Do you think that our society, and/or the world, is secularizing, or not?

According to Wikipedia the population of non-religion people is growing from 1990 (14.3 million) to 2001 (29.4 million) and 2008 (34.1 million).
I think the big majority of people are followers in this world. So there are still a lot of people who believe what the religion leader tells them to do and when it becomes to a conflict in their life, they simply follow the leaders’ ideas. We find a lot of very reliable people among this group but it does not oppose finding a lot of reliable people among non-religious people.

The other group of people that is expanding quickly mostly look for more scientific reasons for any event in the life.

The structure of the life has been changing rapidly and the number of people that cannot find their needs through a religion is increasing. One of the reasons is people can talk about their ideas in some parts of the world like modern country without fear and also people are smarter today than past because they study the history and the role of religion. Look at all the biases that affected people’s lives through the history by religious leaders!!!!

Today life is based on science and that is what religion is missing. So in my opinion, people get less and less from religion and become more and more spiritual or secular. Human is exploring all different type of energy and figuring out the energy of the universe. Human being needs to be connected to the resource of the existing. I hope my sharp opinions do not offend anybody. I strongly believe in pluralism and respect every single person from any background in the globe.

Understanding Relations between Ethnic Groups – Rwanda

http://www.mazalien.com/ghosts-of-rwanda.html


Ethnic conflict such as Genocide is one the most horrifying and inhumane things that can happen. As Carl Wilkens mentions in his interview “ people either have a very humane side or very devil side” and when Dallaire says when he went to talk to Hutu’s commanders and he felt he is not talking to human there bunch of evils in front of him; it shows the depth of darkness of the event.

Unfortunately it is happening over and over in different part of the world and there has not been any plan established to stop it. In my opinion it is mostly social education especially for poor people to make them aware of equality of genes in order to becoming a devil or an angel. We have seen the experiments of “A Class Divided” or “The Stanford prison”. People can become so cruel by having power or just the right to dominate other people. As we in the experiment of Ms. Elliot “A class divided” after people become educated they act differently. So awareness can be very helpful. When that Hutu Farmer talks about what they have been told by Hutu Commanders about the history of Tutsis to convince them that it is all right to kill them, it is self-explanatory that ordinary people can be so influenced so easily by false information. Some commanders can brainwash their people and estimulae them sociologically to use them to kill the others.

How does global inequality affect our lives as individuals?

How do we measure inequality and what is an accurate method to measure it? I think it does not matter…. It is obvious… there is a big gap and a very clear growing inequality between world citizens. In my opinion, there are different aspects of inequality and consequently different effects, Economy, morality, and education.
According to “Branko Milanovic” one of the lead economists in the “World Bank” “Inequality has increased between nations over the last half century (richer countries have generally grown faster than poorer countries)”. As we read in the text book “Introduction to Sociology” Capitalism is growing fast across the world. The affect of Capitalism even in China makes big differences in individuals’ life directly. But Capitalism itself can not make equality in the world. As the text book mentions, “almost 50% of the countries around the world are Technology Adaptors”. These countries usually have old fashion cultures that are mostly based on punishment vs. encouragement and do not provide a proper environment for creativity and innovation for their people. Capitalism can grow based on freedom and human’s creativity otherwise it will go to the wrong side of the road and will be misleading for people in those societies and it is happening in some of the eastern countries especially middle east. This type of semi capitalism happens in the wrong culture base and encourages people to make money without being creative and innovative. It makes a lot of consumers with a lot of false competition. This also can lead some groups toward war and terrorism and put people’s life in danger around the world. Technology innovators spend to be prepared to defend their countries against the war. That money could be spent in researches and health insurance, education, and etc to make happier life for individuals. So we see when people in some part of the world don’t have enough facilities and common wealth to be innovative for their own countries would get involve with other countries in a wrong way and make a lot of troubles for everybody. Dictator governments such as China, Iran, Jordan, and such can make life measurable for their own people and other people around the world. Dictatorships can survive if and only if people are not educated enough too fight with it. People need to be educated to learn how to be confident and creative. People around the worl deserve for that type of education. Our goal should be making a map all the same color to live peacefully and happy.

http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/index.php

Social classes

"People Like Us: Social Class in America"

http://www.pbs.org/peoplelikeus/

I wish I could watch the documentary movie (which was not available online for free), then I would have a much better approach to interpret my understanding of this website. I tried playing one of the games and it didn’t attract me because the questions where not designed properly so not everybody would find an answer close to her/his situation. I red the stories and it seems they all say if you change your class, it does not matter higher or lower; it creates issues for your relationship with your family if they are still in your old class. Val was gone to new money social class through her husband status, Charles left the luxury life that his parents had and went to working social class, Roberta changed her class by getting married to Ben, and it caused problems on their relationships with their families or it was even worse for Charles who lost his relationship with his parents. In real world based on my experience, I have seen people who changed their social class by having higher education or developing a successful business with much higher income and also helping their family and changing their social class gradually. But it does not happen for everybody and some people have to disconnect from their old world to be in a different level of society. I think inequality has been a natural part of the human society forever and some people happen to be lucky by having proper role models and take themselves out of a lower class toward higher classes away from poverty and crime. It usually happens very gradually and to help the process to speed up, society needs to help people to get higher education more easily and facilitate more encouraging tools to help people recognize their potentials. Human being can be positive and creative when they are able to identify and use their abilities. In the other side new money class ad even old money class needs be educated to accept people because of their capabilities not because of their social class. That makes the path much smoother for people from lower class to move from poverty. Human has had good progress but we still have a long journey from inequality to equality and have a happy peaceful society.

Do you think Americans today are more isolated due to technology?

Do you think Americans today are more isolated due to technology? Explain why or why not, and whether you think this issue is something we should be concerned about now or in the future.

Since industrialization made a line between home and work, I think there are two different approaches for this analysis.
Nowadays Americans are more isolated in their personal relationships. When we look at the statistics, the number of single and divorced people has been increasing because people are more isolated today. It is not easy for them to be in a Dyad because they have a lot of personal goals and issues that are not easy to match with another person’s. If we look at that issue more closely, it is mostly worsened by technology. Owning brand new stuff with the latest technology is part of these personal goals that takes a person far from loved ones and from sharing his/her life with them. Internet can connect people across the world on a daily basis but at the same time people living under one roof are busy with their own computers, talking to others and not even paying attention to their partner next to them. Broadcasting technology sometimes distracts people too much as well. Some internet networks like E-Harmony try to help match people but this tool and similar tools do not seem to be working very well. In my opinion, they don’t work perfectly because they can not know what an actual human soul needs in order to find a soul mate. The concern is there is not enough training during childhood and teen ages to help people to know their own intimacy needs so they can find a partner to satisfy their soul needs without technology.
On the other side people are very group and team oriented in society. People in a work environment now can build a rocket and send it to the moon because of great teamwork. Human beings have had great inventions during the past few decades just because of the better understanding of teamwork and team environment they have. People have been drawn to social groups such as Facebook and sub-groups that have been created in the Facebook virtual world, groups that are fans of music bands, demonstrations for human rights, and all kinds of different protests or walks to support cancer and other charitable research. Humankind has had “Great progress” through teamwork to make a lot of things better in this world.

Nature VS Nurture

Nature and nurture are complementary to each other. I believe if we understand the nature of humans (men, women, children, adult, etc) then we can establish good nurturing. Reading different theories such as Chodorow’s and Gilligan’s shows human beings have different nature but what’s important is to recognize what type of nurturing is proper to make the society happy?
Human beings have been through the self-discovery process for a long time. Learning more about our nature lets us understand our reactions to this nature and find out how to overcome wild reactions and make more peaceful society with higher quality of nurturing.
In older times, Family had a very big influence in a child’s life to teach socialization rules and values, but as we study in chapter 4 of the book about socialization and the life cycle, now there are many other things that have big influences in different stages of a person’s life. Family still has a big role but besides family, school, media, and peer relationships can have big roles on a person’s life development. These things provide different types of nurture for the person and create a variety of opportunities for better self discovery. Sometimes these potentials can be used peacefully, but sometimes they can be used in a very improper way.
Some examples of different groups in a society can make it clearer.
Now a days, there are a lot of societies that provide more opportunities for women through family, school, and multimedia. The picture on page 101 of the book shows how a Muslim woman becomes a doctor and takes an important role in the society despite of all the limitation for women. There is obviously less discrimination now compared to 30 or 40 years ago. It is an ongoing process but it has had good progress during past few decades. So it implies that nurturing can create more freedom within societies.
Another example is the variety of races that all work together in multicultural groups and are very active in society.
Let’s think about disabled people. They cannot change their nature much but special nurturing in society gives them opportunities of having their own sport teams, comparable education and professional jobs. Basically they can have important roles and live like a “normal” person.
So, nurturing can make a difference and create lots of options for people of all different levels of intelligence. However sometimes, societies/groups might go to extremes and end up having people with too much expectation because they have gotten excessive attention by too much nurturing.

Understanding how American Culture Looks to Outsiders

Hugh Laurie's song for America - A bit of Fry and Laurie - BBC sketch comedy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyHSjv9gxlE

I didn’t find this clip funny especially the ending part. I think even though Americans are very patriotic and very proud of their country but still there is much less racism in America than Europe.
Some other cultures and countries might have a not very positive look at American politics, but America’s music, literature, style of life, Movies, and technology has had very positive influence in other cultures over the years. American music especially has been very popular across the world. “American contemporary music can be heard all over the world, such as through Channel V, VH1 and by artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley” [1] America in its literary history has had “eleven U.S. citizens that have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.”[2]
I believe all cultures make fun of each other because of misunderstanding and prejudice. I think that is the human subconscious that everybody wants to be the best but unfortunately a lot of time to achieve that wrong concept, the shallowest and easiest way is making a bad view of others by humiliating them through jokes.

**1 & 2 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_culture#Music