A Sociological Eye

  I want to talk to you about eros and thanatos, and the way they cause us to dance. A century ago, in the 1920s, three forces came together. One was industrialization, allowing an explosion of manufactured goods to enter the marketplace. The second was the surge in popular media, with radio and cinema expanding on print media—something manufacturing companies wanted to exploit with a flood of advertising so they could sell their products. And the third was Freudian psychology, especially the belief in the power of the libido, of desire, of eros, in driving human activity. The result? Something that came to be experienced as inevitable: a world in which people became immersed in advertising constantly seeking to stoke their desires. That could be direct: ads pictured luscious, dripping desserts, or displayed advertised clothing on beautiful, nubile bodies. Or it could be indirect: buy our pimple cream or automobile and you will be pursued by enraptured, aroused, sexy potent...

  Ah, nature. Everyone loves it!   Here on the left, we want to protect nature from human-caused climate change and pollution. The right counters, "Our scientists say there is no climate change!" Well, ok, but 99.5% of scientists agree that climate change due to our production of greenhouse gasses is indeed happening. Those are some really. . . unusual scientists you're citing.    The redhat right has its own claim about needing to protect nature. They cry that people on the left are violating the laws of the nature of sex! Nature dictates and the nation requires a sex binary of men and women who are eager to marry and produce children, they say. But instead, the left is full of gender transitions and queer people and crazy cat ladies, leaving the real men of America bereft of the loving, attractive wives they deserve!    Here's the thing. You can cause harm to natural beings and settings. You can kill off the vast herds of buffalo that once roamed the plai...

  Credit for this familiar image goes to KC Green. The Orange Man has yet to take office, but already it feels like everything is on fire. So I am here to remind you what to do! Remember: this chaotic spew of announcements and speculations is intentional. It is called "flooding the zone with sh*t." The theory goes that setting multiple things on fire, day after day, will have the following effects:  1. It will paralyze a sector of the populace, who won't know which fire to put out first, and will just freeze, going, "I can't believe this is happening!" 2. It will divide and conquer those being attacked, because they will each want the fire at their house to be put out first, and will have screaming fights over priorities while everything burns. 3. It will make a whole swath of people act like mythic ostriches and shove their heads in the sand, singing "La la la, everything's fine! If I don't see the news, it can't hurt me!" 4. It will s...

    Yesterday, I posted on social media the graph you see here. It shows current levels of support for the presidential candidates according to gender for Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers. I asked folks reading the post for their theories about what is going on with Gen X, and got a lot of responses. So here is my report on what people had to say! First, to summarize what this chart shows you: Millennials and Baby Boomers are nearly identical in their views, despite having a generation between them with different political preferences. About 70% of both Millennial and Boomer women support Harris, while only about 38% of men in those generations say they support her. That’s a striking binary gender gap of over 30 points. (The survey does not consider the preferences of nonbinary people.) Generations Z and X show different patterns. Gen Z voters are in the youngest voting age bracket, and for decades voters in that bracket have held more progressiv...