In simple terms, humour can be described as that which makes people laugh. What makes people laugh, however, is not universal. Different people find humour in different things. We may not be able to articulate exactly which things make us laugh, or even why they do, but just by experiencing them we are able to distinguish between what is funny and what is not, at least for us, as individuals. That much is obvious.

What is perhaps not as obvious is that humour is not a fixed or static attribute located inside words, text or actions. It depends on the coming together in a favourable way of various elements, such as tonality and timing to create a specific scenario. More importantly, context is crucial. This is a lesson that sociologists learn early in their careers. Whether a particular comment makes us laugh depends on the context in which it is made. The exact same uttering may vary in its effect if its setting changes. The same remark that you overheard in a serious situation, which had you seriously struggling not to burst out laughing may come across to you as extremely bland if repeated in other circumstances. This may help explain why so many anecdotes fail to live up to their implied promise of hilarity, ending up with the anti-climactic excuse of ‘you had to be there’, a tendency cheekily pointed out by the Irish comedian Dara O’Briain in one of his routines.

The importance of context to humour drives home the idea that humour has an inherent social character. Humour happens in a social space, and this social space plays an important part in the creation of that same humour. A silly comment may sound much funnier uttered in class, where it is unexpected, than at the park where leisurely banter is normal. This is obviously not because of the physical differences between the classroom and the park, but because of the different social situations that they represent. Social sites are not neutral, but come riddled with their own rules of appropriate behaviour and expectations.

The same is true for social roles. A nation’s head of state telling a joke during times of national crises would cause different reactions to a comedian telling the same joke at a comedy show, irrespective of how impeccable the former’s delivery is. Humour is thus also social in terms of its regulation: there are appropriate places to laugh at, and inappropriate ones. There are things and people one can joke about, and others that are taboo. Above all, humour is social because it entails communication and interaction between people who share things in common.

This social dimension of humour is nowhere clearer than at stand-up comedy shows, which are basically halls full of strangers brought together by their desire to laugh. In delivering their routines stand-up comedians presuppose certain knowledge on the part of their audiences. The most fundamental and obvious one is that the audience understands the language of delivery. Nobody will laugh at a joke in a language they do not understand, no matter how objectively funny it may be. The second presupposition is that the audience is able to get the jokes, and can relate to the subject matter discussed by the comedian. This applies especially to observational comedy, which uses the most trivial and mundane aspects of everyday life as its subject matter. Put differently, the comedian and audience must have some level of cultural affinity.

Faced with a roomful of strangers, the observational comedian must dig into experiences that ordinary people can recognize. Without experiential knowledge, or at least a vicarious understanding of the topics discussed, the audience would find it difficult to appreciate the humour. This is why such comedians are more likely to discuss the daily difficulties faced by office workers as opposed to the problems encountered by astronauts during rocket launches.

Needless to say, talking about familiar things by itself does not make things funny. The skill of observational comedians lies in their ability to make the mundane interesting, to make the audience look at daily occurrences from a new angle, to see the funny side of everyday things. The observational comedian is able to make us look at our home town with tourist eyes. In doing this, observational comedians step into a zone that is also inhabited by sociologists.

Sociology is often described as the systematic study of society. Studying sociology is said to help us question what we take for granted, the things that escape our rumination, that common-sense knowledge we cultivate just by living in our society. In ‘Thinking sociologically’ Zygmunt Bauman explains that sociology is all about making the familiar strange.

If this is so, then the sociologist and the observational comedian depart from a similar place. Admittedly, their motivations, and intentions, are miles apart. Comedians care little for social theory, research or the creation of knowledge. They only want to make people laugh. Likewise, sociologists are definitely not renowned for accentuating the comical side of social reality. They are more likely to be concerned with such serious things as social cohesion, social solidarity, social action, power, conflict and social inequality. Nevertheless, both sociologists and observational comedians are interested in making us look at things we think we know well with fresh eyes.

This means that despite setting off in completely different directions, observational stand-up comics and sociologists begin their respective journeys in relative proximity. And while this may be inconsequential to the stand-up comedian, who may find little of benefit in sociology, it need not be so for the sociologist.

Unfortunately, a lot of sociological research and writing ends up lost in academic publications that few people read. As a discipline, sociology suffers the unfortunate condition of being often about people and their everyday lives, but seldom for everyday people and their lives.

In this regard, observational comedians fare better. Such comedians are able to command people’s attention and keep things relevant. They do not have much choice. The nature of their job entails keeping things grounded in experiences that people can relate to. More than that, laughter is easier to sell than social research, which makes the comparison between comedians and sociologists somewhat unfair on the latter. Indeed, observations made by comedians are intended to create laughter, not knowledge, and so the “truths” expressed by them remain largely inconsequential, told only for laughs.

Conversely, sociologists are not primarily interested in people’s amusement. For sociologists commanding the undivided attention of a general audience is less of a priority than understanding and explaining social matters. This is unfortunate because sociological writing often carries research findings and truths that are more useful shared than hidden behind walls of impenetrable jargon in academic hideouts. In this sense, making the familiar strange does not suffice. That strangeness must also be made intelligible and accessible.

This sketchy comparison of comedians and sociologists thus presents a scenario where those most likely to hold people’s attention with their questioning of taken for-granted knowledge have only light-hearted frivolities to offer, whereas those with more substantial things to say lack the mass audiences of the other.

This does not mean that sociologists should become comedians, or compromise their research integrity to appease a mainstream mass of non-sociologists. It does, however, remind us that the social world, which provides so much material for observational comedians, can indeed be a funny place. Way back in 1963 Peter Berger warned that sociology should not ignore the “buffoonery of the social spectacle” (p. 165). Sociologists would do well to remember this piece of advice. Indeed, if Berger’s plea is heeded, people may become more receptive to questions that challenge the structures of everyday life.

At the most basic level observational stand-up comedy can be an aide to sociology by serving a heuristic purpose, as a springboard from which everyday social reality is questioned and deconstructed. This is perhaps what drove Tim Delaney to write Seinology, a book that takes a sociological look at the comedy series Seinfeld, a show that is loosely based on the observational comedy of Jerry Seinfeld. The show was often described as being about nothing. As Delaney argues, however, in reality the show is about everything, with episodes made out of basic ordinary circumstances and social situations. Many issues that were tackled in the show have a direct sociological relevance.

What the above suggests is that although different, the worlds of sociology and observational comedy are in some sense proximate enough to make the building of casual bridges possible. Observational stand up comedy can help us appreciate that the way things are does not always make much sense, and convention can be rather funny, if not downright ridiculous. This is its potential contribution to sociology. Sociologists, on the other hand, can help us understand that these conventions, and the forces that create and re-create social life, are alterable. This knowledge is empowering and can be sociology’s contribution to society.

___________________________________________________________________

References

Bauman, Z. (1997). Thinking Sociologically. In A. Giddens (Ed.) Introductory readings (pp. 12-18). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Berger, P. (1963). Invitation to Sociology. New York: Anchor Books.

Delaney, T. (2006). Seinology. New York: Prometheus Books.

The following is an exposure of the secret mind of humanity as an example of how what exists inside us, in and as mind-realities, is existing outside of us equally, manifested as the worldly reality we all share. We have as human beings compartmentalized ourselves within and as the mind, where some parts that ‘fit the bill’ of ‘civilization’ is allowed to be expressed out into the open, both within ourselves and in participation with others, were other ‘parts’ are keep securely hidden and suppressed, so to avoid being exposed.

Many probably know a few details about the North Korean regime or it’s absurd leadership with Kim Jun-Sun as the “father” of the country known as “the eternal president” and his son Kim-Jung-Il who is currently in the process of handing down the role of sole dictator to another son in the line of ill’s. According to Kim Il-sung, the way of living in North Korea is based on the Juche Idea which is based on the belief that “man is the master of everything and decides everything.” So how exactly is it that man is the master and what kind of master is he?

Let’s have a look at ‘who’ we, as North Korea, are:

There are not many secret places left on earth, and ironically, the one’s that are, are not the pretty rainforest Lagunas as one might imagine, but instead secret places of torture and suffering.

One of those places is now being exposed by Amnesty International:  The secret political prison work camps in North Korea.

Amnesty has gained access to satellite photos of the area, where they camps are situated in 2001 and again in 2011 and through analyzing the photos, they were able to see that more camps with more “political prisoners” had emerged in the ten years. The camps are believed to have been existing since the 1950’s. According to Amnesty’s Asia Pacific director, Sam Zarifi:“These are places out of sight of the rest of the world, where almost the entire range of human rights protections that international law has tried to set up for the last 60 years are ignored,”

Subsequently, Amnesty has released a detailed document describing the life in the camps as horrific, where torture, starvation and mass execution is everyday life for the, estimated, more than 200.000 inmates. The document is based on testimonies from over 15 North Koreans who have escaped the camps as well as guards working in the camps.

Life as a Prison

According to the Amnesty report, the people, arrested and incarcerated as criminals, are often people who have done nothing but tried to get out of the country, are exposed to torture and imprisonment, water-boarding, sleep deprivation, bamboo pieces placed under the fingernails and imprisonment – sometimes for months on end – inside a 4ft (1.22m) by 4ft cell. This is the stuff nightmares is made of, yet for the people of North Korea, it is a plausible every day scenario.

In the camps it is even custom that people are held as ‘guilty-by-association’, simply because one of their relatives has been arrested. Here the prisoners work from 4 in the morning to 8 at night, after which they are ‘educated’ in the North Korean military ideology.  But even ‘normal’ North Koreans who are not sentenced to live in the camps, share stories of brutality and abuse and are exposed to starvation and horrible living conditions. It is clear to see that the regime itself wants no one to leave and spends massive resources on keeping the population oppressed and indoctrinated.

Testimonials from with the secret regime

The following are testimonials from North Koreans that clearly describe the horrendous regime and expose the abuse that is accepted as every day living for millions of people.

A 70 year old woman who escaped last year says to BBC that:

“We don’t ask to wear good clothes, to dance or play. We only want full stomachs. But every day we wake up and our first thought is ‘How are we going to get some food for breakfast?’ Then ‘How are we going to get something for dinner?’,” she says.

“Living like that makes people go crazy. Just brush against someone in the street and they will start fighting you. In their hearts everyone knows we live like dogs. But no-one can say it out loud.”

The quote above shows a mentality that might be prominent in North Korea, because of the extreme conditions of fear for survival that people are living under, but it is actually something that most humans will recognize – the belief that we must fight others to exist and how we live accordingly in fear of not surviving.

The following is a letter written by Choi Hyok, a 12 year old boy, who escaped to China with his two siblings, a younger brother and an older sister. In bringing the point back to self, realizing that both sides of the abuse – the oppressor and the oppressed is existing within us, it is clear how we enslave ourselves within the abuse.  What is being revealed here is even further a clear exposure of the world society as a whole and where the bottom line is drawn, when it comes to survival. Money is only point standing between the three siblings and even the slightest notion of freedom, which in this case, is simply seen as surviving and not going to prison.

 “Dear Uncle, How are you? North Korea knows about us. North Koreans came to us for questioning and they made reports about us as they wished and took away all the reports with them. If you don’t help us, we will kill ourselves because we don’t want to go to North Korea. Because, if we go to North Korea, we will be imprisoned for the rest of our lives…Please rescue us. If you rescue us, I will repay it later. Really, really, I want to be free. Please help us. I pray for freedom, to Lord. I want to be free to study, freedom, freedom, freedom

In the evening, 6 April, 07
From Choi Hyok”

Realizing the North Korea within Self – A Personal Story. 

Below is a post I wrote on the Desteni forum, the first time I realized that there is a North Korea in me. It is almost two years ago and the realization still stands clear as day, yet unresolved in the world as a whole or in us as individuals – as states of secrecy still exists within and as the world and within human beings as secret mental realities, where we oppress and abuse ourselves as parts that dominate and subordinate, as autocratic delusions of grandeur, where a single desire, fantasy or fear is controlling our every move – and doing so, with the permission of us as a whole.

“In a video about North Korea I watched today, one of the North Koreans being interviewed said that they believed that the whole world was a prison, because they had never learned about or seen anything else than the prisons of North Korea. This guy had been born into the prison and they did not know they were in North Korea, who had put them there or why.
Just that they were the ones “making mistakes” while the guards were the ones “not making mistakes”.

They are being tortured, starved, isolated and working as slaves within the North Korean regime.
No one can get in and no one besides this guy escaping has seen these “camps”.
After escaping the guy went to china or South Korea, and he describes how he is not very impressed. All he cares about is food.

It got me wondering about the North Korea inside me, because in a way this utterly extreme country is actually showing me something about myself that I had not seen before. When the guy said; “We thought the whole world was a prison” he was in fact correct – it is. But they are the one´s experiencing it in it´s true brutality. Of course these people have no chance of getting out or realizing anything.

What I found within looking at myself within this, what happens in North Korea, can only happen because no one sees it. They make sure to keep everyone out, and no one probably really wants to deal with them anyway. In the video it is said that the government or the leaders are terrified to be invaded which is also why they have kept everyone out.

This is the same way suppression’s work. What ever is suppressed can only control and direct as long as I do not see them or know that I am actually allowing and creating them. In secret I have actually submitted to them from fear of realizing how I am actually allowing myself to exist.

They know what they are doing is fucked up – why else would they hide it?

I have started to look at the personality designs of other countries as well, and it is pretty clear that they are all based on fear of loosing themselves.”

Oppressive regimes within

Another Destonian, Garbrielle Goodrow, wrote a reply to my post and shared a different perspective on the North Korea of humanity

“I studied these brutality suppressive nations this semester, and for me i came to the conclusion that they are based in fear of loss. Fear of losing power, wealth, domination, control, themselves, ect. it is a real tragedy that so many people are driven and ruled by fear, and creating the misery with self here in this reality. I see this in me as well, as one and equal with theses oppressive regimes fear and abuse, and it will not change until i stop the abuse of accepting and allowing this to continue through honestly accepting responsibility for the abuse i participate in and the fear i allow. On a grander scale, the dominant countries, such as the US and Britain for example, let this continue through fear as well, fear of loss of wealth, power, and dominance, not having the slightest care of the human suffering, but only caring for the things they fear losing. It will stop when we/i, the Self, stops.”-

So what does this make us?

When looking at North Korea as an example of a manifested symbol of the mind, it is a dictatorship that is existent upon all members of the group submitting themselves to the belief that one man is god and that it is their duty to subordinate themselves to him – they do so, either brainwashed to submission or out of fear. In a single human, this could be how we exist with an addiction or a personality trait, believing that if we do not follow this ‘rule of living’, something bad will happen to us, exactly how the addiction or belief becomes the king of all our actions or the god we submit ourselves to.

Another aspect is how the rest of the world acts towards North Korea, which is by largely not doing anything at all. Several  sanctions has been made to send a signal to the North Koreans, with the result that the same people that were poor before, are starving now. In a human being’s mind, this could be when we decide to go on a diet and literally starve ourselves to stop an addiction to sugar or food, but where all that happens, is that we’re abusing our bodies, because the real problem was within the structure of ‘who’ we are and not what we do.

The World will not change until we each change who we are

As Garbrielle said: “It will stop when we/i, the Self, stops”

This is the pinnacle of all points of abuse and inequality in the world as well as within each of us  – that it only stops when self stops. And in doing so we stand self-responsible for what is here as ourselves and as this world in its entirety. We do, as all parts, make up the whole that is this world, just as we within ourselves as a whole, accept who and what we allow ourselves to exist as. If one part is allowed to dominate from a separate mind-reality of delusion, and we as a whole, abdicate self-responsibility and submit ourselves to this part or even ignore and suppress this part, we are accepting and allowing the abuse to continue. This is how the world in which we exist, creates such a manifestation as the secret regime of North Korea. It can only exist by our permission and acceptance of it, however that is made – through deliberate ignorance and abdication of self-responsibility of the world society as a whole, as each of us allow our own North Korea – be that fear, greed, submission or self-delusion, to dominate and control us.

The Secret of North Korea is within us

North Korea exists within us, as us, through our permission and therefore North Korea exists as an actual manifested regime. We’ve accepted and allowed parts, which we’ve separated ourselves into and as, to dominate, direct and control us, while we as a whole, in one way or another have accepted this – by turning our backs on ourselves, by suppressing parts of ourselves into secrecy and by living incognito in abdication of self-responsibility.

There is only one solution and that is to bring it back to self. To realize how we’ve been accepting inner North Korea’s, to admit this to ourselves as a first step that will enable us to eventually stand together, as whole to stop the abuse that we’ve allowed in humanity as a whole.

We require to expose, investigate and understand our inner mental realities, where we exist in separation from the actual real world that we all share and where addictions, fears and delusions are what directs us in our daily participation. We require to work within ourselves to stop and take self-responsibility so that we actually become able and capable of changing and directing ourselves, to stop existing in and as separation so that we may start living in self-dignity.

The purpose of an Equal Money System is equally to stop all abuse and separation so that we may live in equality and self-dignity – yet with the EMS, we are actually changing the whole as who we are, at a global scale.

Because just as we require to expose and stop the inner abuse as North Korean realities in our minds, we require to stop the actual manifestation of North Korea and all other regimes and institutions of abuse and inequality that exist in the world, because of who we are, as who and what we’ve accepted and allowed ourselves to be and become, as individuals and as a whole.  Furthermore, instead of money being the symbol of the acceptance of inequality as it currently exists, in the EMS the nature of money, just as the nature of man, will be changed into being the value of life – where all is considered and cared for equally.

 Sources: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13272198

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/n-korea-holding-200000-political-prisoners-amnesty-international/article2008725/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Asia-Pacific&utm_content=2008725

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13268857

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea

http://desteni.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=13912&hilit=North+Korea

The Dynamics of Capitalism Revealed

JEAN ANYON This essay first appeared in Journal of Education, Vol. 162, no. 1, Fall 1980.)

It’s no surprise that schools in wealthy communities are better than those in poor communities, or that they better prepare their students for desirable jobs. It may be shocking, however, to learn how vast the differences in schools are – not so much in resources as in teaching methods and philosophies of education. Jean Anyon observed five elementary schools over the course of a full school year and concluded that fifth-graders of different economic backgrounds are already being prepared to occupy particular rungs on the social ladder. In a sense, some whole schools are on the vocational education track, while others are geared to produce future doctors, lawyers, and business leaders. Anyon’s main audience is professional educators, so you may find her style and vocabulary challenging, but, once you’ve read her descriptions of specific classroom activities, the more analytic parts of the essay should prove easier to understand. Anyon is chairperson of the Department of Education at Rutgers University, Newark;
  

Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes. Bowles and Gintis¹ for example, have argued that students in different social-class backgrounds are rewarded for classroom behaviors that correspond to personality traits allegedly rewarded in the different occupational strata–the working classes for docility and obedience, the managerial classes for initiative and personal assertiveness. Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michael W. Apple focusing on school knowledge, have argued that knowledge and skills leading to social power and regard (medical, legal, managerial) are made available to the advantaged social groups but are withheld from the working classes to whom a more “practical” curriculum is offered (manual skills, clerical knowledge). While there has been considerable argumentation of these points regarding education in England, France, and North America, there has been little or no attempt to investigate these ideas empirically in elementary or secondary schools and classrooms in this country.³

This article offers tentative empirical support (and qualification) of the above arguments by providing illustrative examples of differences in student work in classrooms in contrasting social class communities. The examples were gathered as part of an ethnographical⁴ study of curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices in five elementary schools. The article attempts a theoretical contribution as well and assesses student work in the light of a theoretical approach to social-class analysis.. . It will be suggested that there is a “hidden curriculum” in schoolwork that has profound implications for the theory – and consequence – of everyday activity in education….
The Sample of Schools

… The social-class designation of each of the five schools will be identified, and the income, occupation, and other relevant available social characteristics of the students and their parents will be described. The first three schools are in a medium-sized city district in northern New Jersey, and the other two are in a nearby New Jersey suburb.

The first two schools I will call working class schools. Most of the parents have blue-collar jobs. Less than a third of the fathers are skilled, while the majority are in unskilled or semiskilled jobs. During the period of the study (1978-1979), approximately 15 percent of the fathers were unemployed. The large majority (85 percent) of the families are white. The following occupations are typical: platform, storeroom, and stockroom workers; foundry-men, pipe welders, and boilermakers; semiskilled and unskilled assembly-line operatives; gas station attendants, auto mechanics, maintenance workers, and security guards. Less than 30 percent of the women work, some part-time and some full-time, on assembly lines, in storerooms and stockrooms, as waitresses, barmaids, or sales clerks. Of the fifth-grade parents, none of the wives of the skilled workers had jobs. Approximately 15 percent of the families in each school are at or below the federal “poverty” level;⁵ most of the rest of the family incomes are at or below $12,000, except some of the skilled workers whose incomes are higher. The incomes of the majority of the families in these two schools (at or below $12,000) are typical of 38.6 percent of the families in the United States.⁶

The third school is called the middle-class school, although because of 5 neighborhood residence patterns, the population is a mixture of several social classes. The parents’ occupations can he divided into three groups: a small group of blue-collar “rich,” who are skilled, well-paid workers such as printers, carpenters, plumbers, and construction workers. The second group is composed of parents in working-class and middle-class white-collar jobs: women in office jobs, technicians, supervisors in industry, and parents employed by the city (such as firemen, policemen, and several of the school’s teachers). The third group is composed of occupations such as personnel directors in local firms, accountants, “middle management,” and a few small capitalists (owners of shops in the area). The children of several local doctors attend this school. Most family incomes are between $13,000 and $25,000, with a few higher. This income range is typical of 38.9 percent of the families in the United States.⁷

The fourth school has a parent population that is at the upper income level of the upper middle class and is predominantly professional. This school will be called the affluent professional school. Typical jobs are: cardiologist, interior designer, corporate lawyer or engineer, executive in advertising or television. There are some families who are not as affluent as the majority (the family of the superintendent of the district’s schools, and the one or two families in which the fathers are skilled workers). In addition, a few of the families are more affluent than the majority and can be classified in the capitalist class (a partner in a prestigious Wall Street stock brokerage firm). Approximately 90 percent of the children in this school are white. Most family incomes are between $40,000 and $80,000. This income span represents approximately 7 percent of the families in the United States.⁸

In the fifth school the majority of the families belong to the capitalist class. This school will be called the executive elite school because most of the fathers are top executives (for example, presidents and vice-presidents) in major United States-based multinational corporations – for example, AT&T, RCA, Citibank, American Express, U.S. Steel. A sizable group of fathers are top executives in financial firms in Wall Street. There are also a number of fathers who list their occupations as “general counsel” to a particular corporation, and these corporations are also among the large multi-nationals. Many of the mothers do volunteer work in the Junior League, Junior Fortnightly, or other service groups; some are intricately involved in town politics; and some are themselves in well-paid occupations. There are no minority children in the school. Almost all the family incomes are over $100,000 with some in the $500,000 range. The incomes in this school represent less than 1 percent of the families in the United States.⁹

Since each of the five schools is only one instance of elementary education in a particular social class context, I will not generalize beyond the sample. However, the examples of schoolwork which follow will suggest characteristics of education in each social setting that appear to have theoretical and social significance and to be worth investigation in a larger number of schools.
The Working Class Schools

In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice. The teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance. Available textbooks are not always used, and the teachers often prepare their own dittos or put work examples on the board. Most of the rules regarding work are designations of what the children are to do; the rules are steps to follow. These steps are told to the children by the teachers and are often written on the board. The children are usually told to copy the steps as notes. These notes are to be studied. Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps.

The following examples illustrate these points. In math, when two-digit division was introduced, the teacher in one school gave a four-minute lecture on what the terms are called (which number is the divisor, dividend, quotient, and remainder). The children were told to copy these names in their notebooks. Then the teacher told them the steps to follow to do the problems, saying, “This is how you do them.” The teacher listed the steps on the board, and they appeared several days later as a chart hung in the middle of the front wall: “Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring Down.” The children often did examples of two-digit division. When the teacher went over the examples with them, he told them what the procedure was for each problem, rarely asking them to conceptualize or explain it themselves: “Three into twenty-two is seven; do your subtraction and one is left over.” During the week that two-digit division was introduced (or at any other time), the investigator did not observe any discussion of the idea of grouping involved in division, any use of manipulables, or any attempt to relate two-digit division to any other mathematical process. Nor was there any attempt to relate the steps to an actual or possible thought process of the children. The observer did not hear the terms dividend, quotient, and so on, used again. The math teacher in the other working-class school followed similar procedures regarding two-digit division and at one point her class seemed confused. She said, “You’re confusing yourselves. You’re tensing up. Remember, when you do this, it’s the same steps over and over again–and that’s the way division always is.” Several weeks later, after a test, a group of her children “still didn’t get it,” and she made no attempt to explain the concept of dividing things into groups or to give them manipulables for their own investigation. Rather, she went over the steps with them again and told them that they “needed more practice.”

In other areas of math, work is also carrying out often unexplained fragmented procedures. For example, one of the teachers led the children through a series of steps to make a 1-inch grid on their paper without telling them that they were making a 1-inch grid or that it would be used to study scale. She said, “Take your ruler. Put it across the top. Make a mark at every number. Then move your ruler down to the bottom. No, put it across the bottom. Now make a mark on top of every number. Now draw a line from…” At this point a girl said that she had a faster way to do it and the teacher said, “No, you don’t; you don’t even know what I’m making yet. Do it this way or it’s wrong.” After they had made the lines up and down and across, the teacher told them she wanted them to make a figure by connecting some dots and to measure that, using the scale of 1 inch equals 1 mile. Then they were to cut it out. She said, “Don’t cut it until I check it.”

In both working-class schools, work in language arts is mechanics of punctuation (commas, periods, question marks, exclamation points), capitalization, and the four kinds of sentences. One teacher explained to me, “Simple punctuation is all they’ll ever use.” Regarding punctuation, either a teacher or a ditto stated the rules for where, for example, to put commas. The investigator heard no classroom discussion of the aural context of punctuation (which, of course, is what gives each mark its meaning). Nor did the investigator hear any statement or inference that placing a punctuation mark could be a decision-making process, depending, for example, on one’s intended meaning. Rather, the children were told to follow the rules. Language arts did not involve creative writing. There were several writing assignments throughout the year but in each instance the children were given a ditto, and they wrote answers to questions on the sheet. For example, they wrote their “autobiography” by answering such questions as “Where were you born?” “What is your favorite animal?” on a sheet entitled “All About Me.”

In one of the working-class schools, the class had a science period several times a week. On the three occasions observed, the children were not called upon to set up experiments or to give explanations for facts or concepts. Rather, on each occasion the teacher told them in his own words what the book said. The children copied the teacher’s sentences from the board. Each day that preceded the day they were to do a science experiment, the teacher told them to copy the directions from the book for the procedure they would carry out the next day and to study the list at home that night. The day after each experiment, the teacher went over what they had “found” (they did the experiments as a class, and each was actually a class demonstration led by the teacher). Then the teacher wrote what they “found” on the board, and the children copied that in their notebooks. Once or twice a year there are science projects. The project is chosen and assigned by the teacher from a box of 3-by-5-inch cards. On the card the teacher has written the question to he answered, the books to use, and how much to write. Explaining the cards to the observer, the teacher said, “It tells them exactly what to do, or they couldn’t do it.”

Social studies in the working-class schools is also largely mechanical, rote work that was given little explanation or connection to larger contexts. In one school, for example, although there was a book available, social studies work was to copy the teacher’s notes from the board. Several times a week for a period of several months the children copied these notes. The fifth grades in the district were to study United States history. The teacher used a booklet she had purchased called “The Fabulous Fifty States.” Each day she put information from the booklet in outline form on the board and the children copied it. The type of information did not vary: the name of the state, its abbreviation, state capital, nickname of the state, its main products, main business, and a “Fabulous Fact” (“Idaho grew twenty-seven billion potatoes in one year. That’s enough potatoes for each man, woman, and…”) As the children finished copying the sentences, the teacher erased them and wrote more. Children would occasionally go to the front to pull down the wall map in order to locate the states they were copying, and the teacher did not dissuade them. But the observer never saw her refer to the map; nor did the observer ever hear her make other than perfunctory remarks concerning the information the children were copying. Occasionally the children colored in a ditto and cut it out to make a stand-up figure (representing, for example, a man roping a cow in the Southwest). These were referred to by the teacher as their social studies “projects.”

Rote behavior was often called for in classroom work. When going over 15 math and language art skills sheets, for example, as the teacher asked for the answer to each problem, he fired the questions rapidly, staccato, and the scene reminded the observer of a sergeant drilling recruits: above all, the questions demanded that you stay at attention: “The next one? What do I put here?. . . Here? Give us the next.” Or “How many commas in this sentence? Where do I put them . . . The next one?”

The four fifth grade teachers observed in the working-class schools attempted to control classroom time and space by making decisions without consulting the children and without explaining the basis for their decisions. The teacher’s control thus often seemed capricious. Teachers, for instance, very often ignored the bells to switch classes – deciding among themselves to keep the children after the period was officially over to continue with the work or for disciplinary reasons or so they (the teachers) could stand in the hall and talk. There were no clocks in the rooms in either school, and the children often asked, “What period is this?” “When do we go to gym?” The children had no access to materials. These were handed out by teachers and closely guarded. Things in the room “belonged” to the teacher: “Bob, bring me my garbage can.” The teachers continually gave the children orders. Only three times did the investigator hear a teacher in either working-class school preface a directive with an unsarcastic “please,” or “let’s” or “would you.” Instead, the teachers said, “Shut up,” “Shut your mouth,” “Open your books,” “Throw your gum away-if you want to rot your teeth, do it on your own time.” Teachers made every effort to control the movement of the children, and often shouted, “‘Why are you out of your seat??!!” If the children got permission to leave the room, they had to take a written pass with the date and time….
Middle-Class School

In the middle-class school, work is getting the right answer. If one accumulates enough right answers, one gets a good grade. One must follow the directions in order to get the right answers, but the directions often call for some figuring, some choice, some decision making. For example, the children must often figure out by themselves what the directions ask them to do and how to get the answer: what do you do first, second, and perhaps third? Answers are usually found in books or by listening to the teacher. Answers are usually words, sentences, numbers, or facts and dates; one writes them on paper, and one should be neat. Answers must be given in the right order, and one cannot make them up.

The following activities are illustrative. Math involves some choice: one may do two-digit division the long way or the short way, and there are some math problems that can be done “in your head.” When the teacher explains how to do two-digit division, there is recognition that a cognitive process is involved; she gives you several ways and says, “I want to make sure you understand what you’re doing-so you get it right”; and, when they go over the homework, she asks the children to tell how they did the problem and what answer they got.

In social studies the daily work is to read the assigned pages in the textbook and to answer the teacher’s questions. The questions are almost always designed to check on whether the students have read the assignment and understood it: who did so-and-so; what happened after that; when did it happen, where, and sometimes, why did it happen? The answers are in the book and in one’s understanding of the book; the teacher’s hints when one doesn’t know the answers are to “read it again” or to look at the picture or at the rest of the paragraph. One is to search for the answer in the “context,” in what is given.

Language arts is “simple grammar, what they need for everyday life.” The language arts teacher says, “They should learn to speak properly, to write business letters and thank-you letters, and to understand what nouns and verbs and simple subjects are.” Here, as well, actual work is to choose the right answers, to understand what is given. The teacher often says, “Please read the next sentence and then I’ll question you about it.” One teacher said in some exasperation to a boy who was fooling around in class, “If you don’t know the answers to the questions I ask, then you can’t stay in this class! [pause] You never know the answers to the questions I ask, and it’s not fair to me-and certainly not to you!”

Most lessons are based on the textbook. This does not involve a critical perspective on what is given there. For example, a critical perspective in social studies is perceived as dangerous by these teachers because it may lead to controversial topics; the parents might complain. The children, however, are often curious especially in social studies. Their questions are tolerated and usually answered perfunctorily. But after a few minutes the teacher will say, “All right, we’re not going any farther. Please open your social studies workbook.” While the teachers spend a lot of time explaining and expanding on what the textbooks say, there is little attempt to analyze how or why things happen, or to give thought to how pieces of a culture, or, say, a system of numbers or elements of a language fit together or can be analyzed. What has happened in the past and what exists now may not be equitable or fair, but (shrug) that is the way things are and one does not confront such matters in school. For example, in social studies after a child is called on to read a passage about the pilgrims, the teacher summarizes the paragraph and then says, “So you can see how strict they were about everything.” A child asks, “Why?” “Well, because they felt that if you weren’t busy you’d get into trouble.” Another child asks, “Is it true that they burned women at the stake?” The teacher says, “Yes, if a woman did anything strange, they hanged them. [sic] What would a woman do, do you think, to make them burn them? [sic] See if you can come up with better answers than my other [social studies] class.” Several children offer suggestions, to which the teacher nods but does not comment. Then she says, “Okay, good,” and calls on the next child to read.

Work tasks do not usually request creativity. Serious attention is rarely given in school work on how the children develop or express their own feelings and ideas, either linguistically or in graphic form. On the occasions when creativity or self-expression is requested, it is peripheral to the main activity or it is “enriched” or “for fun.” During a lesson on what similes are, for example, the teacher explains what they are, puts several on the board, gives some other examples herself, and then asks the children if they can “make some up.” She calls on three children who give similes, two of which are actually in the book they have open before them. The teacher does not comment on this and then asks several others to choose similes from the list of phrases in the book. Several do so correctly, and she says, “Oh good! You’re picking them out! See how good we are?” Their homework is to pick out the rest of the similes from the list.

Creativity is not often requested in social studies and science projects, either. Social studies projects, for example, are given with directions to “find information on your topic” and write it up. The children are not supposed to copy but to “put it in your own words.” Although a number of the projects subsequently went beyond the teacher’s direction to find information and had quite expressive covers and inside illustrations, the teacher’s evaluative comments had to do with the amount of information, whether they had “copied,” and if their work was neat.

The style of control of the three fifth-grade teachers observed in this school varied from somewhat easygoing to strict, but in contrast to the working-class schools, the teachers’ decisions were usually based on external rules and regulations–for example, on criteria that were known or available to the children. Thus, the teachers always honor the bells for changing classes, and they usually evaluate children’s work by what is in the textbooks and answer booklets.

There is little excitement in schoolwork for the children, and the assignments are perceived as having little to do with their interests and feelings. As one child said, what you do is “store facts up in your head like cold storage – until you need it later for a test or your job.” Thus, doing well is important because there are thought to be other likely rewards: a good job or college.¹⁰
Affluent Professional School

In the affluent professional school, work is creative activity carried out independently. The students are continually asked to express and apply ideas and concepts. Work involves individual thought and expressiveness, expansion and illustration of ideas, and choice of appropriate method and material. (The class is not considered an open classroom, and the principal explained that because of the large number of discipline problems in the fifth grade this year they did not departmentalize. The teacher who agreed to take part in the study said she is “more structured this year than she usually is.) The products of work in this class are often written stories, editorials and essays, or representations of ideas in mural, graph, or craft form. The products of work should not be like anybody else’s and should show individuality. They should exhibit good design, and (this is important) they must also fit empirical reality. The relatively few rules to be followed regarding work are usually criteria for, or limits on, individual activity. One’s product is usually evaluated for the quality of its expression and for the appropriateness of its conception to the task. In many cases, one’s own satisfaction with the product is an important criterion for its evaluation. When right answers are called for, as in commercial materials like SRA (Science Research Associates) and math, it is important that the children decide on an answer as a result of thinking about the idea involved in what they’re being asked to do. Teacher’s hints are to “think about it some more.”

The following activities are illustrative. The class takes home a sheet requesting each child’s parents to fill in the number of cars they have, the number of television sets, refrigerators, games, or rooms in the house, and so on. Each child is to figure the average number of a type of possession owned by the fifth grade. Each child must compile the “data” from all the sheets. A calculator is available in the classroom to do the mechanics of finding the average. Some children decide to send sheets to the fourth-grade families for comparison. Their work should be “verified” by a classmate before it is handed in.

Each child and his or her family has made a geoboard. The teacher asks the class to get their geoboards from the side cabinet, to take a handful of rubber bands, and then to listen to what she would like them to do. She says, “I would like you to design a figure and then find the perimeter and area. When you have it, check with your neighbor. After you’ve done that, please transfer it to graph paper and tomorrow I’ll ask you to make up a question about it for someone. When you hand it in, please let me know whose it is and who verified it. Then I have something else for you to do that’s really fun. [pause] Find the average number of chocolate chips in three cookies. I’ll give you three cookies, and you’ll have to eat your way through, I’m afraid!” Then she goes around the room and gives help, suggestions, praise, and admonitions that they are getting noisy. They work sitting, or standing up at their desks, at benches in the back, or on the floor. A child hands the teacher his paper and she comments, “I’m not accepting this paper. Do a better design.” To another child she says, “That’s fantastic! But you’ll never find the area. Why don’t you draw a figure inside [the big one] and subtract to get the area?”

The school district requires the fifth grade to study ancient civilization (in particular, Egypt, Athens, and Sumer). In this classroom, the emphasis is on illustrating and re-creating the culture of the people of ancient times. The following are typical activities: the children made an 8mm film on Egypt, which one of the parents edited. A girl in the class wrote the script, and the class acted it out. They put the sound on themselves. They read stories of those days. They wrote essays and stories depicting the lives of the people and the societal and occupational divisions. They chose from a list of projects, all of which involved graphical presentations of ideas: for example. “Make a mural depicting the division of labor in Egyptian society.”

Each wrote and exchanged a letter in hieroglyphics with a fifth grader in another class, and they also exchanged stories they wrote in cuneiform. They made a scroll and singed the edges so it looked authentic. They each chose an occupation and made an Egyptian plaque representing that occupation, simulating the appropriate Egyptian design. They carved their design on a cylinder of wax, pressed the wax into clay, and then baked the clay. Although one girl did not choose an occupation but carved instead a series of gods and slaves, the teacher said, “That’s all right, Amber, it’s beautiful.” As they were working the teacher said, “Don’t cut into your clay until you’re satisfied with your design.”

Social studies also involves almost daily presentation by the children of some event from the news. The teacher’s questions ask the children to expand what they say, to give more details, and to be more specific. Occasionally she adds some remarks to help them see connections between events.

The emphasis on expressing and illustrating ideas in social studies is accompanied in language arts by an emphasis on creative writing. Each child wrote a rebus story for a first grader whom they had interviewed to see what kind of story the child liked best. They wrote editorials on pending decisions by the school board and radio plays, some of which were read over the school intercom from the office and one of which was performed in the auditorium. There is no language arts textbook because, the teacher said, “The principal wants us to be creative.” There is not much grammar, but there is punctuation. One morning when the observer arrived, the class was doing a punctuation ditto. The teacher later apologized for using the ditto. “It’s just for review,” she said. “I don’t teach punctuation that way. We use their language.” The ditto had three unambiguous rules for where to put commas in a sentence. As the teacher was going around to help the children with the ditto, she repeated several times, “where you put commas depends on how you say the sentence; it depends on the situation and what you want to say. Several weeks later the observer saw another punctuation activity. The teacher had printed a five-paragraph story on an oak tag and then cut it into phrases. She read the whole story to the class from the book, then passed out the phrases. The group had to decide how the phrases could best be put together again. (They arranged the phrases on the floor.) The point was not to replicate the story, although that was not irrelevant, but to “decide what you think the best way is.” Punctuation marks on cardboard pieces were then handed out, and the children discussed and then decided what mark was best at each place they thought one was needed. At the end of each paragraph the teacher asked, “Are you satisfied with the way the paragraphs are now? Read it to yourself and see how it sounds.” Then she read the original story again, and they compared the two.

Describing her goals in science to the investigator, the teacher said, “We use ESS (Elementary Science Study). It’s very good because it gives a hands-on experience–so they can make sense out of it. It doesn’t matter whether it [what they find] is right or wrong. I bring them together and there’s value in discussing their ideas.”

The products of work in this class are often highly valued by the children and the teacher. In fact, this was the only school in which the investigator was not allowed to take original pieces of the children’s work for her files. If the work was small enough, however, and was on paper, the investigator could duplicate it on the copying machine in the office.

The teacher’s attempt to control the class involves constant negotiation. She does not give direct orders unless she is angry because the children have been too noisy. Normally, she tries to get them to foresee the consequences of their actions and to decide accordingly. For example, lining them up to go see a play written by the sixth graders, she says, “I presume you’re lined up by someone with whom you want to sit. I hope you’re lined up by someone you won’t get in trouble with.”…

One of the few rules governing the children’s movement is that no more than three children may be out of the room at once. There is a school rule that anyone can go to the library at any time to get a book. In the fifth grade I observed, they sign their name on the chalkboard and leave. There are no passes. Finally, the children have a fair amount of officially sanctioned say over what happens in the class. For example, they often negotiate what work is to be done. If the teacher wants to move on to the next subject, but the children say they are not ready, they want to work on their present projects some more, she very often lets them do it.
Executive Elite School

In the executive elite school, work is developing one’s analytical intellectual powers. Children are continually asked to reason through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically sound and of top academic quality. A primary goal of thought is to conceptualize rules by which elements may fit together in systems and then to apply these rules in solving a problem. Schoolwork helps one to achieve, to excel, to prepare for life.

The following are illustrative. The math teacher teaches area and perimeter by having the children derive formulas for each. First she helps them, through discussion at the board, to arrive at A = W X L as a formula (not the formula) for area. After discussing several, she says, “Can anyone make up a formula for perimeter? Can you figure that out yourselves? [pause] Knowing what we know, can we think of a formula?” She works out three children’s suggestions at the board, saying to two, “Yes, that’s a good one,” and then asks the class if they can think of any more. No one volunteers. To prod them, she says, “If you use rules and good reasoning, you get many ways. Chris, can you think up a formula?”

She discusses two-digit division with the children as a decision-making process. Presenting a new type of problem to them, she asks, “What’s the first decision you’d make if presented with this kind of example? What is the first thing you’d think? Craig?” Craig says, “To find my first partial quotient.” She responds, “Yes, that would be your first decision. How would you do that?” Craig explains, and then the teacher says, “OK, we’ll see how that works for you.” The class tries his way. Subsequently, she comments on the merits and shortcomings of several other children’s decisions. Later, she tells the investigator that her goals in math are to develop their reasoning and mathematical thinking and that, unfortunately, “there’s no time for manipulables.”

While right answers are important in math, they are not “given” by the book or by the teacher but may be challenged by the children. Going over some problems in late September the teacher says, “Raise your hand if you do not agree.” A child says, “I don’t agree with sixty-four.” The teacher responds, “OK, there’s a question about sixty-four. [to class] Please check it. Owen, they’re disagreeing with you. Kristen, they’re checking yours.” The teacher emphasized this repeatedly during September and October with statements like “Don’t be afraid to say you disagree. In the last [math] class, somebody disagreed, and they were right. Before you disagree, check yours, and if you still think we’re wrong, then we’ll check it out.” By Thanksgiving, the children did not often speak in terms of right and wrong math problems but of whether they agreed with the answer that had been given.

There are complicated math mimeos with many word problems. Whenever they go over the examples, they discuss how each child has set up the problem. The children must explain it precisely. On one occasion the teacher said, “I’m more–just as interested in how you set up the problem as in what answer you find. If you set up a problem in a good way, the answer is easy to find.

Social studies work is most often reading and discussion of concepts and independent research. There are only occasional artistic, expressive, or illustrative projects. Ancient Athens and Sumer are, rather, societies to analyze. The following questions are typical of those that guide the children’s independent research. “What mistakes did Pericles make after the war?” “What mistakes did the citizens of Athens make?” “What are the elements of a civilization?” “How did Greece build an economic empire?” “Compare the way Athens chose its leaders with the way we choose ours.” Occasionally the children are asked to make up sample questions for their social studies tests. On an occasion when the investigator was present, the social studies teacher rejected a child’s question by saying, “That’s just fact. If I asked you that question on a test, you’d complain it was just memory! Good questions ask for concepts.”

In social studies–but also in reading, science, and health–the teachers initiate classroom discussions of current social issues and problems. These discussions occurred on every one of the investigator’s visits, and a teacher told me, “These children’s opinions are important – it’s important that they learn to reason things through.” The classroom discussions always struck the observer as quite realistic and analytical, dealing with concrete social issues like the following: “Why do workers strike?” “Is that right or wrong?” “Why do we have inflation, and what can be done to stop it?” “Why do companies put chemicals in food when the natural ingredients are available?” and so on. Usually the children did not have to be prodded to give their opinions. In fact, their statements and the interchanges between them struck the observer as quite sophisticated conceptually and verbally, and well-informed. Occasionally the teachers would prod with statements such as, “Even if you don’t know [the answers], if you think logically about it, you can figure it out.” And “I’m asking you [these] questions to help you think this through.”

Language arts emphasizes language as a complex system, one that should be mastered. The children are asked to diagram sentences of complex grammatical construction, to memorize irregular verb conjugations (he lay, he has lain, and so on …), and to use the proper participles, conjunctions, and interjections in their speech. The teacher (the same one who teaches social studies) told them, “It is not enough to get these right on tests; you must use what you learn [in grammar classes] in your written and oral work. I will grade you on that.”

Most writing assignments are either research reports and essays for social studies or experiment analyses and write-ups for science. There is only an occasional story or other “creative writing” assignment. On the occasion observed by the investigator (the writing of a Halloween story), the points the teacher stressed in preparing the children to write involved the structural aspects of a story rather than the expression of feelings or other ideas. The teacher showed them a filmstrip, “The Seven Parts of a Story,” and lectured them on plot development, mood setting, character development, consistency, and the use of a logical or appropriate ending. The stories they subsequently wrote were, in fact, well-structured, but many were also personal and expressive. The teacher’s evaluative comments, however, did not refer to the expressiveness or artistry but were all directed toward whether they had “developed” the story well.

Language arts work also involved a large amount of practice in presentation of the self and in managing situations where the child was expected to be in charge. For example, there was a series of assignments in which each child had to be a “student teacher.” The child had to plan a lesson in grammar, outlining, punctuation, or other language arts topic and explain the concept to the class. Each child was to prepare a worksheet or game and a homework assignment as well. After each presentation, the teacher and other children gave a critical appraisal of the “student teacher’s” performance. Their criteria were: whether the student spoke clearly, whether the lesson was interesting, whether the student made any mistakes, and whether he or she kept control of the class. On an occasion when a child did not maintain control, the teacher said, “When you’re up there, you have authority and you have to use it. I’ll back you up.”

The executive elite school is the only school where bells do not demarcate the periods of time. The two fifth-grade teachers were very strict about changing classes on schedule, however, as specific plans for each session had been made. The teachers attempted to keep tight control over the children during lessons, and the children were sometimes flippant, boisterous, and occasionally rude. However, the children may be brought into line by reminding them that “It is up to you.” “You must control yourself,” “you are responsible for your work,” you must “set your own priorities.” One teacher told a child, “You are the only driver of your car-and only you can regulate your speed.” A new teacher complained to the observer that she had thought “these children” would have more control.

While strict attention to the lesson at hand is required, the teachers make relatively little attempt to regulate the movement of the children at other times. For example, except for the kindergartners the children in this school do not have to wait for the bell to ring in the morning; they may go to their classroom when they arrive at school. Fifth graders often came early to read, to finish work, or to catch up. After the first two months of school, the fifth-grade teachers did not line the children up to change classes or to go to gym, and so on, but, when the children were ready and quiet, they were told they could go–sometimes without the teachers.

In the classroom, the children could get materials when they needed them and took what they needed from closets and from the teacher’s desk. They were in charge of the office at lunchtime. During class they did not have to sign out or ask permission to leave the room; they just got up and left. Because of the pressure to get work done, however, they did not leave the room very often. The teachers were very polite to the children, and the investigator heard no sarcasm, no nasty remarks, and few direct orders. The teachers never called the children “honey” or “dear” but always called them by name. The teachers were expected to be available before school, after school, and for part of their lunchtime to provide extra help if needed.
The foregoing analysis of differences in schoolwork in contrasting social class contexts suggests the following conclusion: the “hidden curriculum” of schoolwork is tacit preparation for relating to the process of production in a particular way. Differing curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices emphasize different cognitive and behavioral skills in each social setting and thus contribute to the development in the children of certain potential relationships to physical and symbolic capital,¹¹ to authority, and to the process of work. School experience, in the sample of schools discussed here, differed qualitatively by social class. These differences may not only contribute to the development in the children in each social class of certain types of economically significant relationships and not others but would thereby help to reproduce this system of relations in society. In the contribution to the reproduction of unequal social relations lies a theoretical meaning and social consequence of classroom practice.

The identification of different emphases in classrooms in a sample of contrasting social class contexts implies that further research should be conducted in a large number of schools to investigate the types of work tasks and interactions in each to see if they differ in the ways discussed here and to see if similar potential relationships are uncovered. Such research could have as a product the further elucidation of complex but not readily apparent connections between everyday activity in schools and classrooms and the unequal structure of economic relationships in which we work and live.

NOTES

1. S. Bowles and H. Gintes, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976). [Author's note]
2. B. Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 3. Towards a Theory of Educational Transmission, 2d ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); P. Bourdieu and J. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977); M.W. Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (Boston: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1979). [Author's note]
3. But see, in a related vein, M.W. Apple and N. King, “What Do Schools Teach?”Curriculum Inquiry 6 (1977); 341-58; R.C. Rist, The Urban School: A Factory for Failure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1973). [Author's note]
4. ethnographical: Based on an anthropological study of cultures or subcultures-the “cultures” in this case being the five schools being observed.
5. The U.S. Bureau of the Census defines poverty for a nonfarm family of four as a yearly income of $6,191 a year or less. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1978 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), p. 465 ,table 754. [Author's note]
6. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Money Income in 1977 of Families and Persons in the United States,” Current Population Reports Series P-60, no. 118 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), p. 2 ,table A. [Author's note]
7. Ibid. [Author's note]
8. This figure is an estimate. According to the Bureau of the Census, only 2.6 percent of families in the United States have money income of $50,000 or over. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports Series P-60. For figures on income at these higher levels, see J.D. Smith and S. Franklin, “The Concentration of Personal Wealth, 1922-1969,” American Economic Review 64 (1974): 162-67. [Author's note]
9. Smith and Franklin, “The Concentration of Personal Wealth.” [Author's note]
10. A dominant feeling expressed directly and indirectly by teachers in this school, was boredom with their work. They did, however, in contrast to the working-class schools, almost always carry out lessons during class times. [Author's note]
11. physical and symbolic capital: Elsewhere Anyon defines capital as “property that is used to produce profit, interest, or rent”: she defines symbolic capital as the knowledge and skills that “may yield social and cultural power.”

These books are both different. You may be surprised to learn that neither of the books require (or even advise) total abstinence from alcohol, and both strip out the heavy duty demonization and moralization that often goes a long with this disease (like you are someone weak and deficient because you are an alcoholic). Instead they advise, in an open and sensible manner free of the prohibition like frenzy that often surrounds this social problem, change in diet, lifestyle, and attention to whatever social or emotional pathologies may encourage addictive behavior. Recognizing that alcohol, like other addictive substances, provides an endorphin rush (i.e. they make your brain feel good), the books develop treatment strategies that deal with that. Treatment  involves a pharmacological intervention that interferes with the uptake of endorphins in the brain (thus robbing you of the feel good properties of alcohol) and dramatically reducing craving over time. The book authors claim success rates as high as 80% which is incredible considering how difficult addictions are to treat. I haven’t seen these treatments in action yet, though I do have a client who I’m hoping will try them out. They do, however, seem highly promising, and they are backed by serious scientific research.

alchohol treatment

Now as a sociologist I usually don’t buy into biological or genetic explanations of anything.  For me traditional psychology has too narrow a focus and it misses a lot of key causal factors when it approaches psychological dysfunction. I understand the power that advertising, the media, and our social groups have to determine our behavior and personality so from my sociologically sophisticated perspective, even something as “genetic” as IQ isn’t really genetic at all, but social. Still, what I found most interesting about the books from a sociological point of view was the emphasis on the relationship between alcohol and endorphins, a biological process.  Endorphins of course are the natural “feel good” drugs in your brain. Similar to morphine, the body releases endorphins in responses to both positive and negative stimuli.  Stress and pain cause endorphin release, but also laughter and orgasm. In addition, long distance running has long been associated with endorphin release (the so called “runner’s high”). Endorphins are the body’s “feel good” system and lack of endorphins may lead to depression. Drinking alcohol is a way to encourage endorphin release in the brain.

But why do you need alcohol to encourage endorphin release if it is released by other activities?

So what are you going to do about this? Well, if there is an addiction present the implications are clear, you have to break the chemical association and change your environment so your body is not so overwhelmed that it needs additional medication. We now know how to break the chemical association in the brain (both books reviewed here provide a solution). The harder part is cleaning up our social environments; but at least now you know where to start looking.

Now, hold on a second. That’s not the answer we were looking for. Captain America is supposed to be strong, fast, and fearless because he represents all that is virtuous about America, right?

Wrong.

According to the storyline for Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers starts off being a skinny little dweeb who can’t get a break. Steve’s fortunes finally take a turn for the better when he catches the attention of Dr. Abraham Erskine. The good doctor is impressed by Steve’s stick-tuitiveness as well as an indefinable quality of “goodness” that is integral to Steve’s character—and that also makes Steve a perfect guinea pig for Dr. Erskine’s medical experiments. Dr. Erskine has developed a potion that can transform people into super-beings. However, that’s just a theory because the first person to undergo the treatment (aka, the Red Skull) transforms into a monster so vile that he makes Hitler appear tame by comparison. Nevertheless, Erskine is convinced that just as his elixir amplified the Red Skull’s evil qualities, it will also exaggerate Roger’s admirable traits.

In a scene straight out of the Son of Frankenstein, Erskine escorts Rogers into an art deco iron maiden, shoots him up with dozens of over-sized vials of fluorescent super-soldier elixir and then zaps him with a zillion volts of electricity. In the midst of this sequence, when Erskine is momentarily seized with anxiety that he may have charred his poor patient to cinders, we suddenly hear Rodgers’ voice rise above the electrical firestorm to demand that the treatment be carried through to completion. At that point, I half expected Erskine to burst out exultantly, “It’s alive, it’s alive!!”

In spite of all the fun, this is the juncture where the film’s moral narrative gets seriously derailed. In 1942, when Hitler remained a clear and present threat to global security, and before we knew anything about the evils of performance enhancing drugs, it would have been easier to view Steve Rogers’ transformation as a triumph of virtue. That is, with the help of Erskein, a refugee driven from Europe by Hitler’s malice, the American military had cooked-up a potion designed to transform men into the kind of super-soldiers that were required to defeat the Axis of Evil. However, from a 21st century perspective, it’s a bit tougher to cheer lustily for Captain America when we simultaneously cry foul at the likes of Barry Bonds, Floyd Landis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alex Rodriguez, Marion Jones, and others. Although the producers of Captain America seem to have lost touch with such Kindergarten morality, thanks to Nancy Reagan, every kid in America has been conditioned to say no to drugs.

Certainly, the most poignant moral message that Captain America endeavors to impart is, “Nice guys can and should finish first.” A praiseworthy narrative, indeed. However, an equally resounding and vastly more troubling message that Captain America forcefully delivers is, “What you lack in natural ability, you can compensate for with performance enhancing drugs.” Further, if your opponents have taken drugs to enhance their performance, then it is your responsibility to consume even more efficacious drugs in order to out compete your foes. Precisely what it means to be human—not to mention the moral laudability associated with aspiring toward unsynthesized excellence—get dumped by the wayside. In Captain America, the virtues of drug-free humanity get flushed unceremoniously into the gutter of history. Alas.

Americans love moral merit and Americans also love winners. In fact, Americans love each so much that they often fail to see the essential contradictions that make it impossible to achieve both simultaneously. In Captain America, we try to have our cake and eat it too. In the end, Captain America is an entertaining but exceedingly superficial film. Nor, if the moral road map in Captain America is any indication, is it any wonder that America tends to get bogged down in endless wars. How can Americans ever expect to win the wars if, like their hero Steve Rogers, every time they strike a blow for their principles they also strike an equally forceful blow against them?

Like everybody else, the boy was struck by the beauty of the woman. His secret pleasure was to hang back and look on as the woman collected the money from the passers by. She was attractive, beautiful almost, but it was the dog that drew them in. After all, how often do you see a 3 legged dog? Especially one so well taken care of by a beautiful woman.

How and where the woman and the dog lived, no one knew. But day in and day out, sitting on the curb, they sat together. The woman would pet the dog or scratch his neck, and occasionally she gave him a morsel of food.

“Look how good she is to that pathetic dog!” the passers-by would say.

“Why, a beautiful woman like that, she could have any dog she wanted! But just look how she loves that thing, even though he is crippled and very old.”

With these sentiments in their mind, most people wouldn’t think twice about dropping a few dollars in the woman’s jar, especially because the woman was beautiful after all. And what is a few dollars to help a one so beautiful who takes such good care of a crippled dog?

Now the boy didn’t much care for the dog; his gaze was all for the woman. How beautiful she was! Though he didn’t dare to speak to her, and he had no money to give, still the boy hung around the woman towards the back of the crowd. Day in and day out he did this, and over time — even though his focus was mostly on the woman — he came to notice that her dog was not doing very well.

The boy watched, and each day, the dog seemed to be growing older, and he was no longer taking pleasure in the morsels that the woman gave him. But something else bothered the boy. To the boy, something didn’t seem right.

As he continued to observe the beautiful woman and her three legged dog, the boy started to notice that the woman’s behavior toward the dog was rather peculiar, and more-and-more something about this continued to bother the boy.

He noticed for example that the dog wasn’t feeling well, and was obviously in pain. But the woman didn’t seem to notice this, which was strange. He also noticed that yes, the woman would pet the dog, and even give him a morsel of food, but only at opportune times — like when the passer-bys drew near.

The boy then grew suspicious of the woman, and eventually he started to hold in contempt those passers by who were so enchanted by the woman and her dog.

“What is wrong with these people?” thought the boy. “Surely they can see that the woman doesn’t love that dog at all! Why, she is just using it!”

But even as the boy’s perception regarding the woman and her dog changed, the perceptions of the passers-by stayed the same. Over and over men would walk by, be struck by the woman’s beauty and obvious good nature because she took care of the dog, and drop money in her jar. The woman would smile at the men who did this, and lightly touch their hand, and the boy started to see that the men didn’t care about the dog either: as it lay there so pathetically, obviously dying, the men’s attention was only on the woman.

Again and again the boy returned, and each day, the dynamic between the beautiful woman, her crippled dog, and the passer-by continued to play out as it always had… until one day, the woman was alone, and the boy quickly ascertained from the conversation of the men that her dog had died.

The boy was suspicious of the woman by this point, and noticed right away that the woman continued to touch the hands of the men who put the money in her jar, and though she was talking about her dog dying, it seemed to the boy that her story was belying the fact that she didn’t care about the dog at all: it was her own misery at being forced to watch her dog die that she lamented to the men.

But the woman was crying, and the boy started to forget about the irregularities he noticed in the woman’s behavior toward her dog. After all, the woman looked so beautiful sitting there, and she was crying after all.

But something happened next that the boy will never forget. As he stood there watching the woman, one of the men who had been by earlier came back carrying a small puppy in a blanket.

“Here,” the man said, “take this puppy; his youth and vigor will make you feel better, and no longer will you have to be burdened by an old crippled dog.”

As the woman took the dog, and hugged it to her breast, a deep-rooted revulsion came over the boy, and at that moment, the boy vomited. He knew full well the reality that the men could not see.

And he was right. The next day when the boy returned to observe the lady, she had the puppy with her, who was now crippled with a crushed paw.

And the reactions of the passers-by in no way surprised the boy, as they expressed their admiration for such a beautiful woman who would care for a pathetic crippled dog.

Standing there in line, I also met another baby boy with his two Polish parents, who were out shopping for baby products and diapers for the little one. As I went out of the supermarket, carrying my big watermelon, two Romanian workers who deliver advertisements in the early morning hours to the neighborhood, went in. I walked down the street, watermelon in hand, enjoying the heat of the sun and as I turned the corner of the street, I was greeted with a wave and a shout by the Turkish pizza bakers who were sitting on their milk boxes, smoking cigarettes and taking a break from the heat in their busy restaurant kitchen.

Further down the street by the Korean restaurant, an old Korean man was standing on the steps leading up to the restaurant entrance. He smiled at me as I walked by, never having set foot in this or any other Korean restaurant. There is also an Indian restaurant further down the street that I have also never visited. I suppose it is a mixture of sticking to what I know when I do eat out and only eating out on rare occasions because of the money it costs. Interestingly enough a pizza costs the same as a fine Korean or Indian cuisine dinner, yet I have never considered frequenting those restaurants. As I walked past the Korean restaurant I almost bumped into a van that was leaving a driveway.

The woman driving the car laughed as I came up to the car and signaled apologetic to me to go around the car as she was backing out. As I walked around, I saw two other women silently swooping into the car, one of them only wearing a blanket and high stiletto heals. They were coming out from the bordello called “Hungarian Studio”. I actually did not know if the girls were Hungarian or not, but they did speak an East European language. The bordello has a sign that says “Open” with blinking neon lights and I have only seen it being turned off once. As I had passed the van, I looked across the street where a group of Lithuanian workers had been busy restoring a couple of houses and after waving to them, I crossed paths with a young Afghan boy that I often meet in the area who was walking his dog.

Shortly thereafter I walked into my house, carrying the watermelon to my kitchen and as I cut, sliced and ate this juicy piece of the earth, I looked out, through the window, at ‘my world’. In approximately 60 seconds and as long as it has taken you to read this, I met people from at least 10 different nationalities, in a tiny radius around the area where I live. Most of them are here because of money and most are working jobs that they do not enjoy or make much money from. Most of the ones that have been coming during the last 5 – 10 years, the eastern Europeans, live in crappy apartments rented to them by their work-providers for expensive rent in small spaces where they’re crammed together with 6 other guys sharing one bathroom. Others have managed to create a business or have perhaps married a Danish person. Currently Copenhagen is even voted the most expensive city in Europe and even for the Danes themselves, rent, food and transportation is extremely expensive and work is hard to come by.

So here we are: ‘the world’ gathered together in a tiny area, where all the world’s inequality and injustice exists directly visible and immanently obvious, yet incorporated into a day-to-day living where even the most basic questions asked in regards to this apparent exploitation of human life, is considered too naïve or too idealistic to be taken seriously in terms of taking action to change the situation. I want to live in a world, where everyone can travel everywhere and live as equals.

In such a world, an entirely different way of living together might emerge, where for example work environments can be established or cities can be designed with specific purposes that supports the local environment or draws direct inspiration from it, such as water-themed living near the great lakes of Finland or building clocks in small cities of Switzerland. Perhaps as all the people of the various countries on Earth will mix in the melding pot, people will eventually travel to and live in India specifically to live a specific lifestyle of tranquility and playing music or people interested in making movies and working with cinema will gather in California.

When looking at it, in some ways this already is this way – except for the inequality through money that makes all the difference in the world, when it comes to making a living — anywhere. Consider countries in Africa, where the world’s best climate is for growing coffee, yet where people are being exploited and exploiting each other and where the infra structure is non-existent in terms of providing public service and supporting the citizens’ with basic necessities such as clean drinking water, schools or transportation. Who knows how those countries will flourish and bloom, once a system is in place that is created on the basic premise of Life supporting Life to be lived dignified for all?

There are basically endless opportunities to live differently as the way we are currently living is not only extremely restricted and unpractical, but even more so, unfair and unjust. When taking the walk from the supermarket to my house, the people I met were by large people providing a service, working hard and working long hours for the bare minimum wage, while the majority of those they serve are the local population of which many work few hours, with excellent conditions, benefits, unions, pension and decent pay.

So basically we have created a new working-class that might not be women, children, slaves or our local brothers, but in return are people either trafficked here by ruthless people of power or who has migrated themselves out of desperation towards the situation in their home countries. And as we did this, one person crossing the border after another, we also create new elite –ourselves – and we are now living side by side with the poor; equally shopping in the supermarket, yet with unequal access to the kind food we can buy and the quantities in which we can buy it.

We may live on the same street, but where one family of 5 live in a huge town house with a furnished cellar and a garden, the other might live in a single room in an apartment with 5 other people with only fungus as insulation for the winter cold. It is as a constant ‘age of inequality’ we’re all in, all the time, and even though nothing may have changed and people are still as unequal as when the slaves were trafficked overseas or when women were not allowed to vote or get divorced, we live together in this tiny space that is this world. We can no longer deny that inequality is a living fact.

What is required is that we realize that it IS possible to live differently and that what we’ve believed to be creating new opportunities and ways of living was in fact recreation of the same inequality in new and more sophisticated ways that offered nothing more than the same way of living in working to survive. The Whole World is here and here is the Whole World. Borders are not meant to be permanent or to surpass our self-direction, because Life does not have borders and thus the borders that are here, may exist for a moment and be gone the next.

What is important is that we – as a whole – decide upon the borders and fences that we place for ourselves, because they’re practical and supportive – not because we fear the invasion of a foreign nation or wish to uphold a justification of inequality between people. The World in 60 seconds is the World we all live in, all 360 degrees of it – and that is the same as we live Here, in Nigeria where a melon grows that looks like a watermelon but tastes differently than the ones from Spain that can be purchased in the supermarket right around the corner from where I live in Copenhagen.

I Vote for an Equal World for All – because we’re all Equally in it and therefore: by living Inequality, we are living something that is not who we really are and that simply doesn’t make any sense.

I am simply Here to speak that which has remained unspoken within and as myself and within and as this world. Within this article I am thus drawing from own observations and experiences as well as analyzing specific cultural and sociological traits relevant to gain an understanding of why women submit themselves willingly to the abuse and degradation by men and why we accept ourselves as societies and culture that does not honor or dignify ourselves as life. Let’s begin:

The other night a couple of girls were having a party at house next to mine. They were preparing themselves to go out clubbing and from my window, I could see how they were dressing themselves, putting on make-up and getting drunk, meanwhile music was playing with a thumbing bass out the window. I noticed that most of the songs they were listening to were these techno/house tracks with male singers and with lyrics sounding like “eat my ass bitch” in a monotone and generic fashion or it was female singers with lyrics such as “I wanna give it up to you”. I then embarked on researching this point a little further as I found it to be interesting and fascinating how these women were listening to music that was clearly degrading and misogynistic as though it was actually empowering.

Here were these girls, partying as ‘single women’, with ‘their own money’, ‘beautiful and free’ – for example compared to their great grandmothers, who were slave bound to kitchens, not allowed to vote, considered dumb and irrational simply for being a women or if we compare them to women in other cultures that do not have their own money, education or the cultural freedom to express themselves, for example sexually.

And still they were listening to degrading abusive music with male voices singing to them to get ‘get on your knees’ or the infamous “eat my ass bitch” as though it were a celebration of life. When I placed myself in their shoes, their immediate and conscious experience of themselves were as ‘power-women’ – I mean, that was the game they were playing. “We’re players” “Women can be players as well” – and even though that is true, I can say from personal experience that this is also a matter of joining them, because you can’t beat them – and in this case it is the male dominant culture, where women are valuable and valuing themselves as objects for the attraction of men and where men are supposed to be tough and brutal, seen, defined and perceived as the ominous “Cool”.

“…see whore you’re the kinda girl that I’da 
Assault and rape and figure why not try to make your pussy wider 
Fuck you with an umbrella then open it up while that shits inside ya”

Eminem in the song “Stay Wide Awake“

Jackson Katz, an anti-sexism activist writer describes it in these words:

“Is it truly possible that women’s lives have been so thoroughly devalued that {Eminem}  a multi-platinum musical artist with nine Grammy awards to his name can sing multiple songs about raping and mutilating women and hip sophisticates can’t even bring themselves to utter the words “woman-hating?”[1]

Yes – it is most certainly possible, which the story above clearly exemplifies. Because when not only men degrade women, but when women also degrade themselves and when children are brought up to an implicitly immanent misogynistic culture – how can we expect ourselves to live any differently? There is this collective delusion in the wealthiest countries, that women have become liberated (hell that men have become liberated as well) – all conjured up in a comparison to cultures of past times, which apparently makes us liberated because we’re no longer stuck slaving in kitchens, carrying children on our arms and now instead can slave for cash at McDonalds or Wendy’s. And obviously women can get abortions and divorces, but how exactly that’s ‘liberating’, remains the question.

So back to the story of the girls next door. As I placed myself in their shoes, I saw that they were, behind the roles of ‘liberated power women’ who are ‘playing the game’, insecure, self-conscious human beings who were doing what they were doing specifically with the purpose of getting a man, either to have sex with or to love and hold – in both cases, for reproductive intentions.

How do I know this? I have been there and have done it myself. As a woman going out clubbing, your primary asset and value is your looks which has to meet specific standards or preferences. So these girls were constantly going from the living room where they were partying to the bedroom, both of which I could see from my window – to put make-up on and check their reflection. Some of the girls did this many times, many 10 or 20 times during the night of 4-5 hours before they were going out. And these girls were normal, standard, good-looking girls as one would imagine such. There was nothing out of the ordinary about them – and they would check their reflection in a certain way – with critical, sharp eyes of either approval or disapproval. And in the back-ground of the mind, the image of a man accepting them, loving them, feeding them with attention (or money and drinks) were constantly running like a movie in their head. They were drinking heavily as well, which people do to ‘uplift their spirits’ – basically to push beyond their own boundaries so that they become able to speak, dance, flirt and have sex.

As a girl and woman listening to this music, the ‘eat my ass bitch’ from before, the experience is that of being empowered, of being strong, invincible and specifically that of being a part of the male (superior) environment, showing the males that we can ‘match them’ and that we’re not whiny little sissies that can’t keep our liqueur sort of thing – is the psychology behind this point. I realized something fascinating a while back in relation to this point: that men do not specifically want woman to ‘match them’, meaning to be tough or strong – many men has a fantasy about a feminine, fragile virgin-like girl to whom they can either ravage or cherish or both, quite like many women has a fantasy about a beast of a man who fittingly ravages her or cherishes her like a delicate flower or both.

So this specific point is about women matching and attempting to empower themselves through matching the degrading nature of a male-dominant society – it is a quite strange application of self-empowerment. Yet – if we as women have seen men and what men represent and present themselves as, as free, empowered and self-authoritative, then that becomes our aim for empowering ourselves – because in a male dominated society, there are no alternatives.

I am not speaking here about strictly of male-dominant as being run by males – more that it is specific characteristics connected with being male that are predominant and valued as such amongst all members of society, whether it degrades and enslaves them or not. So in terms of the discussion about the male-dominant society, it might as well be a man that is degraded and enslaved by, to fulfill a role by putting on a suit or pumping iron or suppressing himself and his self-expression.

So the topic here is not physical men vs. physical woman. That is exactly seen in how women, when attempting to empower themselves, will end up doing exactly the opposite. That is because our entire society and the systems within which we manage our lives, our bodies and our minds – are male-dominant. In this specific case, it is women who have actively taken upon themselves to enslave themselves and degrade themselves through participating in the degrading of women through music, fashion and social behavior – as though it was in fact empowering.

Women (or men) don’t have an alternative to empower themselves –and power in this current system is equivalent with brutality, abuse cynicism, ego and self-interest. Thus we’re Impulsed to shape and form ourselves as personalities in relation to this definition of power, which is why many relationships will exist within a reversed constellation where the woman dominates the man in exactly the same way as a man would have dominated a woman.

Therefore – it is time to give ourselves an alternative. Obviously in order to do so, we first of all have to understand how we’ve defined power, worth and value as it is – so that we can start redefining what power, worth and value is and should be, when it is no longer abusive and unequal.

You can read more about this in the article, where I wrote about the enslavement of reproduction, and I will return to this in coming articles. I will also continue with investigating the male perspective in this, where males become equally enslaved to and within the point of degrading and abusing women and thus degrading and abusing themselves. For now I will remain with this point of how woman are trapped in a self-degrading and inverted chauvinism that is expressed through the example of music.

We shall here take a look at and analyze a brand this Katy Perry song. Katy Perry did most likely not write this song, yet I am deliberately referring to it as such, because 1) there is a communal pretense that money-making-mainstream-music –performers DO write their own material and 2) because Katy Perry does let this song represent her – she is singing it  – it is “a Katy Perry song”. I shall not analyze the entire song here, merely highlight some fascinating expressions that show how the acceptance of abuse towards women, is Impulsed and groomed into us via mainstream music that pretends to be innocent and harmless via it’s glossy exterior and it’s Disney- meets-Demon-like front-figures.

The song from Perry’s most recent album appropriately called “Teenage Dreams” is called E.T and  it circles around the theme of Katy falling in love with an alien man. (Katy Perry, who got married to another celebrity, notorious playboy Russel Brand in an spiritual ceremony in India last year)

The song starts with a rap intro by the infamous Kayne West that lays the foundation for the perspective of the song presented as a ‘boyish’ tease, like the constant chase on the playground where the boys pull the girls pigtails and the girls scream. Yet – this is not children or teenagers who are presenting this – they are adult, successful artists with large audiences specifically in the segment of children and teenagers. And behind the boyish teasing, is a far more cynical and brutal truth about this and these types of songs and artists.

The topic of why adult artists are making music targeted towards children within creating an entire ‘world’ around them as a fairytale, is another story for another time. Take a look at the lyrics here. This is the fantasy man that Katy Perry in these lyric’s dream universe is feverishly submitting herself to:

K[Kanye West]
“I got a dirty mind
I got filthy ways
I’m tryna Bath my Ape in your Milky Way
I’m a legend, I’m irreverent
I be reverand
I be so fa-a-ar up, we don’t give a f-f-f-f-ck
Welcome to the danger zone
Step into the fantasy
You are now invited to the other side of sanity
They calling me an alien
A big headed astronaut
Maybe it’s because your boy Yeezy get ass a lot”

So first Kayne calls himself a ‘reverend’ meaning the man who speaks the word of god to the clergy or the following of a specific church and later goes on to complimenting Katy for making him ‘the big man he is’ by him having anal sex with her. To that Katy Perry answers:

[Katy Perry]
“You’re so hypnotizing
Could you be the devil
Could you be an angel

Your touch magnetizing
Feels like I am floating
Leaves my body glowing.”

Here Katy are referring to the energetic reactions attached and played out – to which many people are addicted – between man and woman. The “electric” spark that is experienced. Here Katy has associated this to a specific man, a special man – that thus makes it even more intense. The man is thus placed on a pedestal sending the signal that such a man could exist, but also within polarizing and idealizing him to such a degree, she herself becomes implicitly inferior and irrelevant.

“They say be afraid
You’re not like the others
Futuristic lover
Different DNA
They don’t understand you”

There is here an entire topic on it’s own with the references to aliens and spirituality, which I will not discuss in this article, but merely mention as a point to consider critically.

“Your from a whole other world
A different dimension
You open my eyes
And I’m ready to go
Lead me into the light”

This is a clear reference to the biblical “god” and the man is in this fantasy now uplifted to the status of a god.

Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me
Infect me with your love and
Fill me with your poison”

Love is referred to as an infection and sperm as a poison which is from a certain perspective quite accurate, but the point that follows through her is the point of submitting oneself to abuse, to the desire and want to be abused, which clearly can be seen in the lyrics below:

“Take me, ta-ta-take me
Wanna be a victim
Ready for abduction”

The rest of the song goes on repeatedly in the same fashion and upon investigating more of the current music listened to specifically by teenagers and adolescents, these type of lyrics are not uncommon – quite the contrary. So the question is then if this is merely harmless wordplay or mating-games within a fantasy that is not supposed to be lived out into reality and if the average adolescent is so desensitized from seeing and hearing about rough sex that they do not take something like this seriously. Or if the desensitization is actually something that this music is indicative of, where we as human beings abdicate self-dignity and the ability to see others as equals and thus come to believe that we either have the right to treat others as objects or that we are no more worth than the objects we use without care.

I have as a woman – but even more so relevant, as a human being in this world, desensitized myself to abuse and suffering, to the abuse and suffering inflicted upon my own human physical body as well as the abuse and suffering within and as this world. I have found it easier to submit myself, because I believed and accepted that standing up was impossible – my world left me no alternatives. Yet when everybody says this, does this, creates this – we end up with a world of self-abdicated beings who are abusing each other and all claiming their freedom from responsibility.

I have realized for myself that the extend to which I have desensitized myself from what is here, specifically as suffering and abuse, is what has allowed it to escalate – because if it is not me, I cannot feel it, if it is not happening to me, I am not responsible, If I do not see it, I am not here as it.

I have realized that the extend to which I have desensitized myself is so vast that I require a total re-education of myself to actually re-learn how to care – not only about the world, about other life-forms and people, but equally about myself. Because self-abdication in all its various compromises is the self-degradation of separation that I have willingly submitted myself to.

Separation = Self-Abdication

When we return to the girls across the street in the house who were partying and getting ready to go out, they are themselves responsible for what they are doing – – they might even experience that nagging feeling of “why am I doing this, why am I compromising myself like this?” and then they look around and there is no alternative and everyone is doing the same and if they don’t do this they wont get a man and if they don’t get a man they stand no chance at getting that perfect life or at least surviving so that their genes can be transferred and they may live forever through the generations to come … WTF?

Is that the kind of human beings we want to bring into this world, continuously without end? Is surviving more important than being able to exist in self-dignity without being abused or abusing others? Unfortunately we have been programmed and have programmed ourselves to believe and accept this to be true to the extend where the this is infused into and as our bodies so that the mind sends an energetic surge or shock through the body a signal that it is time to get to work, to get that ass on the dance floor and mate at all costs and at any price – because the survival of the human species is our sole purpose in this world.

And within that single point of self-abdication, we have collectively as men and women – as human beings – submitted ourselves to exist within and as the honoring of abuse instead of life, of being entertained by the suffering of others and in believing that the continuous enslavement of ourselves, is what freedom looks, feels and smells like – there at the bottom of the human physical body that has become the object of our blind devotion. We have truly become assholes of our own demise.

I realize that I first must re-learn myself to take self-responsibility, to live dignified and principled, to not compromise or abuse myself, mentally or physically – to not submit myself to ideas or preprogrammed definitions about who I should be or what I should enjoy or desire or dislike. I realize that I have never really cared and even if I did, the world does not even facilitate human begins that do care.

grew up surrounded by women who hated men. Perhaps they did not all hate men, all of them, all the time, but a lot of them did. They also loved them… a lot – sometimes too much. It was an ironic dichotomy that I did not quite understand as a child. These women that I grew up with, had been part of “the movement” in the 70s and had experienced the restraint and limits of growing up in the shadow of fathers, brothers and male teachers.

They often had experienced and how they were taught to be ashamed of their sexuality, sit with their legs crossed and not send out the wrong signals. By the time they’ve reached their twenties, they were pissed off angry. So they became pissed off angry at the men and either directed their anger that way or towards the symbol of “the man” – the capitalistic system of inequality. The women had sex and relationships once in a while. Some of them became lesbians, out of shear spite of males.

In the relationships they did have with men, often the men was cheating as much as possible, drinking too much, wining too much or becoming violent, so most of the time, the women were alone. They hated their jobs as well ironically, many of them worked as some form of child-caretakers, in a daycare center or at a school – and I guess they felt pretty pissed on by life. I remember how they came home, tired, with creasy hair and long heavy breasts under their sweaty shirts, as the last sad remaining symbol of their victorious bra-burning that had marked the beginning of the end of their oppression.

Their rebellion against the system, the authorities and against men had not paid off and they were now in exactly the same position they fought to get out of: underpaid and unappreciated housewives and mothers, often without a man as support, with full time jobs being single parents, bitter and broken.

When they sat around the table at night, drinking red wine, the woman often talked about their youth, about feminism, and how women should stand up for themselves with pride in their voices. What I saw, as a little girl sitting there, with dangling feet at the edge of the chair, was people that were angry, tired and desperate and that was not the life I wanted.

It was not because the men around me, had more happy lives, but they did seem freer. They could come and go as they wanted, they laughed more often, they did not look as burdened as the women did. Often the men also moved on and created new families with younger women and had new children and they seemed to be able to simply brush off the past as were it a flick of dust and walk on as though nothing had happened. They looked invincible from that perspective, or at the very least; not as miserable as the women did.

Lately as I’ve been taking my daily walks around the neighborhood, I walk by these houses, these expensive houses with fancy cars in the driveway. I’ve looked in through the windows and seen beautiful women and men with beautiful children eating dinner and I’ve caught myself desiring to be them because in the mind’s eye, these people have the perfect life. They are happy, they don’t sweat.

One day as I walked by one of these houses, I started realizing for myself that what I was seeing was not happiness, but money. Everything that I saw, all the happiness that were “shinning through” the windows of these perfect houses, was bought and sold for money. Some had bought a rustic happiness that gave associations with childhood visits to the countryside; others had bought New Yorker chic happiness with steel and raw concrete as their portrait designed happiness. I realized that I had not the faintest idea what went on in those houses, as all I saw was an illusion of happiness, created and facilitated through glossy magazines and commercials on TV as the contrast to what I saw as a child, where the adults did not have any money and were miserable because of it.

The problems of this world are not at the fault of men or women. That is too easy. It is however a system of inequality, of abuse, ego and deception that we’ve allowed to be the directive principle that manages all our lives – from politics to economy and relationships. And as it is, to a large extend, males have been the ones in the frontline of the business of inequality. There is however no doubt that we’ve all contributed, participated and played along in this tragic masquerade, where some have power so that others have not and where some have money so that others have not.

What I saw growing up, was not an unfair and uneven relationship between men and women – or it was that as well – however the point is that all and everything is facilitated and dictated by our submission to money. Money is the remedy with which we abuse and control each other. And everyone accepts it or has no choice but to accept it, within the belief that happiness and fulfillment can only be achieved through money – that money does in fact make one happy, successful and achieved.

I had never thought that I would ever declare myself a feminist, exactly because of my upbringing of seeing these women as everything I certainly did NOT want to be anything like. The stories here has now interwoven, from where I started with sharing why I am slowly becoming a feminist, but not a feminist as in a woman that despises men, but as a human being realizing that the current capitalist and patriarchal system is only in support of more of itself in a complete irrational frenzy of greed, power and self-delusion and that to stop it – we require an entire new way of managing our lives and ourselves, a way where women are standing up – and men – to not accept or allow ourselves to continue existing this way without any regard for life whatsoever.

Therefore – I am here to re-educate myself to become a trustworthy and dignified Human Being, with whatever means and measures it takes. Then it doesn’t matter who is woman or man or what is the cause – as long as we dedicate ourselves to changing what is Here, one step at a time.

I do not wish to live the life of the women I grew up around, hating their lives and the men they blamed for their position. I do not wish my children to live the life of me as I have – therefore – to change the future for our children, there is only one way possible: to change what is Here as ourselves, in each breath of self-compromise or self-judgment – to Stop and Stand up. In each breath, where we make excuses or justify why we only care about ourselves – to Stop and Stand up. In each breath of lying to ourselves or each other about what is here or how we really experience ourselves – to Stop and Stand up.

A veil is being ripped from my eyes – it is an astounding experience, as something I have always taken for granted as real and valuable, is suddenly revealing itself as fake through and through. It is even more astounding to see now how obvious it is that it was fake and that I have been existing for all this time on a complete lie.

I have been living a lie, together with everyone else in this world and the lie that I am talking about is: The Lie of Giving Life – The Lie of Reproduction – The Lie of Family – Relationships – Beauty – Love – and Sex.

As I am slowly ripping the veil from my eyes, I walk in my daily participation and see everything as had I gotten brand new eyes and trying them on for size or as am I seeing everything for the first time, yet still too bright and blurry. I am aware that even still what I am seeing now – is but another layer, another veil and that it requires a total unveiling – a brutal, self-honest unveiling of all delusions and illusions about what Life is.

Basically how it works is that I participate in my reality, read the news or listen to someone speak on the street or experience something within and as me and it shows me yet another point where what I believed were real, true and valuable turns out to be yet another point of deception.

What I have realized is this:

The entire world of fashion, healthcare, dating, drinking, having children, buying houses, Hollywood –  is set up like one big giant fertility clinique where everyone is groomed to become producers of “life” like flesh-machines or flesh-factories that are here to serve one basic function: re-produce and clone more flesh-machines.

We are “brought to life” to clone the system that is infused everywhere, Impulsing everything and everyone to only serve it, as a god almost that requires absolute obedience and devotion – and what is even worse: we are not even aware of it – or ourselves as it.

Because the deception has been so carefully designed and orchestrated that everyone believes that they’re in fact “living life” – that they are each living in something called “my life” which is almost like a game-sequence or a level in a computer game, where one must collect the most amount of points and scores – and the most important aspect of this is the game of reproduction.

For some it is mostly about the act itself – which entire industries, such as the porn- and clubbing industry are build upon. For others it is about the goal of producing the best possible offspring – for others again it is about “making the best out of” “the journey” – again with entire industries build upon these programs and impulses, which humans follow and call “family values” and “family first” or “I am a bachelor for life” and nod with this warm feeling of purpose and worth.

I have myself been 100 % controlled by this specific point of enslavement to the point where it is in deed shocking to realize even this singular point as an example of the extend of self-deception and enslavement I have submitted myself to – completely oblivious. I believed that my yearning desire for a little house on the beach with a loving husband, a dog and three children was a pure, honest wish for a happy life.  I was willing to go through hoops to maintain relationships, get sex or even flirt. I never questioned the sexual arousal I felt when I saw a man on the street that fit the profile of someone who is “powerful”.  And what is amazing is that this is a complete collective delirium that everyone is participating in maintaining – lovesongs, Tv-shows, romantic movies, hardcore porn, family-discount, bridal showers, baby showers, bachelor parties, beach parties, date rape drugs, you name it: we’re hooked on it. And this is why it is so hard to see and realize the self-delusion as the spell that we’ve placed ourselves under.

Because even if you were to see it – the entire world around you would live this as reality and thus eventually you would end up believing yourself to be insane or dysfunctional. It is like in the story about the emperor’s new clothes where everyone believes the emperor has clothes on; even though they can see that he does not – simply because they fear losing public appearance. Only when a child who has no concept of keeping up appearances, speaks up, the spell is broken.

It is time to break the spell, people – there is no such thing as love, as relationships, as “the one”, as “the perfect life”. The “perfect life” is – look around – only facilitated and made possible by money. When looking at the various representations of this scenario and those we’ve believed to have such a life, what we see is the facade, the make-up placed on top of the face of reality, stuck in a stiff smile – – what we are seeing is the emperor’s new clothes and we believe it to be real because otherwise we would have to face the lies we’ve been telling ourselves.

Sex is not some magnificent, sacred, spiritual or exhilarating event that will blow the boundaries of reality if only it is performed correctly with the right partner – the experiences of sexual energy charging around in the body is like the sweetener they put in cough syrup to make sure it gets down and stays down.

The entire purpose of this, us existing as flesh-factories in various grooming, fertility and nesting systems — is to replicate and reproduce more clones, more systems like ourselves – cloning what is here as this system of self-enslavement and propelling energy that we’ve accepted and allowed ourselves to become – and thus fear letting go of, because we’ve diluted ourselves to the extend where we now believe that this is all we are and will ever be – which unfortunately is true as long as we allow it to be. As long as we praise and submit ourselves to these systems – in their honor and in spite of life – we will remain self-enslaved and self-inflated, giving value to the act of enslavement itself.

The expression “bred in captivity” is fitting here – because only a race as stupid and arrogant, as we humans have allowed ourselves to be and become, would speak proudly of enslavement as though it was a sign of their evolved intelligence and power over nature – when in fact, all it reveals is the extend of our own self-enslavement.

The point here is not that sex is bad or that relationships are bad and that we should all now go into celibacy. Quite the contrary – the point is for us to realize how we’ve enslaved ourselves to reproduce ourselves as clones of our own enslavement and to break that cycle by willing ourselves to change.

We do this by changing the very nature of our relationships – – from pre-programmed and automated fertility-programs to living agreements where we come together in the purpose of supporting ourselves and each other as Life to stand up. We do this by changing the way we have sex and the starting-point within which we have sex, from mentally and energetically charged reproduction maneuvers to physical self-expression and amalgamation of and as ourselves in the touch of equality. We do this by stopping participation in thoughts, emotions and feelings – within the realization that all of these are pre-programmed for us to follow the pattern of survival through reproduction. We bring ourselves back Here – – in and as the Physical, as Life, Equal and One.

These assumptions have become axioms of our culture. They generate despair but also a certain comfort because they relieve us of the responsibility to change.

Some politicians and pundits declare that human nature makes peace impossible, that war is built into our genes. They point to research by evolutionary biologists that indicates our closest genetic relatives, the chimpanzees, make war. Therefore war must be part of our heredity. It’s true that in certain situations chimpanzees do raid neighboring colonies and kill other chimps. Those studies on killer apes got enormous publicity because they implied that war is hardwired into human nature. Most scientists didn’t draw those conclusions from the evidence, but the mass media kept reinforcing that message.

Further research, however, led to a key discovery: The chimps who invaded their neighbors were suffering from shrinking territory and food sources. They were struggling for survival. Groups with adequate resources didn’t raid other colonies. The aggression wasn’t a behavioral constant but was caused by the stress they were under. Their genes gave them the capacity for violence, but the stress factor had to be there to trigger it into combat. This new research showed that war is not inevitable but rather a function of the stress a society is under. Our biological nature doesn’t force us to war, it just gives us the potential for it. Without stress to provoke it, violence can remain one of the many unexpressed capacities our human evolution has given us. Studies by professors Douglas Fry, Frans de Waal, and Robert Sapolsky present the evidence for this.

Militarists point to history and say it’s just one war after another. But that’s the history only of our patriarchal civilization. The early matriarchal civilization of south-eastern Europe enjoyed centuries of peace. UCLA anthropologist Marija Gimbutas describes the archeological research in The Civilization of the Goddess. No trace of warfare has been found in excavations of the Minoan, Harappa, and Caral cultures. On many of the Pacific islands war was unknown. The ancient Vedic civilization of India had meditation techniques that preserved the peace, and those are being revived today to reduce stress in society: www.permanentpeace.org.

Our society, though, has a deeply entrenched assumption that stress is essential to life. Many of our social and economic structures are based on conflict. Capitalism’s need for continually expanding profits generates stress in all of us. We’ve been indoctrinated to think this is normal and natural, but it’s really pathological. It damages life in ways we can barely perceive because they’re so built into us.

We don’t have to live this way. We can reduce the stress humanity suffers under. We can create a society that meets human needs and distributes the world’s resources more evenly. We can live at peace with one another. But that’s going to take basic changes. These changes threaten the power holders of our society. Since capitalism is a predatory social and economic system, predatory personalities rise to power. They view the world through a lens of aggression. But it’s not merely a view. They really are surrounded by enemies. So they believe this false axiom they are propagating that wars are inevitable.

In the past their predecessors defended their power by propagating other nonsense: kings had a divine right to rule over us, Blacks were inferior to Whites, women should obey men. We’ve outgrown those humbugs, and we can outgrow this one.

William T. Hathaway’s latest book, Radical Peace: People Refusing War, presents the experiences of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists in the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Chapters are posted in The Socjournal and on a page of the publisher’s website at http://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace. He is also the author of Summer Snow, the story of an American warrior in Central Asia who falls in love with a Sufi Muslim and learns from her an alternative to the military mentality. Chapters are posted at www.peacewriter.org.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself.

I was born into a Catholic family and when I was a young, defenseless, trusting child needing lots of love, attention, and positive regard, I had to listen to Catholic priests (and by extension my mom) tell me what a rotten, stinking, low life loser I was. Begotten from a long line of low life losers going all the way back to that witch Eve who tricked the weak Adam into eating the forbidden apple, the priests told me that I was little better than cosmic dust. Sitting in the pew in a long line of the faithful I listened to “the man” standing behind the pulpit tell me that yes God loved me but even so, if I didn’t apologize for something I never did (i.e. original sin), straighten up, and do what I was told (i.e. follow orders/commandments) I’d be cast into a burning fire where I would suffer unimaginable torment forever and ever amen. I was bad, I was evil by nature, dirty, sinful, cosmic chaff, and only by dint of hard work, grace, submission and terror of authority (disguised as respect) could I ever redeem myself and be rewarded with a place in God’s exclusive little private club he arrogantly called “heaven.”

Glad I got that out.

Honestly, I believed the lies of Church for almost a decade of my young life. The priests were convincing after all. They had special robes, wore special rings, stood behind special podiums, and quoted from a fancy, big book they called “the bible.” I was young, I was small, I was weak, I was impressionable and boy did they impress me.

I believed them because I was a child and I trusted the adults.

I believed them because they said they knew the Truth.

I believed them because they said if I didn’t believe them, and I didn’t do exactly what I was told, God would burn me in hell for all eternity.

Anyway, when I was a teenager I gave up that lie. I realized, even if I couldn’t verbalize it, how twisted the priests stories were. It was psychological and emotional abuse by any other name, and so I walked away from it. Of course, still young and uninformed I didn’t give up belief altogether. As a young man I walked right out of religion and right into the hallowed halls of my local university where, caving into the same need to believe, I heard pretty much the same thing from my professors as I had heard from the priests. Sitting in a chair in a line of the faithful I listened to “the man” standing behind the lectern telling me that I was little more than a dirty rotten ape, violent and irredeemable, descended from a long line of similarly rotten and violent apes, driven by Freudian instinct and acting out my disgusting sexual and aggressive tendencies to the detriment of all around me. According to Freud if it wasn’t for repressive society I’d eat my own children if given half a chance. According to science I was worthless, I was violent, I was dirty. I was evolutionary chaff and only by proving myself worthy/strong in some ridiculous evolutionary struggle would I be deserving of reward, and would my “genes” pass on to the next generation.

Sound familiar?

Now honestly, I believed the stories of science a lot longer than I believed the lies of the Churches. The priests of science were more convincing after all. They had special robes, wore special rings, and stood behind special podiums where they impressed upon me the depth and breadth of their learned nature by quoting from not ONE big book, but from many. It was an impressive display of erudite, empirical, edification and what can I say, I was young, I was small, I was weak, I was impressionable and boy did they impress me.

I believed them because I was a young student and I trusted the erudite professors.

I believed them because they said they knew the Truth.

I believed them because they said if I didn’t believe them, and repeat exactly what they said on my final exams, I wouldn’t pass their tests and I’d just end up working poor, or worse, destitute on the streets.

And besides, I wanted to believe.

I wanted to know.

I wanted to have answers to all the big questions that had plagued my mind since I was a young lad and so I believed what the priests of Science said. And besides, the priests of Science did seem to have it in the bag more than the priests of the Church.

They said, don’t trust any other authorities but us!

They said, be empirical.

They said, be logical.

They said, observe and report.

And for the longest time everything was kosher. I didn’t trust authority (unless it was backed by an advanced graduate degree), I tried to be empirical, I strove for logic, and I observed and reported and in all that activity the story that I had been told about human nature by the priests of Science, despite its weird similarity to the church version, seemed to be accurate.

But then I had children, and I observed them, and the more I observed them more I became confused because what I was observing didn’t make any sense.

It didn’t fit into what I “knew” to be true.

For example, I had been told by priests of the Church and Science that my children were greedy and violent little scoundrels, little more cosmic rejects, descended apes, that I had to repress and control and train and enslave otherwise everything would go to hell.

But I didn’t see that in them.

Take greed as an example.

I’d been told by priests and scientists that I was greedy by nature. Original sin and evolution had made it so that I always wanted more. It was my fundamental spiritual flaw, the product of an evolutionary struggle. It was put their by God “the father” to test me or, if you are of a more scientific bent, put their by Mother Gaia to give me evolutionary advantage. However it got there, everybody agreed it was there. So, if I accumulated more and more while others around me had less and less, well all I was doing was responding to my “true” inner nature, proving my worth in the eyes of God, and winning the struggle to survive.

The man with the most toys wins, right?

That’s what I was told so, when I had kids, I expected to see this behavior from them, greedy little monsters that they were. But honestly, I didn’t see it. As it turns out, and much to my Catholic and scientific surprise, my kids don’t have a greedy bone in their body. I look and look and look but I cannot find it. In fact, it appears quite the opposite. Rather than worrying about having more, more, more, their primary concern is with absolute equality and they expend an incredible amount of psychological and emotional energy trying to manifest that equality.

It’s true!

If one thinks the other has a bit more ice cream, or a little more chocolate, or has received a little more love, or a little more attention, all hell breaks loose.

I see it every day.

If my children do not achieve absolute equality in all things, they fight until they do.

And to them it doesn’t matter how small the inequality. When I make Ichiban noodles (sometimes ignoring the fact that it contains MSG) and if one of my kids feels that the other has even one more noodle, or one ounce more broth, they scream, they grab, they protest, they cry ,they wail, the gnash their teeth, they kick, and they complain until they feel absolute equality is established, at which point they happily slurp down their noodles.

As a parent it is frustrating as hell, not to mention confusing.

If happiness and contentment only exists in our home when everybody is included and treated equally, where is the greed and the selfishness?

Is there something wrong with my children, I wonder.

Are they abnormal?

Are they broken?

Have they violated their divine or natural nature, as defined by the priests of this world?

Personally, I think not.

Personally, I think they are doing just what they were wired to do, strive for equality and justice.

Egg on the faces of the priests if you ask me.

Now as a parent there’s two things I can do in this situation. I can accept the facts that my kids want absolute equality and give them that, or not. If I accept the fact then I give them equal love, equal treats, and equal treatment. If I accept that then I won’t privilege the boy over the girl, the first born over the last, or the stronger one over the weaker one. If I do that, if I honor what appears to be to be the natural/spiritual/divine order of things, then everything is calm and everybody is happy. But if I don’t do that, if I violate the powerful instinctual need for equality, or the divine inner self that says “love me and honor me equally,” bad things begin happen. The kids fight and scream, they begin competing for attention, they begin hording whenever they can, and the whole household descends into fetid, funky, pathology which can only be managed with repressive controls and which descends, by degrees, into the earthly representation of hellish suffering.

And as any parent with eyes open will tell you, I’m not over exaggerating.

The drive for equality and fair treatment is powerful and when not honored, a disturbance in the force, results. When that happens, when instincts and nature are violated, repression, indoctrination, and violence are the inevitable outcomes. I yell at my kids, I tell them life isn’t fair, I banish them to their rooms for being so “unreasonable” and “demanding,” I send them to church where the priests justify, or to school where the teachers indoctrinate, and I ask them again and again, “why can’t you just ‘get it’.” In this process their natural drive for equality is suppressed and oppressed and eventually, despite abortive and comical attempts at adolescent rebellion, they learn to accept the lie, but at a serious cost, I believe. When your natural instincts towards equality are violated, pathology results. Just look at the United States, one of the most unequal countries in the world and one where psychopathology is out of control.

You can check it yourself in the statistics.

Crime, drug addiction, eating disorders, obesity, and a culture soaked in anti-depressants and anti-psychotics must lead us to question the moral, philosophical, and scientific foundation of our view of human nature.

I mean really…

You don’t need me to point it out.

Unless you want to write off the growing pathology with a magical sweep of your hand you have to consider the possibility that we’re doing something wrong.

Of course I’m speculating here.

It is a big causal leap from a violation of our natural instincts for equality (wow, doesn’t that sound like a sacrilege on so many levels) to the toxic emotional and psychological soup of modern day society, but it’s an interesting hypothesis don’t ya think?

Not to mention totally, yranoitulover.

But so what?

And who cares?

Personally, I think (and feel) the idea that we might have a natural “instinct” for equality deserves a lot more attention I mean, what if the spiritual and scientific structure of our modern moral and cosmological sensitivity is nothing more than a carefully contrived justification for inequality and privilege?

What if it’s just a case of the priests telling the peasants to accept their lot.

You know, divine Right of Kings and God wants it that way or the rich deserve what they get because they are stronger, faster, more capable than you.

Inequality is natural and inevitable, God likes it and its good for the evolutionary scramble, so deal with it.

I believe the idea is worthy consideration and if you ask me its at least as significant and revolutionary as the notion that the Sun doesn’t revolve around The Earth and if true will require a pretty significant recant and revision of a number of academic disciplines. I know it sounds outrageous, improbable, even impossible, but lo and behold it’s already happening. View the video in this article and watch the author of a 1970 book RECANT the dubious science that led him to coin the term “alpha male.” As a sociologist I must ask, was it pure ideology after all?

As for me, I’m not buying it anymore. I can see with my own eyes. Watching my little children I see that it’s at best a horrendous scholarly mistake and at worst a big fat lie. Of course, reading this short article you may not be willing to go so far but at the very least you should raise some questions. Better yet, think and observe for yourself and come to your own conclusions. And remember, just because some priest said it, or some scientist said it, doesn’t make it so. You have to understand, from the the recent recanting of the term Alpha Male to all the ignored researched on the negative impact of competition, it would seem that scientists are as ideological and error prone as everybody else.