Friend inspired contemplation.

I would like to have a pointless ramble if I may. I'm writing this completly from scratch so please forgive me for any gramatical or spelling errors. I'm a little fed up of work and would like to unload some random thoughts.

I shall start with a thought, first expressed by a friend of mine. This observation is originally his, which he shared as a comment on a story I told him. I find myself, most likely un-necassarily occupied with it. I was telling him about my trip to the Natural History Museum in London. During my tour of the exhibits, I was not paying full attention to myself. As I walked down a hallway, not looking where I was going I suddenly felt a light tap on my knee. Assuming I'd unwittingly almost walked into someone, brushing my leg against their bag or something trivial like that. I looked at my immediate surroundings. To discover, to my horror, that I had accidently kneed a child onto the floor. Of course feeling concerned, and absolutly awfull that I had knocked a small child flat onto the floor! I reached down to help them up and make sure they were ok (I could see that they were about the height of my knee, so I must have kneed them in the head :-S), but, I stopped about halfway. Suddenly conscious of the fact that I could be seen to be overstepping a boundry of some kind. To be met with a hostility and, perhaps not most sincerly, prescribed a label which has had a recent boom in publicity.
Thankfully the child was fine and the mother laughed

This is where my friend commented on how it's interesting how social discourse can have an effect on our instincts. I know I said I became aware of the reason why I stopped myself. But this was'nt at the very moment I stopped, I actually stopped myself from helping the child up then became aware. So I can completly empathise with his comment.

This has led me to think about alot of different things, with no real intended point or conclusion. One was the effect of social discourse on actions which we do not put conscious thought into. We all have "automatic reactions", when something happens we react without thinking. Such as if a snow ball was thrown at us, most of us would flintch or when we touch something hot,we tend to pull away very quickly without having to make a conscious choice too. These reactions are commonly seen as natural to our bodies, I wonder, can the unnatural social discourses we are bombarded with every day have an affect on our natural reactions. Alternativly, to what degree are we natural beings? What part of us is the result of biological process?

I'm just spitballing (to put it bluntly). Personally I take the view that we are more a result of the social than of the natural. We have natural bodies and capabilities but I think that's it. Everything else about us such as our temperment, mental health, psyche, gender, capabilities and habits are socially defined. This is very vague, I hav'nt put too much thought into this to make a fully coherant point, but as I said I was'nt out to make a conclusion.
If I have any readers who have an idea please share some thoughts yourself.

First thought...

So I'm in my third year of university. Over my summer break I had a "summer job" working in the local super market, I also started attending church. In these two social arenas I got to meet new people and make some new friends :-) In meeting these new people, I discovered how generally apathetic I am when it comes to... everything.

It is in this that I have found some curiousity and comedy in my current situation. I am living in a shared house with three other students, three female students who I did'nt know untill I moved in with them. These three (I'll say for ease) girls all commented several times on "how it's good to have a man in the house", hmmm what?
I wondered what that meant but soon dismissed it thinking nothing will come from it. This changed after an event of hilarity (for me at least).

4am I was being shaken awake by one of my house mates. When I came round she explained that another of my housemates had returned home from a night out to discover the front door wide open. She then added that she woke me up so that I could check the house for burgerlers, I thought fair enough, she then added "since your the man of the house". I went and checked the house, no burgerlers and came to the conclusion that we simply did'nt shut the door properly. The next day I was asked to call the repair man to fix the door, I thought fair enough. But it was accompanied by "since your the guy you'll understand him"... What?
Since that night I have noticed lots of comments, apparantly I'm the man of the house so I am meant to take the rubbish out, lock the doors at night, be a bad cook, not mind having my stuff used, be ok with cleaning the disgusting things in the house, automatically know whats wrong with bikes and know alot about cars, along with numerous other things, please don't misunderstand me! I'm not having a vent. I actually don't mind them using my stuff or cleaning up etc, it's the fact that because I am male there are all these expectations of how I'm supposed to behave. I just don't buy into this "men are like this, women are like that" thing.

I tried to play around and said one day that since I'm the man and I have numerous special tasks does that mean that they are gonna do my washing up and ironing. I was met with hostility, that we live in a modern world, men and women are equall and that the old expectations were stupid and pathetic.

Surely the stereotyping of men falls into the same category, in reinforcing the stereotype of the man they are indirectly reinforcing the old stereotypes of the woman. In saying your the man so you should... are they not saying woman should'nt have to... and so making a gender based difference in ability and suitablilty, to me it does anyway...
I personally wish we lived in a less gendered society.

Pleasde forgive any bad use of grammer or punctuaion, along with bad spelling. I may not have fully communicated my idea since I'm not so big on writing. So any misunderstanding please ask and I'll happily clarify!

What on earth.

Ok, I can imagine no one has actually read my blog. I was talking a load of BS! I have no idea what I was thinking at the time of my first publication. I am really sorry.

In light of this comment, I am actually going to try and write a blog, with no specific concentration. I will just rant on about things that come into mind.

Social Worlds.

Throughout all of its history, the human race has lived within some form of society. I will stake anything and everything that if you were to magically look at any time, at any place on earth (inhabited by human beings) the people you observe will be part of some society or community. Whether it be the hunter gathers of early man, the first city states of Mesopotamia, to the Democracies of nations such as France and Germany. Mankind has always resided in some form of social world. By “social world”, what I mean is a set of forces acting on people. Directing their behaviour, and their understanding of the physical world. A “social world” accounts for all those characteristics of humankind which have no direct physical existence. These characteristics are all concepts which we understand to be human traits, such as morality, culture, norms of behaviour, this also includes the “objective” understanding we have of our physical world.The social world co-exists with the physical world, wherever human beings or any other entity possessing freewill and an ego may be. Much like scientists would explain the physical world as having underlying laws which govern physical phenomena. In a similar way the social world can be understood to be a set of laws governing social phenomena.

What is a society? This is the first question for us to address. I encourage everyone with their own thoughts to share them. From my understanding of our social worlds, only one conclusion can be made, that society is in fact the human beings equivalent to the giraffes neck. Society is mealy a human evolutionary characteristic, developed in order to increase our survival chances in the physical world. With this, I reject the ridged (and lets face it, big headed) view that human beings have evolved a “superior intelligence”. Which has led to a complex system of organisation. Our development of society is an alternate method of survival, which happens to include self awareness, free will, “rational reasoning”, emotions, complex psychology etc. Now I will stress that this is not an evolutionary step up the ladder from a more primal existence which had not yet developed these characteristics. As this implies that other animals on earth will, given time become similar to us, and we see no real evidence of that so far. This evolutionary difference, towards a more social and “rational” state, is mealy a different tier to that of conventional organisms, we as human beings are not a more sophisticated step in an evolutionary ladder, but rather a different branch in the evolutionary tree.

I shall leave this entry for now. As reading large amounts can easily become a chore. Also I would like to reduce risk of going on a tangent and ultimately making no sense!

Hello!

For my first blog entry. I would like to take the time to introduce myself.
I am a Social Science student currently residing in "Britain". Whom often has many ideas regarding the worlds "social state". I also find myself constantly conflicted with questions and flirting with theories regarding the nature of Society and Human. The internet still being new to me, this "blogging" phenomenon was introduced to me by a friend whom advised me to have a go.
And so here I am, I'm not entirely sure of what will come from this. But my initial idea is to lay out ideas, and open up topics for (unoffending) discussion and have ideas shared by other people.
So yea...