Globalization, Prejudice, and Gender Norms.

I had to write three essays out of an option of five for my sociology final. Here they are if anyone wants to read them.
They're all pretty controversial topics. If anyone wants to add anything I'd be happy to listen.

Globalization.

~Everyone’s a victim in a world gone mad~ This seems to the slogan of the process of globalization, a key belief which catalyses a perpetual change that’s driven by an eternally dissident people.
Globalization is a term used by most sociologists to encompass the uncertainty created by an intangible amount of information and influence projected across the globe at every second of the day. The pace of the flow is new, and in fact the term itself is merely an expression of velocity and scope that has been associated with an ancient process of knowledge disseminating across spatial, cultural, and cognitive boundaries.
People argue that globalization was spawned from the west, and that it’s the first evolution of a cultural force which is both wide spread and has the capability of imposing radical social consequence on the neighboring ways of life. If you consider this the standard definition, then the mastery of fire, tools, and the ultimate development of agriculture would be the first effects of globalization. India would be a culprit of globalization by spreading the modern number system, which changed the human range of reason forever, and the middle-east would be held accountable for the alphabetic system used in most the world today. The case against such a historic beginnings to globalization is not the factor of size regarding the change, because turning from a hunter and gatherer society to an agricultural society is probably going to have just as substantial an impact as the new internet café down the block will posses, but it focuses on the “thousand pinprick’s” of information that influences revolutionary change on any given day. In the new world order, a person’s main venture is not to seek knowledge, but to find a filter fitting for that person’s individual character, and the discrimination of knowledge that was once most largely regulated by tradition, is now more widely a job for personal undertaking. Although the traffic of change is obviously different from how it used to be ten thousand, a hundred, or even twenty year’s ago, the same generational affect is what regulates the process, and tries to reconcile the new with the old. This struggle, which is generalized by age groups, although by no means restricted to it, is also one of the key issues of the globalizing world, because the new has developed a momentum that the old can’t seem to impede, or hardly even touch, and as the old is for the first time acquiring the bitter taste of loss, it is increasingly becoming pissed. Wherever, or whenever, globalization may be consider to have first formed, the West is clearly the current center of the modern struggle between this new and old that emblemizes the process, but as the West’s new is much more drastically new to the peripheral countries, the struggle is felt with a greater certainty, and is either taken advantage of by ready entrepreneurs, or is fought against ferociously by those who find themselves drowning in their own losing struggle
The United States could be considered a small model for the direction of which the world is possibly moving. If you wonder around any large city in the United States then you get a sense for why this would be. If you were to look, you would see a Little Italy, a China town, an African American ghetto, a Hispanic, Jewish, and Indian parts of town, as well as different projections of White-land America. White America is then scattered with individuals of each race who have weakened the ties to their ethnicity and merged with the identity of the majority. The different cultures of a city remain divided for their separate traditions, but are united by enduring the same barrage of information flow and pop culture excess as everyone else. The shared experience creates a unity across the globe, but the unity comes from being thrown under the same unfathomable force, for better or worse, that might as well of been the sky to the people of this world a millennium ago.
The main issue that has arisen in America, and around the world, is that sometimes the deep-seeded values imbedded in a culture causes for an unsteady transition into the capitalistic material world that is arising. A good example of this is the contrast between Islamic society, who’s strict religious values are agitated by the equalizing liberty evoked under the simple unprejudiced philosophy that anyone who can grab the cash has a right to it, and the power it provides, and the adaptive Asiatic Confucius tradition which states that people should work hard, and that the one who can do the job best is the one who deserves it. On the other hand the Asian people under the Confucius tradition of fulfilling ones role, just as the Anglo-Saxon people with their Christian tradition of female submission, have been unified in their difficulty for wrapping themselves around gender equality, but much like our feminist movement in the 70’s, Asia is slowly reaching in the same direction. This correlation between Confucius tradition and post-industrial thought could be considered the main reason that Japan was able to pull off one of the largest economic recoveries the world has ever seen, and why the Asian Tigers have been deemed the most probable new contestants to participate in the global economy’s power structure. Other countries, though, have not had the benefit of such a persistently relevant philosopher’s words to go by, and in some large countries, like India and China, there exists a more realistic model for the world of Globalization today, in which parts of the country have flourished while others have been left to decay in the obsolete world of yesterday.
One of the largest affects of globalization has been self empowerment. A good way to understand this manifestation would be in the comparison of pre-globalization societies and the old Christian tactic of keeping the bible in a dead language. If a person can not read the bible then they are automatically at the mercy of anyone who can. Respect then goes to the holy man not for his character, but for the power he wields. If a person ever learns to read the bible then the mystic power of reading ancient texts of god becomes less mystic, and the holy man becomes more susceptible to judgment. Not only that, but people may then find contradictions in the bible, and the religious institution, and may wish to seek their own source of spiritual identity, or lack-there-of. Just as those who were able to question the organized religion during the renaissance, the information produced awareness has given people of developing countries, or underdeveloped parts of countries the sense of relative deprivation need to protest their conditions. Ironically enough, many of these protesting people are gathering against globalization, the original source of their empowerment.
The affects of globalization on culture, technology, and economy are moving at such a rate that no one is able to keep up with them. The turbulence created by this spreading force has unearthed consequences ranging from developing values of equality, to permissible forms of indirect slavery, to a small boy in the US, China, Bolivia, or India being able to ask the internet any question his curiosity would inquire, and get an answer that, by the luck of the draw, might just be correct. It’s impossible to tell if globalization will take the human race beyond the stars, or merely quicken one of the many classic or newly developing ways the human race can obliterate itself, but it certainly is the most interesting things to happen on this planet for years.

Prejudice in America.

The human mind, and all thinking creatures for that matter, function through the rapid storage and retrieval of information. When information is incomplete, in any situation, the mind will fill the uncertainties with generalized presumptions based off of previously acquired information. This is the main essence of thought, and the basis of prejudice.
In the eyes of society prejudice is considered evil, but the word evil is a copout, because it permits no further explanation. Prejudice is a product of the mind. It is a structure of thought based off of incomplete, usually false, and always generalized information that is often hardened by its integration into the ego and secured by social forces and the belief system that gets built on top of it. The emotion most commonly associated with prejudice is hated, but the second is pride. You can get over hatred and be relatively unscathed, but you loose pride and you’re destroyed. There are two main types of pride: pride of accomplishment, and congenital pride. The first refers to the feeling of self worth you obtain after achieving a goal, the second one is where you define your personal value by the sex, race, or country you were born into. It is the congenital pride that plays a large role in prejudice, because the basis for such is inherent inequality. If you find your self worth in being white, then being white must be better then being anything else, and so all else is inferior. This ignorance driven sense of self empowerment is highly addictive, and even a necessary part of forming an identity, but the amount it affects your belief system, and the amount you let it regulate information flow determines how closed or open minded you will be. Congenital pride is most often found to prevail in the lower classes of society, because due to menial unfulfilling jobs with long hours, they lack the time or education to pursue the self gratification involved in pride of accomplishment. Interestingly enough, a state would not be able to exist without this same congenital pride, because it is the basis for patriotism.
Most people will say that the concept of race was formed by Europe during the imperial explorations of the renaissance, but that seems to have large logical and historical flaws. India’s cast system was begun over a millennium ago after the Aryan’s invaded from the northern hills, and the system had, even from the beginning, clear racial regulatory standards imbedded in the hierarchy. Also, during the late 1200’s, northern China was conquered by the Mongols and the capital was moved to southern China. After a while, the Mongol government collapsed and northern China was reintegrated into the state, but since the occupants of northern China were forced to mate with the “inferior” Mongols, the people of northern China were considered “un-pure” Chinese people and were barred from many roles in the government. Not only is this an obvious example of racial discrimination, but it’s a clear tactic of using institutionalized segregation in keeping the status quo. Europe might have spread racism in the image of its own conventions, but the idea that Europe somehow invented the concept of race is preposterous, and even more so that it’s perpetuated in a college level academic setting. Just as science was once corrupted to conform to the terribly moronic accusations that every single person in one race could possibly be presumed better then every single person in another race, we are seeing another corruption to the sciences as a result of “white man guilt,” and the clearly acceptable prejudice of “those in charge.” A recent renovation of this discriminatory backlash is the Orwellian pleasant thought control policy of PC.
Politically Correct is the official term for the candy coating that media and the modern social movements have put on all forms of prejudice. It’s not a genuine force of popular thought, but a fabricated wave of public dissention. It has, on the other hand, created an unwritten strict regulation on public discrimination, mostly for the majority, but has only been accomplished by a stranglehold method and has moved passed keeping check of prejudice into producing a counterproductive awkwardness due to fear induced self-consciousness. This transgression of PC into the zone of “too much of a good thing” is becoming apparent with the recent debuts of “edgier” shows which satire usually avoided stereotypes, like Minoriteam, and shows that pick fun at aspects of a culture that’s obviously detrimental to its own people, like The Boondocks.
Occasionally you have to wonder how much people are responsible for the generalizations that they hold. This is referring mostly to blacks and gays who have recently found a ready and comfortable home in popular media. Black people are poor with money, vulgar, and obviously temperamental sexist drug dealers. Gay people are materialistic, vain, whorish, empty-headed drama queens who like to dress people up and redecorate their apartments. In a way people are right to blame the media, but in a large way they aren’t. Mainstream has always had a fascination with different cultures, so media gives the people what they want; a summed-up romanticized image as something exotic to chew on. The downward spiral of the situation comes from the fact that the people of the different minority groups begin to identify with the dumbed down pop culture representation if their people, and end up eventually giving validity to everyone’s generalizations. Those who don’t conform to the projections of their minority group then have the tiresome, repetitive task of trying to educate people by breaking through everybody’s preconceptions, so they can eventually stand on equal footing and jump out of the shallow role of being a novelty.
You also have to consider the people who the media chooses to display as the leading representatives of a minority, and who effectively do become the leading representatives. I’m not one to believe that if anyone makes it into the “big-league” should be held responsible for any group their supposed to personify, but the affect they have on filling peoples preconceptions is undeniable. For instance, the one white person who has successfully broken into the rap industry has a six minute song about killing his wife. What does this say about black people, rap music, and their culture? Should I be held accountable for the obvious deductions this simple fact would lead me to? Perhaps this is at least a small factor contributing to the subconscious nature of enduring institutionalized racism that is inhibiting blacks in modern America society. While the PC face-value of most people has become a whitewashed mind of purity, the uncontrollable discomfort still associated with being continuously exposed to the image of a violent, debaucherous culture will always prevail to create the undercurrent wave of prejudice associated with institutionalized discrimination.
The key solution to this is that gays, and particularly blacks, should either abandon or change their culture. “White people are to blame,” withstanding, it is any of the particular minority group’s responsibility to recognize when their own culture is inhibiting each new generation low with expectations and damaging cultural traditions. You can toss a million different educating tolerance campaigns at the majority, but there’s only so much function of thought you can change in the brain. I wonder how long it will take for people to realize the blame/guilt-trip tactical game plan is never going to go anywhere, and actually formulate a logically valuable plan to once an for all ease this country of some of it’s prejudice. My bet is that it’s never going to happen.

Gender norms.

Anisogomy- This is the term used to describe the fertilization technique of different sized gametes: Sperm and egg. Through the difference in energy investment attributed to the two sexes, such as being pregnant and nursing for the mother, and the ability of the male to copulate with other females during this time, natural selection was born. From natural selection came evolution of both environmental adaptation, and the adaptation of both sexes into their roles of caregivers and competing providers. This is a very popular argument in the consideration of biological differences playing a main instrument in creating gender roles. In most animals, though, a simple regular injection of testosterone will make that typical female start displaying all the natural characteristics of a typical male. In some species of fish, even the sex organs will switch from female to male, or occasionally back. So if the only difference between mentally being a male and mentally being a female in animals is hormones then what does that say for people? Another interesting example lies in African spotted hyenas. In this polyandry society the females are aggressive and the males are submissive. Since the males raise the pups, the females have to compete for breeding, and they will display typical male behavior even though their testosterone level is much lower then the males. This hints at the possibility that, although hormones do regulate aggression, they may be secondary to the impact of the overall social structure.
It seems in modern times that the United States is becoming more flexibly androgynous in it’s gender roles. Men try to look pretty and women try to become bosses of men. The home with both working parents has become a norm over the stay-at-home mom and the breadwinner dad combo of the classical fifties domestic ideal. Women are going to college, and intelligence in women is becoming a more desirable mate selection trait, but even with all this, it’s difficult not to notice personality variances between the sexes.
There are human tribal examples where the traditional roles of female and male are switched, but the consistency of the status quo against thousands of non-deviant societies has to give some persistence in the biological argument of gender roles. Plus there’s the conundrum of why these roles exist in the first place. In nature, they exist as a functional tool of competition that is inherent in creatures which use Anisogomy. The females lack aggression because it causes energy expenditure without gainful biological consequences, and it affords an unnecessary risk for injury. The hyena species I listed above is an example of the possible malleability that sexes possesses to fulfill either gender role, but it’s difficult to know over how many generations this mirror society developed, and whether the biological makeup of each sex had adapted to fit, and reinforce, the changing social hierarchy of the society. In reference to people this turns reasoning over to an age-old philosophical question of whether human’s have superseded evolution through the construction of society, or will women with genetically higher levels of aggressiveness also begin to prevail during the breakdown of gender norms, in our success driven society.
The two females I know best are my mother and sister. Picking through my conception of both of them, it is hard to determine whether I have associated to their qualities as women-typical for the fact that they are both women, or for the reason that I have recognized underlining commonalities for the female sex. As my mother has always worked throughout my life, as her mother, and my sister far outweighs any of her brothers in terms of financial success, it doesn’t seem like societies general conformities should apply to either of them.
Perhaps the mere fact that women are attracted to men, while men have an attraction to women, although usually taken for granted, gives a subconscious, or even genuine separation to the two genders. Evidence of this is supported by the fact that although a gay man may be the epitome of his culture’s masculine archetype, his attraction to a man is an obvious feminine quality. This, for whatever reason, seems to be less true for feminine women attracted to another woman. Then, you have to consider whether attraction to a particular sex actually has any inherent implications in surfacing distinct gender qualities for any given person. Although this may seem ridiculous, it is one of the few trains of reason that actually does lead to obvious biological differences in the forms of interaction. So the question becomes, how much does the role of sexual interaction, and probably more important, the magnitude of persistent sexual fantasy, influence someone’s overall character?
The scope of study for gender norms is impossibly large, but maybe the question’s become larger then it would ever need to be for political context. If the inquiry is of whether a women can effectively hold an upper-level administrator job, then you only need an example of one, such as the un-rivaled “Golden age” of prosperity brought about by England’s Queen Elizabeth The Great, to show the possible range of leadership ability a women is capable of possessing. Whatever the catches the women equality cause is slowing down upon, it is, and will, undoubtedly keep moving forward.