Everyday Sociology

For today, I chose to explore an article titled “Understanding Violence Sociologically” (http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2014/10/understanding-violence-sociologically.html). This article went on to discuss how violence is perceived as a basic concept which features a definitive “right” and “wrong”. While it may appear this way, it is actually far from that. The author of the post explained how sometimes violence is seen as good and sometimes it is seen as wrong. The reasons for all of this, as he describes, is the contradictions, context, and construction of violence. The contradictions of violence are mainly that in some instances a violent act may be construed as excessive, while in another scenario it may be considered perfectly acceptable. The context of violence describes how its not just the violent act that is important, but also the context (motivation for attack, who did what, etc.). The last point was the construction of the violence. As the author pointed out, humans are affected by a social construction explains our violence as “natural” and “genetic”, and that if we truly believe that we are naturally violent, we’re falsely explain our violence away as such instead of linking it to the real causes of our violence.

Upon reading this article, I felt as if my perspective had changed quite significantly. I had never thought about violence in this way, and I feel that it is a good explanation of the complexity of violence in our society. Violence is a sort of confusing topic, as most people would say they know what is right or wrong in terms of violence, but if they were asked to explain it they really wouldn’t be able to. In his explanation, I think the author hit the nail on the head when using his “3 C’s of violence”. He effectively described how the complicated topic of violence is extremely dependent on what society deems is acceptable and what were the circumstances of the violent act.

I think this explanation of violence is very helpful, and it can be used to better society on a personal level. I think the most important facet was how societal constructs of violence can affect a person’s behavior, and as such I will focus on that.  In the world we live in, violence is portrayed often in media, from songs to movies, and is critiqued often. We often have people who claim that the violence is portrayed as the cool thing to do thanks to violent video games and bloody movies. One could quickly fall back on this social construct and use it to explain away all the violence in the world. I believe this is the fault of society, since I believe that blaming it all on the media is the easy way out. Like the author pointed out, looking at the social construct of violence can mislead people about the real causes of violence. I think this is important because we need to find the real reason for violence in our nation. If we think about the violence sociologically, we can start to find the real reasons and find actual solutions. For instance, someone may be quick to point out that a young kid is violent because he plays violent video games, yet they didn’t spend the time to delve deeper and find out that he is taking out his anger on others because of trouble at home. This is critical to sociologists because they need to look deeper than what appears to be the obvious answer. Both humans and violence are extremely complicated topics, and trying to link a cause and effect is often difficult when there are so many causes and so many effects which are often intertwined.

So in summary, it is up to sociologists, along with anyone else, to unearth the true causes of a phenomenon (not just violence) and not just look at the seemingly obvious answer, since it is often much more complicated than what we originally believe. This, if we can apply it to our daily lives, will help us to look for the true causes of events, which will help us to react in a better way.

Sociological Autobiography

Over our life, the things that we value are a perfect representation of who we are. We have a choice of what we hold as important, and we become known for what we choose to let represent us. For me, the three most important things that I value are my faith, my education, and my art.

The first value of my life that I will delve into is the most important to me personally: my religion. I am a devout Lutheran, and I let it show through my actions. Due to this, I don’t believe in the big bang, but rather in Creation. The reason I gave my life up to Jesus Christ was because my parents enrolled me into St Thomas Lutheran from preschool until 8th grade, and then Lutheran High North for all of high school. While this sounds more like a brainwashing since I was too young to make my own choice, my parents presented me with a chance to leave and go to a public school instead of going to a Lutheran high school. When I was given this choice, after some thought I decided that I’d like to continue my religious education and chose to go to Lutheran High North. Being an openly religious person has its perks and its downfalls though. Being an engineer who goes to a science college, my religious views are often shunned due to the fact that atheism and science often go hand in hand. This struggle has made my faith stronger, as I am a highly analytical person, so whenever I run into a hardship, I search until I find an answer to the question of my faith. This has resulted in me having a faith that I wholly believe in an any struggle only brings me closer to God.

The second value that has had a large impact on my life is my education. While most kids my age hated school and couldn’t wait to be done, I always loved school. My parents always pushed me to do good in school and made sure that I understood what I was taught. On top of this, I was raised in a household where we didn’t have cable television or internet for a long time because we lived in the country. This meant that instead of watching television, I would read books. With this craving for knowledge cemented in my personality, I started watching television channels like the History and Science channels instead of cartoons. This love of learning, I tended to be known as a nerd and geek, since society seems to have a negative view on people who love learning so much, like I did. This emphasis on education has had an extremely large impact on my life, as I am continually learning. For instance, while I was in grade school, I became interested in cars and wanted to fully understand how they worked. In order for me to understand this, I rented as many technical books about engines as I could, and spent my free time reading books and looking at cutaway drawing in order to see how all the parts come together to work. Along with books, I also worked on my go kart engine just to understand it. Even to this day, this love of learning continues, as whenever I run into something that I don’t understand, I decide to do research and learn more about the problem rather than shying away from it.

And lastly, theres my love of art. I feel that art is an important part of life, and it is often forgotten because people tend to focus on other things instead, such as sports and homework. On top of this, the general consensus of being an artist is that its a waste of time and that its a moneyless interest. While my parents did what all other parents did and let me play with crayons and colored pencils as a kid, it was my own doing that led to my love of art. I am a firm believer that being artistic is something that is learned, not something that you’re born with or without. That being said, my bored childhood of living in the country and having no friends nearby led to me spending my time doodling on paper and drawing. As I went through school, all of my free time or instances where I was bored in class saw me pulling out  apiece of paper and drawing. Once I hit that stage in my life where I became interested in cars, I also decided to see how well I could draw cars, and this eventually led to me designing my own cars in order to satisfy my creativity. By the time I got to high school, I was taking every art class I could, and I gained a reputation as being the best artist in the school. Up until my senior year, my intention was to go to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and major in Automotive Design. At this point, I finally caved to what society said about artists, and I decided to take a completely different route and to become an engineer since it meant I’d earn a substantial amount of money more than I would as a car designer. At first I had some second thoughts, but I found out that I could be both an engineer and and artist, since my artistic nature led to me excelling at any engineering work that requires hand drawings or technical drawings.