Shift Happens

Social change refers to any substantial changes over time in behavior patterns and cultural values and norms. It is the facts, sometimes unpleasant facts that we cannot stop.it is look like a baby that we love the most and that baby must grew and one day will move outside the house. Watching the video makes person sad in one side and happy in the other side. It makes you happy when you see how technology is growing in the world is going forward. Also it makes you sad because it one age does not support that grew. For instance I am happy because I am student and probably I will get better future, but when you see all what you learned will outdated even before I graduate.

Stopping or reducing the bad side of the story is in the hand of educational system. Educational system must prepare students for future. We might ask; how I should predict what kind of change will happen in future? The answer is let us looking into human’s dream. Human always think of all possible changes and we must integrate those possible changes into our school system to be studied.

A change in information processing and availability is the best happened in human’s life. I would like to tell one story to show how great those changes are. Last year we had a group project as a last assignment. The professor asked five students to write one research papers. I divided the project among us via email and each student was doing his/ her portion. One of student was communicating with me all the time at the end she told me that she is visiting her relatives and sending me her papers from Pakistan. This is a small example how great it is the changes happened in information processing. There might have some drawbacks but the benefits are exceeding those drawbacks.

There are many ideas that we have studied throughout the class that can help to better understand the fact in that video. For example; globalization, changing culture, and mobilization are the best to describe the facts in that video. Globalization made information flow easier among nations and ideas can be exchanged faster among people.  Globalization made people adopt new culture and learn new life patterns.

Life in city vs. rural area

Living in small city in Iraq and moving to Virginia in United States is similar to moving from rural city in American to Virginia. The differences between the two put me in cultural shock for almost six months. Talking about differences does not mean only in size but in every aspects of the life. The most important differences I would like to discuss in the paper is; in term of social, health, and economic.

I bought my in Virginia in April 2008, and I live there since then, but until this moment I do not know even the name of the person who lives next door. One week ago there are couples living in the house on the right hand sight of my house, passed by my house while I was working in the front yard and they told me “HI”. That was the first time someone greeting me at that neighborhood. Compared with where I lived, I knew every single family and their kids not only in our block but also three blocks away from my house in each direction. If someone in the neighborhood was getting sick, other people went and visit him and they share happy and sad moments together.

Since 2005 when first time I come to American until this moment, I have been hospitalized 6 times, and I must visit family doctor every six month. I left Iraq and I am 35 years old, I never went to hospital, I never been ill. Many times I argue with my friends about this particular subject. Simply in the United State food and drink is processed nothing is natural, while in Iraq I remember the guy we used to by vegetables from him, he own that farm and he was selling everything from his farm, they were natural. Another point about health was, we never had transportation, and we used to walk that was a good sport. In the US we do not walk, use our car to go even for short distances.

The last point I would like to talk about is economic. Many times my friends asking me if I missed my old life, honestly I say: NO. Economic was very bad in small cities, we was living excluding every kind of entertainments from our life to survive. People in small city, keep one job and stick with it until they retire because finding another job is really hard. There is more prosperity in big city and it is easy to find a new job.

There are many differences between life in rural area and big cities. It is hard to say which one is better, because each has it is own flavor. However, we can compare the two in term of social, health, and economically.

Who wields the power in our democracy?

       This is very tricky question, First in the assignment consist of two different words: weilds and wields. I am not sure which one is the target! I assume wield is the correct word. In democracy system one person cannot wield power because it will turn the democracy into dictatorship just like Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That guy used to say “whatever I write on piece of paper, it is low.” However, as Max Webber mentioned millions of people cannot meet to make a political decisions, there must be certain people whom are experts and been elected by people to make those decisions, those people together wield power. Even those people they cannot make arbitrary decision because there is a balance of power and low to stop them.     

        The elected group of people make up political parties and they make what they believe is right, count. In the United States there are two groups or political powers they run the show. Any decision has to pass congress which consist of 100 members and parliament which has 435 members. This how the democracy system works, they do not allow person has a super power.   

       Many of us remember that the President Bill Clinton represented in the court because he was accused scandal. Even though he was a President of the country, he did not have that power to do what he wants. So, since everyone has to follow the low, no one actually wields the power.   

          I strongly believe that Pluralist theory is the most effective for few reasons. First, citizens cannot have direct influence on any political decision. Politic is very complicated matter, it is require a lot of expertise, people common people must not allow to influence any political decisions. Another great point is, no one wields power in the country because presence of interest group limits the centralization of power in the hand of government official.

Classmates, Professor: I would like to invite you to see a short clip degree to show you to what degree people do not understand politic in this country:

                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVz4VweMqFE

Wal-Mart

       Every currency has two faces. I have read many article about this particular subject, I came up with this conclusion; we must accept the side effect of every new evolution. This is multidimensional aspect; it is not about local TV manufacturing plant in Ohio and South China boomtown of Shenzhen or Chastity Ferguson and Kelly Gray in Las Vegas, it is about in what part Wal-Mart might be good or bad to our society. Let us examine some evidence together;

     Wal-Mart brings low quality products from China and dumps it into the market in cheap price that attract attention of the consumers. In return local businesses and companies in the United States shut down because they were not able to sell their products. Another point is unethical work environment of Wal-Mart providers in China and in the U.S. had brought a lot of attention. In your text book there is a story of a woman named Li who gets paid $65 a month to work for 55 hours a week. Also I would like to invite you to watch this movie to see unethical work environment here in the U.S. Please click the link below;

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_k1VHJLI0w&feature=related

          I strongly believe there another side of Wal-Mart too. 3,600 stores cross the country with millions of employee. I don’t believe those employees are from China or from another country. Wal-Mart serves 100 millions customers every day, it collects billions of dollars from tax payers which goes back to pay the salary of other citizens. For the purpose of this class I went to local Wal-Mart to examine one thing, how many of product they show is from the U.S. Not all the products they have are from China, there are other products are local and help those local manufactures to sell their products.

Let us go back to the initial question; is Wal-Mart good for American society?

     To answer that question we must look in to the case from varies angels and see all its detentions. I think the good sides of Wal-Mart exceed the bad part of it and for many reasons. First, Wal-Mart might kill some local jobs, but also provides more. Second, Wal-Mart pays higher rate of salary than other jobs do. Third, Wal-Mart makes life continue more smoothly because it helps people to save money. That’s my humble opinion and I am not saying I am correct.

There is a very good debate on Wal-Mart I would like to share it with my classmate, please click on the link below;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4clILPy2So&feature=relmfu  

Second Shift

Second shift is generally referred to the tasks that supposedly designated or belong to women after work hours.  Well, this topic is very controversy if we talk about the United State.  According what I see on the ground, today there is no job designated only for either one  and the check list that comes with this assignment both man and woman share responsibility to make the family run smoothly. However, there are some certain jobs that require muscle power such as cutting grass, man is expected to take care of those kind of chores while woman take care of some chores that require smooth touch such as finding a Christmas cards.

In the past, however, our society was male dominated society and woman use to work side by side with man after long work-hours, there were more chores was waiting for him at home. That era is over, for now in many cases man takes care of many chores at home like doing laundry and packing lunch back for kids even doing babysitting.  Matter of fact if I talk about myself, I cook more than my fiancé cooks, and I clean the house more than she cleans the house, above all, I work and she not. In many cases, I have friends whom are retired and the wife work, they do everything in the house and the wife makes money for the family. The notion second shift is not the way has been described and there is little of exaggeration.

In the Middle East and other man dominated countries that notion is more pervasive. Women usually have all hard chores and man take the one is less boring. I remember when I grew up my mother was contributing in family earning also she was taking care of most of the home chores; cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, washing cloth, and many other things. This practice is still going on in many mail dominated countries and the main reason behind that is lack of proper education and custom and tradition.

Brief History of Religion

To better understanding religion and belief system, history is a great resource. With my humble general knowledge and satisfactory English language, I write this brief about history of religion. I hope you like it. Also, the link below provides a lot of knowledge about the same subject.

Many years ago, before the era of hunting and gathering, human were thought to make since about the unpredictable thing that occurred around them. Some were believed the fire might be that power because it eats and burns everything around itself, some thought women who gives the birth and bring a new person and new life, and some thought it might be some kind of animals because they live for long time and they are powerful every group and according it is surrounding environment chose one to worshiped and made it God. Human approached those figures to ask for blessing and victory, but there were no low-kind roles that had been generated by those Gods.

 After the era of hunting and gathering, human were engaged in many conflicts over food and water sources. Human needed role and regulation to organize them, Hammurabi in the Babylonian empire was the first who devised the first set of written lows to be followed. Many followed Hammurabi’s steps and generated lows for their society to follow, although some of those low creators claimed deity but they were dying or overthrew by power of other human beings. Years after humanity found itself with many Gods and shapes that control their life. One God for travels other for wars another for good harvest and many of others for anything else.     

Humanity needed a powerful, divine, and absolute God who cannot be defeated or died over the time. According to Karen Armstrong’s book “the History of God,” Judaism was the first monotheistic religion in the history.  The monotheistic never been replaced, but had went some modification years after through Christianity and Islam. The purpose of religion in all different stages of life was only reform and obedience.  However, with revelation humanity and progress of human thoughts, religion was not able to satisfy people’s need and people did not see themselves any more as subject of obedient.

In 18^th century, the age of Enlightenment in Europe reduced the burden of religion on people for the first time in the history.  During the French revolution the journalist Jean-Paul Marat used the word “democratic” in one of articles. Political parties appeared on the surface after that to (replace or work side by side) religion.

Unfortunately my knowledge is not adequate to say political parties to replace or to work side by side religion to serve human’s need. In many discussions seating with people with PHDs, I asked that question to get the correct answer, but everyone gave me his or her opinion with no evidence. So I don’t know if it was to replace the religion or to work with religion.    

Class mate, Professor: this link below will provide a lot of information about the history of God. It is one and half hour documentary and it is great thing for your own use.

 http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/a-history-of-god

Secular World

         Secularization is the movement that encourages the society to adopt ideas based on scientific-approved factors not based on spiritual factors.  According to the book, secularization is evaluated according to three dimensions; the membership of the church, the influence of the church on the state, and religiosity. All these are good dimensions to relay on to look into new secular world. However, I can add one more dimension to show that secularization is pervasive and religion is heading to diminishing.  A close look into religion today and compared with 18^th century’s religion there are many modification and facilitation. For instance in the Catholic faith man and woman were not allowed to sleep on one bed only for making child, it was considered to be sin. Now, the same faith has changed it is approach and allow, what considered to be sin, happen with church’s approval.  One might ask, why church has changed it is approach? The answer is simple, to keep people under the flag of religion!!!!

          Secularization is very obvious in industrialized countries. However, because the religion had penetrated deep into society in early ages, the effect of religion will remain for longer time. Look at our dollar bills; you will see the “in one God we trust”. This is small sentence does not mean that we have spiritual system in the country, but it is only remnants of history no more. Secularization is more obvious and advance very quickly more than another area.

         The movement of secularization is slower in Middle East and Islamic countries than we seen in the industrialized countries and the other part of the world. The reason behind that is because religion in Middle East plays the role of weapon, and it has been used by many religious groups to reach their goal. For instance, as we all might follow news there is a mass of change happening in the Middle East what they called “Arab Spring.” All revelations happening at this moment in Arab Spring, religion has the upper hand and it is the motive that pushes people to fight against their governments.     

Race and Ethncity

Racism, prejudice, discrimination…………… terrifying words, I don’t want to read those words, I don’t want see those words, because I don’t want to remember.

I would like to introduce myself; the only person survived from my family. All my family, with no exception, is gazed by brutal regime with intention to wipe out my ethnicity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewSX0gNlpow     

It might be hard for me to word my personal reflection, because simply I cannot compare Japanese American situation with my situation. As it is stated in “The Japanese American Legacy Project”, many people in the country as well as government official were against that decision, but unfortunately there were some people with a stat of power were able to effect the central power in the country and put 120,000 innocent people in detention with no charge against them.

I already mention that, all different kind of social problems exist inside every society and in all levels and classes. Government official can be deviant, poor, reach, gay, or anti-group. United States is big community and consist of all kind social classes, and our government is part of that community also has all different level and social class.  

  

Gender Inequality

I worked for a unit in the United States Marin Corps in 2004-2005 as linguist and culture advisor in Iraq, called “Recon Force” and our administrator was a female captain. She was very active and hard worker, but many personal in the unit looked at her presence in that unit as an unusual, and they gave her hard time. I had conversation with many of those personal to ask them the reason behind their behavior toward that captain, the response was “this unit is aggressive unit for special tasks and women has no place at this unit.”

Gender inequality refers to the deference between individuals due to their gender. Gender composes both socially through social interactions as well as biologically through hormonal differences. Gender inequality stems, mostly, from social role in the society.

 During hunting and gathering era, men went out for hunting and women stayed home to take care of anything else in the house. The men task was always associated with kind of risks because of the dangerous animals that might confront, but the women jobs were safer because they were away from dangerous risks. Another task was dedicated to men was protecting it is house if there were attack from outsiders by fighting outsiders. The women were upbringing kids more gently because they were attached to the kids more than men.

These physical-grounded tasks gave men upper hand in other aspects of the life, which made women think they are in the protection of the men and they obligated to follow men’s orders. There is two important points I would like to mention; first the physical capability of men is always admired by women even if it makes men have upper hand. If the men are more powerful physically, the women feel safer. Second, the desire for independency makes people to eliminate the need of others and women were always, in the past, felt that they need men’s presence and men took pride of that.

With evolutions of life, women start to involve in every aspect of life, this involvement was challenging for men whom are about to lose upper hand positions. Men continued to fight back to bring back that position by making assumptions about women; men are better drivers, men are smarter, women are good in certain jobs, and many others. Gender inequality come to surface more at this point by not letting women having certain jobs “stay in your lane.”

There are many things in current day are men’s favor; for example names in the United States and other countries are man oriented. When someone talks about, for example, babysitter, or nurse women’s image come to our mind, but when we talk about commander or solder image of men come to our mind. In many occasions women were able to play many rolls that were dedicated for men throughout history, such as the French defense minister Michele Alliot-Marie 2002-2007. However, the gender inequality will continue but it will be different according to careers, cultures, and countries.   

Poverty

Today I would like to address a problem we’ve all heard of before; an enduring problem that have been with us for as long as I can remember. According to the United Nations, poverty in our world still exists and it continues to be a devastating problem. You may wonder exactly who these people are, because we are living in a secure environment away from poverty. But there are other countries, such as Africa, where people are engaging hardships with poverty.

However, poverty is not in Africa alone, it is everywhere. To name a few places, it is in India, China, North Korea, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, and even in the United States of America. It is an alarming fact that poverty is all over the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and great deal closer to our homes in the Americas than most people might know. It is shocking how in our so-called modern society, there are millions of families living with less than 10,000 dollars in annual income. When faced with this reality, it is clear that we have a great challenge ahead of us. We the people must act upon this problem to help our neighbors who are in dire need. We are hard working, determined, caring people who will eliminate poverty from our society if we put off our selfishness aside and decide to act upon this problem.

I strongly believe that poverty is not all bout theories such as market-oriented, state-centered, or other theories. Those theories might be part of the problem but not the only factor behind poverty of some countries. For instance country such as Qatar whose population does not exceed 1 million and oil pop up in every spot around the country while countries in Horn of Africa not only does not have oil, drought constantly hit their lands,  kills all kind of harvests and people cannot find drinking water from themselves. There are no theory can work to straight up the economy of those country.

All theories that we learned from this chapter have it is advantages and disadvantages, but when we come to which theory is good for certain country, we have to consider many other things such as geography, weather, belief system, and people. I had posted two pictures on the discussion form, but I would like to post it here too. One picture is about life style in Arabian and the other is the image of African kid trying to wake his dead mother.

Today I would like to address a problem we’ve all heard of before; an enduring problem that have been with us for as long as I can remember. According to the United Nations, poverty in our world still exists and it continues to be a devastating problem. You may wonder exactly who these people are, because we are living in a secure environment away from poverty. But there are other countries, such as Africa, where people are engaging hardships with poverty.

However, poverty is not in Africa alone, it is everywhere. To name a few places, it is in India, China, North Korea, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, and even in the United States of America. It is an alarming fact that poverty is all over the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and great deal closer to our homes in the Americas than most people might know. It is shocking how in our so-called modern society, there are millions of families living with less than 10,000 dollars in annual income. When faced with this reality, it is clear that we have a great challenge ahead of us. We the people must act upon this problem to help our neighbors who are in dire need. We are hard working, determined, caring people who will eliminate poverty from our society if we put off our selfishness aside and decide to act upon this problem.

I strongly believe that poverty is not all bout theories such as market-oriented, state-centered, or other theories. Those theories might be part of the problem but not the only factor behind poverty of some countries. For instance country such as Qatar whose population does not exceed 1 million and oil pop up in every spot around the country while countries in Horn of Africa not only does not have oil, drought constantly hit their lands,  kills all kind of harvests and people cannot find drinking water from themselves. There are no theory can work to straight up the economy of those country.

All theories that we learned from this chapter have it is advantages and disadvantages, but when we come to which theory is good for certain country, we have to consider many other things such as geography, weather, belief system, and people. I had posted two pictures on the discussion form, but I would like to post it here too. One picture is about life style in Arabian and the other is the image of African kid trying to wake his dead mother.

Why we should care about global inequality

    Few weeks ago, my friend sent me an email asking me whether good or bad if they attack poppies field in Afghanistan. Instead answer yes or not I wrote back to him some fact:

    Afghanistan is the greatest illicit opium producer in the world produces 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium also it has been America’s main heroin supplier. However, opium is 4 billion dollar industrial Bringing billions of dollars a year into the country’s economy opium is the main source of livelihood for the population. If we just burn that economy source without replacing it, we will instigate the situation more.

   Afghanistan is small sample to give why we should care about global inequality. The flame of fragile government that steamed from weak economy, will reach us in the U.S.  Unless we find ideal solution to support Afghan economy, we will not going achieve peace in that country and thousands men and women from our armed forces will not return home. The cost of war in Afghanistan is much larger than any one can expect. Terrifying figures I do not talk about I prefer you look at the link that I provide below. That is how global inequality affects us.

To obtain more information about poppies in Afghanistan pleas see the link below:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0112/How-US-is-tackling-opium-trade-in-Afghanistan-poppy-heartland

tTo obtain more information about cost of war in Afghanistan please see the link below:

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/afghanistan-war-cost_n_850293.html

Social Class in the United States

We have learned in previous class about crime inside the society, and we learn that there is no society without deviant. Regardless that the deviant is a negative sign of the society, but society cannot exist without deviant. In this part, we learned about social classes inside the society, every society in the world has been divided into classes, unfortunately we have to live with that fact that we all belong to one of these classes. The importance thing we should learn about social class is that the class is income based which means that the size of your bank account will dictate which class you belong.

Social class is matter in every society not only in the U.S. since I have lived only in Middle East; I can compare US with Middle East. Class is matter in the U.S but defiantly not that as in the Middle East. However, in the U.S people care about which neighborhood they live in, summer vacation, winter vacation, and what kind of school you went or your kids are going. I have noticed, in many occasions, people with the high class associate only with people with similar class.

My first experience in this country was few month after I came to the country when my friend from New York invited me to his wedding. Fortunately, another female, that I knew little, was invited too. During the matrimony I noticed how those people were behave, what kind of restaurant they chose to have dinner, what you doing for living, and what kind of car you drive. When I asked that girl I mentioned at the beginning, she told me: “these people are high class people, Wall Street people.” I felt that I am not belonging to this class, but I can only be their friend only by phone not be part of them.

What I try to say is, classes in the U.S in matter but people from different class still can be friend. This is the fundamental differences of social class definition between the U.S and the Middle East. Different social classes in the Middle East are totally separated, they never come together.

Few months ago, I saw an interesting article in one of news papers; a nine years old boy from low-economic class was walking with eight years old girl from high-economic class in Pakistan.  The girl’s family considered that an insult to their status, they decided to attack the boy’s family and revenge to restore their status. Unfortunately the article was in different language, otherwise I will put the link to that article on my post.

Social class like any other negative sign in every society, but society cannot exist without economic classes and it has to exist inside every society.        

  

Conformity and obedience to authority

       I am not sure how many of you follow the news of the world, but there is a dramatic changes happening at this moment in the Middle East known as “Arab Spring.”  People whom are curbed for many decades are coming out on the street, facing those dictators, and push them out of power. However, there is also a large population whom are fighting, desperately, to back off the demonstrators and fending the rulers. Many people might wander; why people are defending dictators?

There is an explanation for that:

     Obedience to authority is part of life routine, people follow the ruler’s orders even it was wrong. It never happened people tell the authority “NO” before and facing the government is unusual thing for the public to accept. I believe this part, in the Middle East, comes from religion that blended with their culture. There is an Islamic saying “the ruler is a shadow of the God and its Caliphs on the earth.” This makes people slaves for the authority.

       Another thing is the fear of revenge. People, whom were harming other people following the desire of rulers, are afraid they will get the same thing from potential new authority. I totally agree with them if they do, because it is true, the new rulers or the new course of government will harm all others who were affiliated with the old government. The best example of that is Iraq. After the invasion of Iraq the United State put only 55 people on the arresting list but millions of people lost their jobs because of their affiliation with former government, ignoring the sociological explanation for what they did was only the routine of obedience to authority.

      The only leader in the history who recognized that fact was Nelson Mandela. Mandela was able to recognize that people might harm other people by following authority, but this does not make them deviants. He issued what he called “National reconciliation” and he asked people that had being used by government, to visit the victims and apologize to them. Many of those people turned to be a good member of the society at the end.

The impact of technology on American society

Years ago, there was no centralized cold and heat system in most of residential houses across the country. People were use to come out side there house, with a glass of wine in their hand, and sit down on the bench in front of their house and interact with other neighbors. Boom Box was very popular among the youth; one boom box might bring 10 to 15 young men and women together to interact with each other. What happened to all those social interaction? Is it disappeared naturally or just people do not want to interact?

The rapid evolution of technologies has negative and positive impact on American society. The most noticeable negative impact, hypothetically, is isolating the society increase the individualism life. People don’t want to open their door for a long time so the cold air does not go out and the electricity bill does not go up. The Boom box has replaced with a small IPod and plugged in the ears as a sign for “leave me along.” It is not unusual to see the son lives coupe block down the street from the parent and he might send them a text message once a month to just remind them that he still there.  Not many years ago there was an article on newspapers about the young girl who was raped and beaten in one of the New York alleys, many residents had heard her voice by no one came out to see what was going on.  

However, people are thinking differently and many things might affect the way people think such as; education, experience, and background. Some people think that it is very negative sign and we should concern about it and I don’t think it is big issue, for many reasons. This issue is inevitable because the life trend is required people live like that. If I left my front door is open, my electricity bill goes up, it is better for me to shut it tightly. In the other hand this kind of life style creates challenge for people to be more creative and make more independent decisions away from the pressures of peers.   

Today most of us have his digital network of people through “twiter” or “facebook”, but they have the option who should communicate with and who not. Socialization should not be limited in face-to-face meeting only, socialization might be through electronic and it might be more productive. People meet through chat room, to exchange ideas, to create networks, and exchange emotions. Regardless there are some crimes are reported occurred through online interaction, but it should not be considered a big concern because there are crimes in every communities and digital network is just community and has every kind of people in it.

Conformity, Deviance, and Crime

This subject become more interesting as we navigate through it is chapters. In previous chapters we learned about the societies and cultures. We learned that the society cannot exist without culture and, also culture cannot exist without society. Every society consist individuals whom might have been raised in different environments and in different life condition that make them carrying different attitude toward certain different subjects.  We also learned that society is governed by norms; the norms could be formal or informal. The informal norms is the custom and tradition that public expect the individuals to follow it without been taught in formal schools, we learn those norms through our interaction with public. Violating those norms might have light consequences on the individuals such as blaming or complaining one thing is important about informal is it has been founded without deliberate interference of human. For instance how the American societies become individual society? Who make the decision that American society is untouched society?   

 The other kind of norm is formal norm or conformity, this kind of norm is generated by human and so called Conformity. If violating informal norm lead to light blame or complain, violating formal norms lead to formal punishment by law enforcement. If the person who violates informal norms is only rejected by the surrounding friends and he/she might be called “freek” or outdated, the person who violates the formal norm or conformity called deviance or criminal. There are many theories why people do violate the law, but I think the one most I think about it is the surrounding environment. Even though there is no society without crime and criminals, but surrounding environment might dictate the statistic and the size of crimes and criminals.

For instance, the crimes in the big cities are more than the smaller cities for many reasons. The life in the cities is more expensive in smaller cities and human needs more resources to live. The other thing is there are more culture groups in the cities than the smaller one. The men commit crimes more than women, because men have more power then the women. The young commit crimes more than old because the young generations interact with the society more than older people and they might have more physical power. The corporate companies still more than a homeless on the street, if the homeless or young teenager jump into a convenience store to still $200 or so, the corporate companies still billions of dollars in one fraud case. It is all related to the surrounding environment.

However, crimes and criminals are part of every society, matter of fact we all commit a crime in some way. If we look back to our life most of us have a speeding ticket which is considered   crime. The hardest part in this subject is labeling. In many occasion the individual who is labeled as a deviant, if you look it at it in another angle,he/ she is a victim. For example the person who still to feed his kids, the woman who kills the cheating husband, or the ignorant teen that jumps on the store to still a case of beer. In all cases those labeled deviants are victims of the environment more than they are criminals.                      

Nature and Nurture

      Nature versus nurture is a discussion of the influence on human’s social behavior.  Nature might be physical environment, geography, economy, faith, or anything else surrounds human being.  In the beginning of this course Professor asked all students to comment on certain post he posted on the blackboard about group of students from poor families not doing well in school comparing with other students whom are from middle or upper class. It is obvious that those children had been influenced by their family. The family is the first line of nurture and has more influence over the kids, even though the book say bit different. Some believes that in the industrial cities the role of family has been dwindle because the parents, especially the mother, are working but parents, I think, remain one of the important factors responsible of children’s nurture . Many researchers described the home environment as the natural school. Other factors that have direct connection to nurture are school, peers, and media, but none of these can be a perfect alternative of family’s role.

All factors mentioned above influence directly or indirectly mankind’s social behavior. Human must behave according to his surrounding environment. Actions that not match the surrounding appear like shortcoming or uncivilized. I remember when I was young boy I used visit some relatives in the village and the kids they use to call me city boy and laugh at me. Many armed force members come back from Afghanistan and they describe the Afghan society as uncivilized society, but they don’t know that Afghan use to call American uncivilized society. The fact is neither is out dated but they act according to their physical environment. An afghan guy might use donkey to travel through the harsh terrain that has no paved road, while the American guy uses his truck to go around his flexible streets.    

At the end of my post I would like to invite everyone to read this article below about some groups how they still live in their world and they are happy do not like to be disturbed by what we call today new life.

http://news.yahoo.com/isolated-peru-tribe-makes-uncomfortable-contact-135924259.html

Culture, Norms, and Customs

       It was not requirement to post this page, but I love to write about culture because it is my job and, also, I see it is very important to talk about culture to change things toward better. In the United States, people don’t go outside country often, because they can get what they want here in America. People learn other countries’ culture from Hollywood or from friend. This kind of information generates assumption and stereotype which give us wrong ideas about other people.

      There are many definitions for culture, norms, and customs, but all these definitions are view of certain people. These definitions might be right or wrong, it is just opinion. I have my own opinion about all this. I believe there are two different things; culture and norms. Culture is anything that imposed on society by faith or historical significant, and norm is any human behavior that accumulated and become part of their daily life. Culture cannot change but norm can be change, but it will take a lot of effort and time to change some norms. The line between these two is blurred, things are overlapped and it’s hard to be separated.

     For instance, people in the U.S. celebrate Thanksgiving at November while people in the neighbor Canada celebrate Thanksgiving in October. My question is “can we go and tell people in Canada celebrate your Thanksgiving at November? The answer will be “NO”, but can we change whatever is served on their table, the answer is “Yes.” The time of the celebration is historical significant related, but the food that served on the table is human generated behavior and can be changed.

        I would like to talk about Yemen, the poorest Arab country in Arab peninsular. People in this country are drug addicted, 75% to 85% of the society consume drug on daily bases, and this is include men, women, children, and government officials. The country’s water supply will deplete by 2017 according to all expectation because all water goes to cultivate drugs “Qat”. The person spends 60% of his income to buy drug, live stops completely after 12:00 P.M. Many people call this culture; I don’t call this culture I called tradition or norm which means can be changed. To erase something that accumulated for all this years, will be very difficult and hard task, and it will not happen overnight.      

     

Stanford prison experiment

The experiment conducted by Professor Philip Zimbardo in Stanford University California 1971. Professor Zimbardo want prove that how people can be affected by the environment. Good people in evil environment. The experiment was mad for two weeks, but after six days the experiment was interrupted because of ethical issue. Please watch this documentary for more information about Stanford prison experiment;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkmQZjZSjk4

Also you can obtain more information about the experiment by clicking this link:

http://www.prisonexp.org

In Stanford prison experiment, Professor Zimbardo had used human to conduct his research. That was unethical side of that experiment. The line between experiment and real prison become fuzzy one day after the experiment had started. The prisoners had gone through real psychological abuse. In resent day, scientists are not allowed to use animal for medical experiment anymore, it is illegal, but in that experiment used human not animal. The author, in his interview, admits that he interrupted his experiment because those young students were in psychological pain and he can stop that.

Current environment affect person’s behavior, it is obvious, but not more than past environment. The environment that the person is grew up in. I think the past environment can affect person’s behavior more than current environment. This part had been ignored in the experiment and also when the Professor was trying to link his experiment to Abu Ghraib. I build my argument based on three year experience on the ground in Iraq with the armed force and I have been in many, formal and informal, discussion about that particular incident and many other incidents like Haditha killings. To satisfy my curiosity, nothing else, I approached many members of armed force, during the war, the solders with violence tendency. I noticed there was one common thing among all those people, it was their background.

The participant of Abu Ghraib, the guards, they all were members in military police unit. I will discuss biography of two of those people to see how they were affected by their background. Lynndie England, the female figure in the Abu Ghraib incident, she born and raised poor, low educated family from Kentucky, her father was railroad worker. Lynndie never attend any college. Another participant of Abu Ghraib is Charles A. Graner; Mr. Graner also was born from poor and law educated family at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he dropped from two year college. Charles was correction officer in 1994 at Fayette County Prison; he was accused of putting mace in a new guard's coffee as a joke, causing him to be sick. In 1998, a prisoner accused Graner and three other guards of planting a razor blade in his food, causing his mouth to bleed when he ate it. Lynndie England got pregnant and she stated that the father is Charles Graner, they were having sex in front of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib and they were filmed.

These are the main characters of Abu Ghraib; my question for everyone is what kind of action is expected from these two characters?  What kind of girl allows herself to be videoed while she has sex? I hope that everyone will participate in the answer.

To obtain more information about Abu Ghraib please click the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ_Vxoyu8zY

To obtain more information about Haditha killing please click the link below:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/15/60minutes/main2574973.shtml

Interview with Lynndie England:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x03EYg_oq0

Introduction

Hello classmate, Professor, my name is Saman Ahmad but everybody calls me Sam. I am from Iraq originally. I have two BA degrees from Iraq, one in math and the other one in political science but as everybody knows that everything in Iraq has burn up and I don’t have paper to prove that. I decided to start again from the scratch and go back to school, this is a second year in the college trying to get my associate degree in IT and hopefully by the end of this year I will transfer to GMU. This class is part of my program.

I work as instructor in the United State Marine Corps, I teach foreign languages and culture. I stationed in Quantico VA, but I work in CA, NC, AZ, FL, on ships, as well as Okinawa Japan. I have very busy working schedule because I speak five different languages.

The goal taking this class, mainly, because it is part of my program but another reason I take this class because I am interested in learning about education system in America. I want to know what they teach and how they teach. I love to learn about other cultures around the world, I love to learn other languages and learn how people do things around the world.

 I wish everyone best in this class.

             
               Sam