The Lone Critic

Lawyers are watering down American society and there is now social research to show it.

Peter Turchin, vice president of the Evolution Institute and professor of biology and anthropology at the University of Connecticut simply states that “it is the over-production of law degrees”.

Turchin has written the book War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires and has come up with 30 indicators that help show the demise of any socieity. He used the old Roman Empire, Imperial China and civilizations to prove his point. One of the indicators, stated above, is the overproduction of law degrees.

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I have started working again on my long time “Level Theory” or now I am calling the “Level Rule”. I try to stab at it once and while to keep it fresh, but I have really dropped the ball on this, it has almost been 3 years since I have worked on it! So what the hell is it you ask?

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“Expanding on Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, director Robert Kenner’s Oscar-nominated documentary explores the food industry’s detrimental effects on our health and environment. Kenner spotlights the men and women who are working to reform an industry rife with monopolies, questionable interpretations of laws and subsidies, political ties and rising rates of E. coli outbreaks.”

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Many believe that everything they learn is accurate and unquestionably correct. Why is this? In addition, many students believe everything they read from a textbook is accurate. Again, why? I think it is because education is thought of as a trust worthy institution.

Education has a high moral value in our society and placing lies and misleading facts in our textbooks wouldn’t be right. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Many of the facts and stories we read in our textbooks are misleading or do not cover a specific area on purpose. This is a good time to consider power and social control in our society.

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The science of sociology in organizations and institutions is extremely powerful. Understanding how and why organizations are set up and the power of institutions can help us better understand ourselves and society.

Once consciously outside of society’s iron cage of rationality, a sociologically mindful person may come up with many questions and pondering ideas on why/how they act a certain way, belief a certain ideal, eat a certain food, and much more. There is much more to consider though.

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The current institutional foundation our society has learned to grow on is slowly starting to crack. Although it may be cracking, that doesn’t mean it will be fixed. Power is always the architect to our every-day sociological formulas.

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Reading Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation is a great way to get introduced to sociology and the sheer dominance of organizations and institutions. Obviously there is always more than meets the eye when observing popular organizations, but understanding where to start and what to consider is crucial. Standing in line at McDonald’s can provide a flood of sociological observations. Watching person after person after person designate what they want to eat by a number and wait no longer than 1 minute to receive their food can be a little disturbing. In addition, there is primarily young teenagers working the counters and delivering the final product. Quality and Quantification are the key elements in fast food, or uniformity. Presenting customers over thousands of convenient locations with food they know will be satisfactory for a low price can raise many questions.

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Johnny Got His Gun is an eerie anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. The book is a dark tale of the effects of war, patriotism, and individual liberty.

It took me a while to realize that Joe (the main character) was a complete vegetable, meaning no arms, legs, and other basic human functions. I couldn’t even begin to imagine on what life would be like in these types of circumstances, but the colorful details that Trumbo paints for the readers made me quiver in my bed. The eerie theme in this book sneaked up on me, filling me with grim despair and desolation. Everything that is beautiful on this planet shrunk into insignificance as I read this poor man’s reactions as he slowly begins to unfold what has happened to him.

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After reading an in-depth critique by Edward Seidman on the errors of conceptualization, I couldn’t help but agree with re-framing all the premises involved in traditional research problems. We need to learn that there is always an alternative to consider, not just for the social science in the justice department but in our health, education, welfare, and other systems.

The problem with our society is that we get too caught up with repeatable, institutionalized theories and ideas that we become completely dependent on it, much like what Maruyama has called monopolarization. How can we train our society to consider other alternative thinking patterns? Why must we always ‘victim-blame’ or label people with an implicit, automatic response trained in the first-order conceptualization process?

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“Reframing Society’s Attitudes on Animals”

This essay is written after reading Regarding Animals by Arnold Arluke. The attitude on animals is currently at a disgustingly low level in our country and incidentally the entire world. Has our level of humanity decreased so low that we are completely ignorant of other living creatures that share the same land we walk on?

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