyone on the planet. How could it not? This is not our native land to begin with. How jaded have we become as a society to think that 300 years of occupation on Native American land makes this a place strictly ours and no body elses? America prides itself on being the land of opportunity and throughout history has been a refuge for foreigners aiming to better their own lives. I think that is why foreigners embrace the idea of the American Dream more than citizens of the country. Growing up an American citizen gives a person a false sense of “having it made” in many cases. As if just growing up an American will be enough to make them realize all of their goals and dreams. We definitely take all of America’s advantages for granted, maybe that’s why our educational system has declined significantly. It is humbling to think about the lengths foreigners will go to in order to get here, and a little embarrassing how badly we want to keep them out. Like Sam touched on in class, the door to America is always being opened and closed depending on our needs for labor. In the early 1900’s Americans were outraged at how many Europeans were coming here and diluting the American way. Right now, the hot button issue is Mexican immigration. These people are coming here to work jobs that Americans won’t, for less than Americans will take. All the power to them! I think the issue goes deeper than that though. It scares people that in 30 years whites will be the minority here (as if the entire continent has always been lilly-white). What will be interesting to see is whether the government continues to be run by primarily white politicians. I think it still will be, but to a lesser degree. Even if whites are the minority, I think the power distribution will still heavily favor whites. The American Dream is for everybody, it’s not called the White American Dream for a reason. I feel honored that my country is the apple of the world’s eye. We should let immigration happen but control it and try to assist the immigrants into becoming tax paying, productive American citizens.