Jail

This Tuesday my sociology class took a field trip to the county jail and court house. The first thing we did there was sit in on a double murder trial.  In this double murder trial, a 20 year old man stabbed his mother in he chest multiple times and nearly decapitated her and then had an Escort service over and when the woman saw the bloody knife he had used to kill his mother with he killed her too also by stabbing. As you can tell this was a very violent horrific crime and not only did we get to hear about it, we also saw many of the pictures from the scene of the crime. I dont believe I have ever seen something more disturbing and disgusting in my entire life. This trial left me feeling very depressed and confused and also kind of angry. How could someone do this to their own mother? Well anyway, while we were listening to the trial we saw a lot of repetition, and a lot of obvious questions being asked, like, "is there any sign of forced entry here?" and, "and is this a close up of the same towel we saw in the previous picture" like x 50 it got really boring and kind of annoying. We were talking about it later with the class though and said that the reason why they do this is  because in a case this important you have to make sure every detail is accounted for and that you make no mistakes because if you do the the murderer could end up getting away because he can claim that the case was incorrect. So even though it was kind of boring at parts it was necessary. This was definitely a criminal case and it was a felony.

Positive and Negative Deviance

There are different types of deviance Positive and Negative deviance. Positive deviance is deviance that helps society move forward such as with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. If not for some deviance acts America would not have been able to become better. Sometimes deviance is a good thing. Another type of deviance is Negative deviance, Negative deviance is deviance that hurts people such as murder, rape, or theft. Even though this deviance hurts people, without it the world would not be able to function properly. On an economic stand point especially, deviance is necessary along with in many other areas. Just imagine what would happen if we no longer needed police or politicians. So basically until the world ends there will be deviance.

flight 227

In Sociology we were talking about deviance and flight 227. Flight 227 was a case in which a group of people were trapped on an air plane that crashed in the mountains. While they were trapped on the air plane the people were forced to commit cannibalism and eat their dead friends and other teammates. In class we were discussing whether or not this would be considered deviant. I said that it wouldn't because they did it out of desperation, they didn't want to, and they did not kill anyone. As a whole we decided that it depended which society you were taking a look at. If you were talking about the society where the people on the plane came from we said that it would be considered deviant because in that society it would have been looked down upon to eat someone else. However, because while the people were on the plane they were no longer considered part of their former society and actually part of their own society in which in was completely acceptable and necessary to eat other people in order to survive.

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is believing that your ethnicity is better or superior to everyone Else's. I also see this as Racism. Both of these things are really stupid and useless. Who cares where you came from and what you look like?? It makes no difference, you are who you are based on the decisions you make not what Ethnicity you are. You can decide that you are no better then the stereotype people put on your ethnicity but then that will be your own decision and so you really can't complain when people react to you the way they do because its your own fault not your ethnicity or race. SO PLEASE STOP PLAYING THE RACE CARD! OK enough of that but seriously stop. I'm part Irish that doesn't mean I can just be drunk all the time and blame it on the fact that I'm Irish, I'm also part German that does NOT mean that I should just go around and start persecuting Jews.

church

I was at church today and we talk a lot about morals. Being a Christian normally means that your supposed to have good morals. Unfortunately a lot of people dislike Christians because they say they are hypocrites, Just because we are Christians does not mean that we are automatically perfect. We are just supposed to try to do the right thing. I think that I have pretty good morals but on the moral scale I;m not sure where I would fall. Morals are not universal, one person might have a set of morals that they try to follow and another person might have a completely different set of morals. Some morals I do think are pretty universal though like do not murder, or steal, or rape people. (although, I could be biased because of the Bible and the ten commandments)