During my freshman year of college I took a class called Person and Society. Most students called it P and S or more often P 'n' S. Person and Society was one of three foundation classes every student was required to take. My roommate had taken it during first term while I had taken another foundation course called Human Expression. He suggested we trade books for second semester. So, I said goodbye to Sophocles, Plato, Dante, Goethe, and Machiavelli and hello to The Person and Society Reader.
So, what was Person and Society supposed to teach me? The reader contained pieces from the field of psychology and sociology. But the anthology also had readings on racism, sexism, politics, the legal system, and economics.
At any rate, some may suggest the course was basically about the wide range of concepts and concerns that tend to captivate social scientists.
Social science can be defined as a group of academic disciplines dedicated to examining human behavior and specifically how people interact with each other, behave, develop as a culture, and influence the world.
In the preface to the reader the professors who compiled it tried to make clear what students were hopefully going to learn.
From the reader:
"But this is not to say the articles appearing herein are merely randomly selected specimens of social scientists' work. On the contrary, they are all linked, in one way or another, to the notion of power, a concept that is central to and provides many points of contact between all of the social science disciplines. Learning something about power, then, is what the substance of Person and Society is all about. But beyond questions of content, Person and Society is fundamentally concerned with questions of process: How can we and do we know? How do we learn? These are the questions which we hope to raise and begin to address, in part, through the thoughts of those authors whose work appears in this volume."
Power is a universal phenomenon that is reflected in virtually all forms of human interaction. Power is intimately related to many other key concepts and ideas in the social sciences—personality, behavior, aggression, role, class, mobility, wealth, income distribution, markets, culture, ideology, change, authority, oligarchy, and the elite. Power is also a universal instrument in approaching the various crises that afflict human beings and their societies—racism, sexism, poverty, violence, crime, urban decay, and international conflict.
I seem to recall being placed in discussion groups. Then each group would share their thoughts with the entire class. The professor would, of course, offer her thoughts on any given topic.
Our professor, Doris, made it clear she was a feminist and that she was opinionated. However, she made it clear she did not hate men. She was divorced but not averse to a new relationship even though she was in her sixties.
"If you know of any eligible men, please let me know!" she joked.
* * *
One topic that our reader explored was authoritarianism. Faced with fear or hard times many people may be agreeable to a strong leader. They may even seek out churches that traditionally are more authoritarian and that hold up a God who is in control of all things.
Stephen M. Sales explored the idea that individuals are more likely to join authoritarian churches during times of perceived economic threat, suggesting that when people feel economically insecure, they may be drawn to religious groups with strict structures and strong leadership.
Research suggests that individuals seem to elect presidents who radiate strength and energy by wide margins during years of perceived high threat such as an economic recession.
Psychology professor Stephen Sales said, "When people are scared, the fascism-prone among them will respond exactly the way those good Germans did when they embraced the Nazi party.
The Germans were scared by the political rioting of the Weimar Republic period, the violence in the streets, the political rhetoric, the harrowing monetary inflation, and the onset of the Great Depression."
The average citizen, it appears, may become less concerned with the morality of the strongman’s actions, many of which are clearly inhumane, and more concerned with a personal sense of safety and stability, even if it is illusory.
Even comic books characters seem to be affected.
In the work of Sales (1972), one common finding was the increase in popularity of “powerful” fictional protagonists during times of threat. Sales found that comic strips originating during the high threat 1930s were more likely to feature tough heroes (e.g., Dick Tracy, The Lone Ranger) whereas comic strips in the low threat 1920s featured characters who were not as tough (e.g., Betty Boop).
Also, individuals can even become more superstitious. During times of threat, articles and books pertaining to astrology, for example, seem to become more numerous and popular. Interest in astrology goes up as times become scarier.
Surrender to authoritarian control is often the mark of uncertainty and insecurity. Stephen M. Sales tells us that psychoanalysts have long maintained that threat evokes a characteristic pattern of defenses. When we are afraid, they say, we turn to strong leaders who can protect us. We become intolerant of outgroups and of those who differ from us. We admire power and those who wield power, we come to despise weakness and ambiguity, and we become superstitious. In short, we become authoritarian.
Were people feeling insecure, uncertain, and threatened when Donald Trump was elected in 2016? Was Trump's candidacy a clarion call to Americans disposed to authoritarianism?
We read other articles concerning authoritarianism. Clinical psychologist David Mark Mantell compared Green Berets and draft resisters to discover who had more authoritarian parents. The Green Berets had the parents who were more authoritarian.
He didn't suggest that we didn't need soldiers, but he did comment on the role of parenting.
"As this study has shown, however, there exists a strong correlation between the degree to which children have been exposed to arbitrary authority, physical abuse, and intimidation, and their later readiness to submit to these practices and make use of them. The child "properly reared" in the authoritarian tradition learns to conform at home, to accept and bow to arbitrary and demeaning authority, to be beaten and intimidated, and to justify these conditions as the norms of social reality."
In closing he added, "People like the Green Berets may be necessary in potential soldiers if the United States is to survive as a world power. For the United States to survive as an idea, we will need people like the war resisters. We can hope to nurture such men."
Our class also read about the work of Dr. Martin Seligman and a phenomenon known as learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a laboratory state in which animals or humans, subjected to some inescapable trauma, finally give up trying altogether. Depression, like learned helplessness, can be the result of coming to believe that one's own actions just don't matter.
As a freshman in college, I felt very insecure and uncertain. I felt a sense of dread. I was going to fail or somehow things just weren't going to work out. I wouldn't go so far as to say I felt helpless. But I did have a desire to feel more in control of things. This feeling that I lacked personal control in my life didn't have me searching for someone to tell me what to do. But I did feel a need to have more order in my life.
Our class also read about the work of Julian B. Rotter concerning the construct of locus of control. Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they, as opposed to external forces (beyond their influence), have control over the outcome of events in their lives.
I found ways to feel better in college. I escaped to areas of the library that allowed the introvert in me to feel less overwhelmed. I scheduled my days including study time to bring a sense of order to my world. I didn't join a church, but I found myself feeling better after reading books like The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. This book was somewhat spiritual in nature incorporating practices of prayer, meditation, and affirmations.
* * *
Another topic in our reader was androgyny. We read about the work of Sandra Bem. In an article she stated, "As many feminists have argued, freeing people from rigid sex roles and allowing them to be androgynous (from "andro", male and "gyne", female), should make them more flexible in meeting new situations, and less restricted in what they can do and how they can express themselves."
Doris was on board with this. She actually felt sorry for males who felt they always had to be tough and always be the breadwinner. She was concerned that too many men feeling the need to play the masculine role were having heart attacks.
Doris didn't believe in toys being categorized for boys and girls. If a girl wanted to play with a football or a boy a stroller that was fine by her. She was a bit upset that some men had started migrating into traditionally held female fields like secretarial work. It was bad enough that women already had fewer options and made less than men. They didn't need to infiltrate the conventional careers of women as well.
We never talked about transgender people that I recall. Terms like crossdresser, transvestite, and transexual would be considered offensive today though I heard such terms back then. We certainly didn't talk about preferred pronouns or transgender people in sports.
We didn't speak much about the gay community. I don't seem to recall acronyms like LGBT being in use. I don't recall talking about the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969 though that would have been interesting. Doris had a theory that people were homophobic because they imagined that gay people were having sex ALL THE TIME.
Later in college, I would take a course called Changing Roles and Human Sexuality. One day our class was able to ask questions of three gay men who were visiting. I asked a question that embarrasses me now.
"There are places that have high concentrations of Mormons like Utah. Do you wish some sort of utopia existed where there were only gay people?"
"Would you like to be all alone?" one panelist snapped.
My professor tried to diffuse the situation by mentioning that I was alone by virtue of the fact that I was the only male taking that class that term.
A friendly panelist laughed a bit and suggested there were already places like that. I believe he may have mentioned West Hollywood.
The third panelist said what I already knew I suppose. He suggested that gay and lesbian individuals wanted to be part of society and simply wanted to be treated with respect and dignity and have equality. He said it wasn't desirable or feasible to be cut off from the rest of society.
So, it wasn't a great question, but it got people talking.
The thought of us discussing androgyny seems quaint now. A class like Person and Society would have so much more to discuss in today's world. Can an individual assigned male at birth truly be a woman? Does a designation like nonbinary make sense? Are acronyms like LGBTQIA+ useful and important or confusing and silly? Should marriage only exist between a man and a woman?
I suppose androgyny is still an important concept. Maybe we don't need tough guys and macho men. And yet back in the 1980s some people actually saw an androgynous individual like recording artist Boy George as a threat. And Annie Lennox with her closely cropped hair and wearing a man's business suit was striking. When I was doing some student observing in an elementary classroom for a few weeks I was asked to by the school principal to remove my earring. He said I needed to be a good role model. I didn't make a fuss and point out that the female teachers wore earrings. I just removed the earring. Would that still happen today?
Is the blending of masculine and feminine traits desirable and healthy?
Sandra Bem suggested, "I have come to believe that we need a new standard of psychological health for the sexes, one that removes the burden of stereotype and allows people to feel free to express the best traits of men and women."
* * *
The second section of our reader concerned social stratification in regard to wealth, income, race, and gender.
"Yes, women do work, but they work in dead-end, low-status jobs, not in careers."
"If we truly believe that every young person should be free to pursue whatever vocation he or she desires; if we really believe that the counselor's function is to help the young person to make an informed choice from among a wide panorama of possibilities, then we must once again come face to face with the fact that our society's sex-role ideology has already drastically reduced the number of alternatives that the female adolescent is psychologically prepared to consider." -Sandra Bem
Doris was fine with a female choosing to be a homemaker IF that was her choice. But, of course, she believed women could do most anything and deserved equal pay.
But the father-dominated authority structure, with its traditional duties and rigid gender roles, is changing. The family is becoming an institution in which both husband and wife seek individual happiness rather than the perpetuation of the species and economic efficiency. Many women still choose to seek fulfillment in marriage and child rearing rather than in outside employment; others decide to do this temporarily. The important point is that now this is a choice and not a cultural requirement.
She cared about us men though too. She didn't think men should always feel that pressure to be the sole breadwinner. Some young men in class disagreed with her.
"Well, I hope you don't work yourself into a heart attack," she warned.
I wonder if we read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.
Years later TIME magazine's 1998 cover "Is Feminism Dead?" featured an image of Ally McBeal from the TV show Ally McBeal to suggest that feminism was in decline.
We read the work of Maggie Scarf who declared that women experienced more depression. We discussed it in our groups and most of us weren't quite buying it. Doris didn't really care whether Maggie Scarf was correct or not. The most important thing was that we recognized that women often find their sense of worth in loving relationships with others.
"From infancy to adulthood, women are taught to be more dependent on others than men. They have a greater need for approval from others, and a greater fear of rejection or loss of love.
Women tend to base their self-concepts not so much upon what they think about themselves as upon what others think of them. Their self-esteem tends to result from external evaluations and not their own internal judgements.
Women, then, are not encouraged to develop independent self-concepts. More than is the case with men, their moods and opinions of themselves depend upon the moods and reactions of those around them."
Well, here I am in the new millennium. Females I knew in college are lawyers, doctors, business owners, and school principals. Most of them also got married and had kids. Most of them seem happy. Maybe things did improve for women to some degree. On the other hand, maybe most of these women still did the majority of the cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. Superwoman Syndrome!
Roe v. Wade was overturned, and some suggest the blame is on Donald Trump who was recently reelected President.
Sophie Gilbert writing for The Atlantic wrote, "For Trump, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion was apparently only the beginning. Bolstered by that definitive Supreme Court win and flanked by a hateful entourage intent on imposing its archaic vision of gender politics on the nation, the Trump-Vance ticket seemed to outright reject ideas of women’s autonomy and equality."
I suppose in a social sciences class like P&S in this day we might discuss the #MeToo Movement and perhaps the 4B Movement and women going on sex strikes. 4B or "Four Nos" is a radical feminist movement that originated in South Korea. The name refers to its defining four tenets which all start with the Korean-language term bi, roughly meaning "no". Its proponents do not date men, marry men, have sex with men, or have children with men.
Not to be outdone, men have their own movements.
Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) is an anti-feminist, misogynistic, mostly online community that espouses male separatism from what they see as a gynocentric society that has been corrupted by feminism. MGTOW specifically advocate for men to avoid marriage and committed romantic relationships with women.
I guess nobody wants to date, marry, or have sex these days.
I take that back.
The "tradwife" movement is a subculture that promotes traditional gender roles and a lifestyle that evokes the 1950s.
The term "tradwife" refers to women who trade feminism and gender equality for a more traditional role. Tradwives value traditional gender roles and promote submission to their husbands. They often showcase their idyllic, domesticated lives on social media.
* * *
I was moved by a tract in our reader by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. entitled "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people...
During my junior year of college, I spent a fair amount of time hanging out with a young black man from Chicago. He had decided to spend the school year living with a white college friend of mine. They were best friends. So, the young black man became my friend that year as well. I didn't think too much about it. We were all young men who liked to drink a few beers, dance at the clubs, and pursue the opposite sex. Race was never really brought up. They did mention the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago a couple of times and made it sound like a place I wouldn't want to visit.
African American students didn't exist in vast numbers on our little campus. Two young black men roomed together on my floor during my freshman year. Everyone seemed to like them.
A girl I met my freshman year was mistaken as mixed-race or African American and befriended by some black girls. They were surprised when they saw her white parents during a visit. My friend wasn't sure how to feel. She hoped they liked her for her personal qualities and not just because they thought she was black.
I realize now that a girl I was quite attracted to in college was mixed-race. She could "pass" as the saying goes. I'm sure her father was on campus sometime and I just never happened to see him. Maybe others knew she was mixed. I wonder what she would have to say about her college experience.
My girlfriend in college was Asian although that term wasn't in use yet. She referred to herself as oriental. One evening we went to see the movie Mississippi Burning. Based on a true story, the film tells the story of how the FBI investigated the disappearance of three Civil Rights workers in 1964.
She was quite upset to hear character Clayton Townley say, "We do not accept Turks, Mongols, Tartars, Orientals nor Negroes because we're here to protect Anglo-Saxon democracy and the American way."
For a different class I interviewed a young Indian man named Akshay. I asked if he'd experienced any racism. He replied that more than anything he felt ignored. He didn't experience overt racism but felt invisible on campus. I hadn't realized that ostracism could be so painful. But we all have a psychological need to belong. If someone senses he is being ignored and excluded he may begin to question his worth. Fortunately, I'm fairly certain Akshay went on to have a rewarding and meaningful life.
I don't recall talking much about race and racism in Person and Society. I'm sure we must have talked about stereotypes and prejudice. Doris said the only time she had a racist thought was when a black man cut her off in traffic one day.
Some would say things haven't improved much. Too many young black men have been killed by police officers and others. We could discuss Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and George Floyd. We could discuss the founding of Black Lives Matter. Even the Rodney King incident and the subsequent riots happened after I graduated from college. I don't even recall discussing the Watts Riots of 1965 in our class.
I don't recall a debate about Affirmative Action either.
Would we have to discuss Critical Race Theory and institutional racism if the class were still being taught today? True or false? Racism is "systemic" and "structural."
* * *
Our reader had articles on poverty. Some studies suggested that many people blamed the poor themselves for their place in society. Not everyone, of course, felt that way.
"Like it is in the Alley" written by Robert Coles was very enlightening about life in ghettos or slums in big cities.
It might have been interesting if we'd discussed the funding for the exploration of space.
"Whitey on the Moon" refers to a poem by Gil Scott-Heron criticizing the Apollo moon landing, arguing that the money spent on space exploration should have been used to address social issues on Earth, like poverty, rather than sending "whitey" to the moon; essentially saying that space exploration is not worth it when basic needs are not met for many people on Earth.
Here's a bit:
A rat done bit my sister Nell
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arms began to swell
And whitey's on the moon
I can't pay no doctor bills
But whitey's on the moon
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still
While whitey's on the moon
I seem to recall discussing welfare. We might have even discussed President Reagan's speeches concerning the so-called Welfare Queen and whether that was accurate or not. Some students supported welfare citing it as a crucial "safety net" for those in need. I suppose others weren't so sure although I don't think anyone advocated Social Darwinism or "survival of the fittest."
Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 is a 1984 book about the effectiveness of welfare state policies in the United States between 1950 and 1980 by the political scientist Charles Murray. Both its policy proposals and its methodology have attracted significant controversy.
Murray's main thesis is that social welfare programs, as they have historically been implemented in the United States, tend to increase poverty rather than decrease it because they create incentives rewarding short-sighted behavior not conducive to escaping poverty in the long term.
Of course, several people disagreed with him. I don't believe we read this book although it seems it would have made for a good discussion.
President Ronald Reagan had things to say about welfare even when Governor of California.
"Welfare is another of our major problems. We are a humane and generous people and we accept without reservation our obligation to help the aged, disabled and those unfortunates who, through no fault of their own, must depend on their fellow man. But we are not going to perpetuate poverty by substituting a permanent dole for a paycheck. There is no humanity or charity in destroying self-reliance, dignity and self-respect – the very substance of moral fiber."
I was so ignorant even as a college student that I was never quite sure exactly what welfare was other than the government somehow helping those in need. I realize now that perhaps the program most familiar to people would have been AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children).
Perhaps we could have watched the film Claudine (1974).
Because of the way AFDC worked back then, there were certain rules regarding having a man in woman's life. Claudine gets caught with a male in her house by the social worker one day and loses her temper regarding the rules.
"I have to hide my man in the toilet. Miss Kabak, do you hide your man in the toilet?"
Under the man-in-the-house rule, a child who otherwise qualified for welfare benefits was denied those benefits if the child's mother was living with, or having relations with, any single or married able-bodied male. The man was considered a substitute father, even if the man was not supporting the child.
The "man-in-the-house" rule was struck down in 1968 by the Supreme Court in King v. Smith. Thereafter, families with males in the household were eligible for benefits if they were not deemed to be actual or substitute parents, although any financial contribution on the part of the male to the family was still considered a part of the family's total income.
My family had a neighbor and fellow church member who referred to a certain back street in the small town where the church was located as "welfare row" which didn't sit too well with some people.
I became well-versed in welfare programs myself later in life. I used food stamps for a while and then stopped because I was too embarrassed and was always afraid someone might confront and berate me. I've had both housing and heating assistance at times.
My thoughts on welfare are complicated I suppose. Most programs are means-tested. In other words, it's unlikely anyone is getting rich from welfare.
In the slums of New York, on the East River just below the Queensboro Bridge, wealthy people live in opulent and luxurious apartments because of the picturesque views of the river, while the destitute and poor live nearby in crowded, cockroach-infested tenements.
Social stratification is an interesting topic. My college girlfriend's parents demanded she end our relationship because I was just a farm boy. I told Doris about it. She was a bit surprised. I guess she'd spent so much time focusing on racism and sexism she hadn't thought that much about classism and class stratification.
* * *
What about power and collective choice?
We read "The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom" by Milton Friedman.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman believed that economic freedom is a vital component of a free society and is essential for achieving political freedom.
Friedman believed that economic freedom protects minorities from discrimination because the market is not concerned with their views or color.
Friedman believed that economic freedom acts as a check on government because people can move to another community if they don't like what their local community is doing.
Friedman believed that the market is an impersonal mechanism that allows people to cooperate economically regardless of their differences of opinion.
I believe we read a book called The Powers That Be by William Domhoff. In fact, I believe Domhoff spoke on our campus that fall before I was enrolled in Person and Society. Domhoff made it seem like the President had little power compared to special interest groups.
"Ruling-class domination of government can be seen most directly in the workings of lobbyists, backroom super-lawyers, trade associations and advisory committees to governmental departments and agencies. It takes place in a network of people and organizations that is knit together by varying combinations of information, gifts, bribes, insider dealing, friendship and, not least, promises of lucrative private jobs in the future for compliant government officials."
We never read The Communist Manifesto by Marx, but we did read an essay by radical economist Howard Wachtel.
Radical economists believe that economic planning should be actively used to address systemic inequalities, prioritize social well-being over pure profit, and promote democratic decision-making in the economy, often advocating for significant restructuring of the economic system away from traditional capitalist structures towards more participatory and socially-oriented models like cooperatives or worker-owned enterprises, with a strong focus on environmental sustainability and equitable distribution of resources.
We never discussed the Declaration of Independence, Mein Kampf, or the Port Huron Statement.
The Port Huron Statement was a broad critique of the political and social system of the United States for failing to achieve international peace and economic justice. In foreign policy, the statement took issue with the American government's handling of the Cold War, both the existential threat of nuclear war, and the actual arms race. In domestic matters, it criticized racial discrimination, economic inequality, big businesses, trade unions, and political parties.
Sounds a bit like the Occupy Movement that came much later in time.
Occupy Wall Street is a is a movement formed by American citizens in response to the country's economic conditions following the 2008 financial crisis. Protesters first gathered on September 17, 2011, at Liberty Square in Manhattan's Financial District. Topping the list of occupiers’ complaints were the high unemployment rate, the greed of American corporations, and the increasing divide between the country’s rich and poor. After the first demonstrations began in New York, the Occupy movement spread to more than 100 cities throughout the country and has been linked to similar protests internationally in Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia.
Perhaps our class could have read The Road to Serfdom by Frederich Hayek.
Perhaps we could have even watched some movies like All the King's Men, The Great McGinty, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Candidate.
* * *
We read "Lifeboat Ethics" by Garrett Hardin.
"Lifeboat Ethics" by Garrett Hardin, when applied to today's world, essentially argues that wealthy nations should not significantly aid poorer nations facing extreme poverty and overpopulation, as doing so could jeopardize the resources and stability of the richer countries, essentially viewing them as "lifeboats" that could be swamped if too many people try to board from outside; this perspective is often criticized for being morally problematic and neglecting the root causes of global inequality.
I don't recall discussing immigration in P&S, although Hardin mentions immigration in his article.
In one iteration of her book she writes, "To imagine what this means in practical, everyday terms simply set yourself at a restaurant in front of an eight-ounce steak and then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the "feed cost" of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains!"
When I read her book, I was shocked about the connection between water and livestock.
She writes, "Producing just one pound of steak uses 2,500 gallons of water—as much water as my family uses in a month! Livestock production, including water for U.S. crops fed to livestock abroad, accounts for about half of all water consumed in the United States, and increasingly that water is drawn from underground lakes, some of which are not significantly renewed by rainfall. Already irrigation sources in north Texas are running dry, and within decades the underground sources will be drawn down so far that scientists estimate a third of our current irrigation will be economically unfeasible."
In her book she argues that a plant-based diet can significantly reduce our environmental impact, particularly in relation to climate change, by minimizing the resource-intensive production of meat, thus making it a key component of a "climate-friendly" diet; essentially, eating less meat and more plant-based foods can help mitigate the effects of climate change.
I'm sure vegans and anyone concerned with climate change would like this little book.
We didn't talk about vegan diets or climate change in P&S. We didn't talk about the Greenhouse Effect or our carbon footprint as I recall.
I have actually watched Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. I've watched other documentaries on climate change and read articles as well.
By the way, Hustler ran an article on the Greenhouse Effect in the January 1983 issue. Don't ask me how I know this. I just do. I just thought you should know.
The skeletons of large cities still standing in the center of the continent bear silent witness to the great civilization that previously thrived. But along the edges of this once heavily populated region the ocean waves break on a coastline unimaginable to those 'of us alive today. Major metropolitan areas-such as Boston, New York City, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco-lay drowned under waters as deep as 300 feet. Only the tops of skyscrapers are occasionally visible, their underpinnings rusting away before they topple into oblivion. In the vast sea obscuring what used to be the Big Apple, just the tip of the head and the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty poke forlornly through the swells and whitecaps.
The Green New Deal mentions high speed rail. Perhaps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I could watch Transatlantic Tunnel (1935) together. The film tells a fascinating story, set in the near future (for the 1930s), about a joint American British project to build an undersea tunnel from London to New York.
* * *
I am often reminded of Person and Society and Doris, our professor. I watched Mona Lisa Smile not long ago. A lot of those young college woman seemed to be preparing for marriage as opposed to a career.
I've watched the films Boyz n the Hood, Remember the Titans, The Help, Green Book, and Hidden Figures which made me think a lot about poverty and racism.
I watched Experimenter, a film about Stanley Milgram's study of conformity and free will. The film is based on the true story of famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who in 1961 conducted a series of radical behavior experiments at Yale University that tested the willingness of ordinary humans to obey an authority figure while administering electric shocks to strangers.
I believe our class may have read an old Esquire article about the experiment entitled "If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably" by Philip Meyer.
The Branch Davidians and Heaven's Gate both bring to mind the Jonestown Massacre I believe we may have read about for class. The mass suicide at Jonestown involved some people drinking a red liquid poisoned with cyanide.
Although Jones used poisoned Flavor Aid, the drink mix was also commonly (mistakenly) referred to as Kool-Aid. This has led to the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid", referring to a person or group holding an unquestioned belief, argument, or philosophy without critical examination.
I saw a documentary or two in recent years mentioning the Stonewall Riots.
I read a short story published in The New Yorker entitled "Cat Person" that quickly went viral online. “Cat Person” was published at the height of the #MeToo movement, at a time when many women were reassessing past relationships through a new lens, and it clearly resonated with readers.
Kristen Roupenian’s story about a text-based flirtation turned into a waking nightmare, resonated with a chilling number of women.
Have you heard about the "Missing Girls" phenomenon caused by sex-selective abortions and female infanticide in countries with severe gender discrimination?
Did you read about the Columbine High School massacre and other mass shootings?
We could discuss universal healthcare or perhaps socialism in general. In 1945, President Harry S. Truman proposed a national health insurance plan to Congress, making him the first president to publicly endorse such a program. Truman's national health care proposal was defeated in Congress.
However, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law on March 23, 2010. The ACA, also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) or Obamacare, was a major overhaul of the U.S. health care system.
So many things have happened and are happening that would keep us busy talking in a P&S class today.
Is there hope for our world?
When I first heard of the Green New Deal and the mention of high-speed rail it made me think of the song "I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)" by Donald Fagen of Steely Dan.
If you are a Steely Dan fan, you might know the Donald Fagen song, “IGY.” In it, Fagen sings about a rosy future with high-speed undersea rail, solar power, giant computers making life better, and spandex jackets. Since that song was on the 1982 album Nightfly, it is already too old for some people to remember, but the title goes back even further: the International Geophysical Year which was actually a little longer than a year in 1957 and 1958. The year was a concerted effort by 67 countries to further mankind’s knowledge of the Earth. It was successful, and was big news in its day, although not much remembered now.
The ending of the song has these lyrics:
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(more leisure for artists everywhere)
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
