Distinction

How is it that we are able to tell the difference between things, and how are there such stark differences in what people recognize?  This is one of the topics that we were talking about today in the undergrad class that I work with and I thought some of it was pretty interesting.  Back in like the 80's this French dude, Pierre Bourdieu, did some research on culture and how people think about it, and what makes people like different things (think: micro-brew beer vs. bud light).

He would ask things like 'what is a photo beautiful' with answer choices like: sunset, bark of a tree, and a woman  breastfeeding (i know, that one seems totally random).  Turns out that there are strong social class differences in people's answers.  Lower class people like sunset photos (easily appealing, colorful, easy to 'understand'), middle class people like the woman breast feeding (ahhh, not sure here - value family?), and rich people like picture of tree bark (drawn to abstract stuff, appreciate subtle art themes more).  Now, these were strong differences and not just like some upper class people here and what not.  Weird.

The idea is that we all live in certain social circles that then impact what we understand, recognize, like, appreciate and so on.  Why are something things familiar to us while other things we don't 'get?'  Only certain people recognize different wines, let alone even like it (or can afford it even more).  But it can be more than just physical things like art and food/drinks.  Religion is like this (type of music one likes in church, theologically liberal or conservative, and so on), and pop culture (movies, music, who dates who), politics...

Here is the part from class that I thought was interesting (if you stuck with me this long).  Two things.  First, Baylor has more upper class students and some will recognize this and others think what they see here is pretty common.  This thinking that upper-middle class-ness is normal or not actually as upper class as it is is conditioned by community and context in just the same way.  No, it is not normal for everyone to be wearing Sperry Topsiders with their niki running shorts - but you see it enough you will start to think that this is not related to money.  No, normally there are not this many Mercedes on a college campus.  They have a lot of money, but it is relativized so that they don't think of it as a lot, but as 'normal.'

The second thing is volunteering.  Baylor really pushes this.  It is even to the point that some of their scholarships require students to do things in the community here a few times per week.  It would be interesting to see what difference (if any) this makes for constructing a certain view of volunteering as something that 'normal' people do.  I hope it does make that difference.  On the flip side, it reinforces distinctions here.  The students 'go out' into the community to help them.  The school is separated as different and reinforced as such.  They are not a part of the community, but they are the big brother that steps in to beat off the bullies when the brother is able to show up when needed.  the 'we' goes to help the 'them.'  Not making 'our' community better, but helping 'their' community.  Makes me think, how do we understand volunteering?  How should we?

strain!

So today I have a presentation on general strain theories of crime.  Just for 'fun' I thought I would share the causal model that I drew up for it for all of you closet sociologists and criminologists.  I know you are out there... somewhere. Not sure if it is 'clickable' or not, but if it is you want to see it a bit larger. Cheers.

An attempt at shorter blogs - I think I failed

Some randomness about life lately
-I'm currently watching Raising Hope, a new show that comes on after Glee that surprisingly my Mom told me to watch, but is really quite appalling to watch as a Pediatrician (but does make me laugh)

- Good week - margaritas 2 nights in a row ;) (last night we had a 2nd year residency dinner at a Mexican place as we all had the night off in preparation for a "resident as teachers" session today, and then as part of the session we all had dinner at one of the attendings house tonight...and don't worry, margaritas weren't what made it a good week, more just time off hanging out with friends.

-Went to San Francisco 2 weekends ago for the American Academy of Pediatrics conference. Interesting experience, very enlightening about politics of such a big organization, great to see the neat things people are doing in peds all around the country and enjoyed seeing San Franscisco with one of my medical school friends (quite a bit different experience than the last time I was there on a mission trip during high school).

-Went to a little bit of the Gold Humanism Honor Society conference here in Dallas next weekend. Awesome conference and very inspiring as the overall idea of the Society is to create compassionate caring doctors who put patients first and encourage humanities/creative arts within medicine. So many people doing amazing things in medical school and residency education!

-Loving the weather here in Dallas. The kind of weather I wish all summer was like, although I miss leaves changing color. Evenings and mornings are still a little crisp though, so still feels a little fallish despite temps in the 80's most days

Enough randomness for now.

ehhh

I like an interesting mix of clothes.  I am a huge fan of the worn-out T-shirt, cargo or just cut-off shorts, and chacos/sanuks/keen/flip flops.  It is always a good time for these.

then, on the other hand,  i am also a big fan of bow-ties, suits, 3-piece suits (yep, they get their own category), and of course vests.  this last one can be a bit unfortunate, especially in light of the TV show, Glee.  especially after the zinger this week: "You wear more vests than the cast of Blossom." 

I taught the undergrad class solo this past week and wore the vest.  thought i should look a little more professional, as that is the style there (maybe requirement, too - not sure).  I think I may have associated myself with Will on Glee now and got some somewhat muted smiles from some in the class.

ehhhh.

starbucks excess

I went to the rich people's Starbucks to study today.

i felt a bit out of place there because i was not wearing an entire paycheck (one of their paychecks, that is) on me in the form of clothing or 'handbags.'  nope, torn cargo shorts and smelly sanuks for me!

as i was sitting by the window, this lady pulled up in her p-diddyed (yep, that's a verb - look it up) escalade.  beyond the fact that she looked hilarious working so hard showcasing her money, it was hilarious because she sucked really badly at driving.  as she parked her blimp, blocking and nearly hitting a b'mer on the way in, i was hoping it was due to talking on her rhinestone-studded iphone like the lady next to me had.  nope.  she just sucked at driving.

i said to myself, "dang, self, rich people really suck at driving."  i kind of laughed again as barbie pranced back to the yugo with a happy cup of starbucks in hand.

man, i really am a terrible person for feeling so much better than poor barbie.  i parked my car badly one time, too.

Salted-caramel, Solid chocolate

From Photostream

On Friday night we went over to a friend's place to celebrate her birthday and so Sara and I made the cake above. It was awesome. It is a salter-caramel chocolate cake. It even has some kind of special salt - I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of salt out there!  We had a good time making it, although I think if we were to make it again/when we make it we will need to invest in a candy thermometer for the caramel to make knowing the temperature a bit easier.  We found something online that said you could put it into ice water and then feel the consistency of it, but let's face it - it is a bad thing to allow people like Sara and I to cook something rather specific like that through a guesswork method.  Still, it turned out.

Then to follow up on a food weekend, yesterday we stopped at this little hamburger shack on the side of the road and I got an awesome burger.  It had avocados and even refried beans and a tostada shell on it (yep, we even make tex-mex hamburgers down here).  Like I told Sara, I knew it was going to be a good day when I started it off with a hamburger like that.  Then I lost my wallet in the trash can.

The Now and Not Yet

On a run this morning after I got off my night float shift, I thought
"I can't wait to go on a run and not have my head sweat" and then thought " I can't wait to go on a run in the middle of winter in shorts and a T-shirt"
I feel like Dallas is a place of I don't like one thing but then liking the opposite things that are only possible because of the first.

Or at work last night thinking "I can't wait until I don't have to FYI page the fellow at 2:30 in the morning about a medical decision I just made that I am completely confident in simply because if I don't wake him up the next morning he'll be upset because I didn't let him know about things going on even if he agreed with the decision I'd made", yet "I am in no way ready to be making my own decisions that no one checks up on being completely accountable for everything I do with no one above me"
Residency is a place of wishing we were at that next step but being scared to death to get there

Such is life. Especially this life Aaron and I seem to be living in blocks of 4 or 5 years at a time always lived in a new location with new friends, new livelihoods, new goals, successes and struggles; trying to enjoy where we are at yet always seeming to look toward the future knowing in x amount of time we will start over. Like living the Christian life in the now and not yet knowing that our life on earth is important as we also look toward life in heaven.

For now I will simply wait for the short term future when I can run without sweating and not walk to my car getting off my night shift at 7:30 am in 85 degree weather. And PS, I seem to think a lot of the blogs I post dwell on this same idea of wrestling with living in the place we are in right now.

despair and blissful ignorance

When I tell people that I am studying sociology and focusing on the sociology of religion, inevitably there are questions.  I usually need to explain to people that no, I am not going to be a pastor when I am done.  Other times, somehow the word 'religion' is like a mental block that doesn't allow people to think beyond 'theology,' which ironically is something that we very, very rarely consider.  Either way, the conversation usually doesn't stop there.

This makes for interesting bar/happy hour discussions.  (This isn't really a new thing for me at bars - ask Sara)  Not too long ago we were at the bar with the residents and someone asked me and so we got on the conversation of religion.  Seeing as how I like to talk about this stuff, and also seeing as how I have been on an existentialism kick for a bit now, we somehow arrived at Kierkegaard.  Ok, I arrive at Kierkegaard.  I was talking about his ideas of despair and defining commitments as a way out of the dark, and one of them, trying to take the blank look off his face - i need to figure out how to stop causing that - says, "well, ignorance is bliss."  To him, the best line of action is to do all that he can to avoid arriving at the inevitable realization that life apart from a Kierkegaardian defining commitment is submersed in despair.

In earlier generations this would probably seem like an odd conclusion juxtaposed the possibility of realizing one is stuck in despair, but for our generation this is old hat for some reason.  Why is this, I wonder, that we prefer to survive though life with a veneer of optimism instead of tearing off the veneer and looking into the face of actually living life?  In the past social research consistently showed that going to college could be detrimental to one's belief in the existence of God.  People would go to school and be exposed to lots of different view-points and ideas and realize that their own may not be the only one, nor the best one.  It can be tantalizing (or paralyzing?) to live in a box and then have the door opened and see a myriad of options.  It is like living in the corner store and then going to a super Walmart.

This is not really the case anymore.  The secularizing effect that college used to have on students is nearly absent today.  One of the reasons for why this is the case is that students today are literally no longer interested in questions of ultimate purpose and existence to the extent that it makes a difference personally.  This is interesting to me.  Why are we more content to live in despair than otherwise if given the option?  More than that, what does optimism really mean if we prefer ignorance?  What are we optimistic for in that case?

Do I prefer my box in disregard for world as it is?

Invisible.

Phenomenology is, I think, what got me interested in academics.  Phenomenology is the study of people and groups that focuses on their psychological states, cognitive dispositions, and how they see the world around them.  To put this in another way, it is a study of what world people see.  Bracketing the question of what Reality is (that is, with a 'big' R), this is essentially trying to figure out what reality people live in and what it looks like to them.  We all have differing views of what this is and as a result, genuinely different experiences of the big 'R' Reality.  We don't merely understand our experiences differently, we have different experiences; different realities are taken in.

Now, with that base laid out there (and I can guarantee both that it will likely not be the last time I write about that one and that this is actually going somewhere), I had an interesting conversation last night that got me to thinking a bit.  Baylor, like most places, has people who come in and clean the building after people leave for the night.  The lady who cleans our (the graduate students) office is a really nice lady who holds three different jobs to 'make it'.  I try to talk to her a bit whenever I see her in the hallway or when she comes into the office here to clean up.  There are a few other people in the room here that also talk with her, and last night when I got back from working out there was a note for her on the chalk board that they had left to get dinner and that she should come back later to talk.

She and I were talking about the note and she said that it was really nice of us to take the time to talk to her a bit and that it makes her feel appreciated and 'wanted'.  I told her that is how she should feel and so we got to talking a bit about how she feels working here at Baylor.  She was saying that most people here do not talk to her and most of the time pretend that she is not even there - even when in the same room as her.

Now, I am giving everyone that does not 'see' her the benefit of the doubt and am saying that they are not mean or purposely giving her the distinct impression that they are, as she put it, "better than her."  I am thinking that we genuinely live in different words from hers.  We live in a world that is distinctly removed from her life, her experiences, and more specifically, the work that she does.  So it comes down to invisibility.  She is, in a literal way, invisible.  Not seen.  Not noticed.  All three of her jobs are 'service' jobs, and I couldn't help but think that it is ironic that she is invisible to the very people that she serves.

This same idea applies to more than just people, but also to circumstances or situations in our society/world.  What do I not see that is and should not be?  This is and should be the challenge.  To both see and strive to make 'not be.'