Conventional Psychology and Sociology

Conventional sociology and sociology have one major weakness from the start.  Let’s start with Freud and his subject-matter at the start.  He counseled phthisic women and generalized it to laborers.  Mind you, he did dilute his thoughts about the dreams and rigidly suppressed needs with deliberations about himself.

There is a slight weakness here.

Modernly our pundits begin with surveys and data from the correct places. The incorrect places (and thus the incorrect drives and needs) simply don’t exist.

This isn’t something that should be surprising.  Most of the foundations of the modern school of thought (so-called) are quite clearly based in reasoning that preceded the modern sequence of centuries–it’s “B.C.‟, that is.  At the moment you go from realizing you’re naming something to knowing somehow that the name must indicate something inherent in what is named…you’re proceeding down the path to damnation.  The moment that “black‟ means “evil‟–the moment that a word holds a whole judgment and inescapable action–one has become truly a social being, truly incapable of making an independent moral judgment and deriving your existence from belonging to “what isn’t black‟.  Or, maybe, to even a more strictly defined group.

This rather intelligent-seeming article has one major problem.  A great many of the so-called millenials haven’t even managed to acquire steady jobs, because they don’t exist, don’t collect unemployment (therefore they don’t exist), can’t collect welfare, don’t pay income taxes…and (when they allow themselves to think about it even momentarily) are becoming steadily more desperate.

How in the world could I know?  I, though I worked, spent a lot of my life studying these non-existent people, how they worked and didn’t, and what their aspirations ended up being.  Unfortunately, I eventually made too much money and was too obviously not a part of the crowd.

When you live in a rural part of the country where you might as well not exist (and no, the census doesn’t catch everyone because some people are born under the radar and stay there, or others just gradually fade from its cognizance) oddly enough spare work doesn’t tend to exist.  Gold panners are one sector of society that makes money and may or may not do so ‘legally’.  Note that this also amounts to saying that unless you exist legally (and pay taxes) you don’t have the right to live.  Our modern sociology, psychology and for that matter–religion and patriotism–are tied very tightly to that assumption.  If you don’t produce, you don’t really have the right to live.

Think I’m criticizing you?  Think not, I am part of that society.  I narrowly have right to live.  I’m disabled.  As one of the disgruntled wealthy pointed out fairly recently, that puts me “on the dole‟.  It’s veteran’s disability, which is hard to get, and that jibe was footnoted where veterans would see it; I wonder what sort of responses he might have had.

behaviorism, a simplistic view

 

Behaviorism

 

Behaviorism says that if there are consistent results to actions, then there will be consistent, predictable behavioral results (mostly based on the classification of the results, it would seem). If the results are inconsistent, you’re liable to have inconsistent actions with regard to whatever, particularly if the payoff is really big. (That means that even though they’re liable to lose at whatever, people keep doing things—because they find that reward so delightfully irresistible. The existence of this tendency gives real strength to the argument that at least for some people, for pleasure to be complete, there must be something usually considered negative.

 

Bear in mind it definitely can be argued that a lot of this involves words rather than real things. I’ve known a couple of the people who need pain and such. I don’t think they totally understood it either, but one thing definitely involved that I never saw brought up by one of those studies was that there was a sense of humor involved.

 

One thing society definitely is, is consistent actions. That is one component of stability.

 

Tidbit.

 

–Glenn

On Judgment

I could nearly even try to stay with the subject today.  However, there are a couple of other things I’m going to babble about that are fairly important (like not going to warez, and don’t think everything or maybe anything I write about is third hand, told to me) today, like some fairly obvious moves by the government.  It’s been 30+ years since I was even associated with it, so I feel a trifle more secure.

 

However, this post is about the line between humor and pathos and the ability to judge between.  I am absolutely not advising anyone to contact the purported victim in the last link; it could all too easily be a new variation on the infamous 419 scam, which is detailed in the article linked (basically, someone has a lot of money and they’re offering to give you some if you let them have access to your bank account).  [As for phishing, it’s easy.  If it’s too good to be true, it is.  What you miss will be far outweighed by what you gain.]

 

About a quarter of this country’s [the USA] population is admitted to be poor by the government.  Oddly enough, a fraction of them were once in the $100,000 a year plus bracket; football heroes (or whatever), and so forth, although most are functional illiterates.  Yet still in the political rhetoric of this country there is a continual referencing to the individual’s worth in terms of wealth–in terms of property, tangible or not.  Without the poor there is no wealth, and some I think need wealth as much as others need power.  Each separation we make that allows us to disassociate–to tell ourselves that we could never be there or do that thing–is a lie.

 

Most of the homeless are psychotics who can’t stand to live in places where their living is managed.  They’re happier fending for themselves.  Most of those who live in cities would have no idea of how to live without the city’s infrastructure.  Intelligence is unproven as a virtue.  As we have defined it, it amounts to puzzle-solving on a 2-dimensional framework, by means of a mandated referencing system.  Use language incorrectly and your message is incorrect.  That means that changes to language are actively resisted as threats, and that means that governing entities can never accept change well.

 

But that’s mere and empty rhetoric.

–Glenn

toward a definition of social networking

The current usage of this phrase is very much mis-usage. I’m using this blog as “Notes Toward” and it may merely continue as such, with Davies and the WordPress.com then being the significant ones, one of course hidden.

Society is a social network.

A social network is an organized form of communication, generally employing both protocols and hierarchy. The usage of technological artifacts in order to figuratively speed or ease communications is at best nonsensical. The actual medium employed is language, which has set rates of broadcast and reception. An electronic medium used to overcome physical separation (which should generally be the only possible justification for its usage) necessarily eliminates some of the information present in a personal/physical meeting. So…when you as the head of the corporation find yourself absolutely unable to live with the latest technological piece of refined, polished and attractive assistance…first ask yourself what isn’t being done by people with what they already have? Bear in mind that the newest software, like the newest hardware, is the most likely to fail, because it’s the least tested.

–Glenn