Making Sense of It

In order to get a degree, most universities require students to take either Psychology or Sociology.  When the time came for me to choose, I chose Psychology because it seemed to be the more interesting of the two.

Years later, at Akron, I chose to take the Sociology course and was captivated by the subject matter.  Sociology delves into the structures of society and tries to make some kind of sense of it.  We used three theories to explain various types of societal behavior.  One was from a guy named Max Weber, a father of sociology, who studied the rationalization, secularization and disenchantment due to the rise of capitalism.  I believe his name is pronounced, "Vaber."  The second theory we used was based on the work of Karl Marx who favored class conflict as the developer of society as we know it.  And there was a third that I would have to look up but as I remember it, this theory was based on how in society we tend to mimic the behavior of others and follow social mores so as not to be ostrasized.

For some of our tests, the teacher would propose a situation and then we would have to decide which of the theories best applied to it.  It wasn't that I couldn't get the answer; it was that it just seemed as though one theory should actually explain everything. 

By the time I got done with the class and continued to think about the theories and our society's institutions, it occurred to me that the actual theory that applied to all of it was good versus evil and the presence or absence of God in the lives of people. 

Apparently, there is a movement in Christian Sociology that began around 1980 and continues that would go along with this thought. 

So what makes a guy who has been suspended at work go after a woman who apparently may have complained about him and take off her head?  Does that act flow from some understanding of psychology or does it show something different about our society today?

T.J. Lane who killed the students in Chardon did something horrific.  It didn't seem to bother him that what he planned to do would be looked upon by almost everyone as a terrible thing and that he would have to be removed from society because of it.

So the social mores theory doesn't seem to be working quite so well these days.  The conflict between the classes that Marx liked to study doesn't seem to describe it either.  And capitalism has been around long enough that I'm just not sure it has a relevance the way it did in the early 1900s.  This is just my take on it and I'm no expert!!

The guy who beheaded the woman and T.J. Lane have something in common.  They acted in a completely evil way.  They were obsessed with evil whether it conflicted with the behavior of others around them or not.  They moved past a point where they obviously don't care.

We always want to understand things.  That's the way people are.  It's part of our nature to try and make sense of something.

Not excuses -- sense.  There are no excuses for what has been happening lately, both around the world and here in the U.S. 

More prayer ... more prayer.