Day 14 Sociology of Religion

you [Music] good afternoon welcome to sociology one little heads up in this class not this Wednesday will come to class normally on this Wednesday but the following Wednesday Wednesday the 19th we're having another event having to do with the election so that's the day of the final debate between the candidates so from 6 to 8 we'll have another debate watching party in the theater but during the day from 2 to 5 we're having an open mic for voters so that'll be in the theater too and that will involve anybody who wants to can get up and say whatever they want for up to 10 minutes related to political issues so especially local issues is what we're hoping people will talk about local candidates local measures that are on the ballot including measure Q which affects funding for Yuba college and so lots of things for people to be talking about there and if you want extra credit for this class while attending you can get extra credit if you turn in a paper and talk about what you saw and heard at any part of the event whether the more the open mic or the later debate and there'll be an open mic after the debate as well in the theater in between there's gonna be free dinners so if you come you can get free food before the debate but you can also get extra credit if you speak if you get up and do 10 minutes I'll give you extra credit just for doing that so please try to come to the event but since it starts at 2:00 o'clock 2:00 to 5:00 is the open mic I won't be here I'm gonna be over there so I think what I'm gonna actually ask is that this class meet at least from 2:00 to 2:30 or 2:45 in the let's say you know we meet we start here 2:30 so if you could be there from 2:30 to 3:45 at least at the at the open mic you can listen other people talking and it'll definitely relate to sociology because it's all about this community and also the larger national community and state so so that's what I'll be meeting in the theater next not this Wednesday Wednesday the 19th is that clear and it's all part of what's called the October voter Fest and my class sociology 2 is putting on this event we to grant or the school got a grant for $10,000 from the Community College foundation to promote voter registration the other thing is if you're not registered to vote I don't think I can give you extra credit for that but you definitely should be registered to vote and that's one of the reasons we're having the event and we will have all the resources you need there to get registered even online if that's the way you want to do it all right well in here we're talking about not politics but religion and obviously those two things are supposed to be separate in American culture at least in terms of our government but we're talking we were talking about Durkheim's analysis of religion so we were talking about the elementary forms of religious life this is talking about Durkheim the reason we're talking about Durkheim is well we're talking about functionalism in general but functionalism has a lot to say about religion and we were comparing durkheim's views on religion to those of Karl Marx as we said Karl Marx saw religion as a tool that the dominant class is used to maintain their dominance over the subordinated classes they make people believe that religion is the right thing to believe in not revolution or anything like that and Durkheim disagree with this view of religion because you didn't think you could just impose religion on people from above or maybe you could but that's not where religion comes from according to him if we're gonna ask about these functions of religion we need to think about why do groups create that the group functions religious belief and practice so the group functions of religion and as we were talking about he tried to answer this question by going back to the earliest forms of religion before there was Christianity Buddhism Islam before any of those there were groups of human beings and they had religious belief and he asked for what function did those served and the kinds he was talking about I won't go back over the whole lecture but we tried to imagine how did those first beliefs start happening and as we pointed out they had to do with something Durkheim could cause collective effervescence it's this group power of people and I think we described it the other day when people get together and they do things as a group like chanting or singing or drumming or dancing they can begin to achieve this bubbly feeling this group effervescence collective effervescence where people feel like there's magical powers in that group power and intercoms view that's the beginning of religion as human beings realizing that groups as as a group of human beings they have power that they don't have as individuals and they begin creating representations of that power collective representations as the term he uses where the group creates images and symbols and other things that help them recognize that power and celebrate it and even worship it and these early religions were totemic religion and totem is usually a natural symbol you've probably heard of totem poles in the northwest the Indian tribe to the northwest often make these totem poles how many have ever heard of a totem pole it's a pole with a bunch of animals heads basically or other animal symbols and they typically represented each tribe in a clan of tribes so you might have like the Eagle clan and the bear clan and different clans and a lot of people at the time of Durkheim interpreted that to mean that these early humans were were worshipping animals and from a Christian standpoint that meant they were heathens and they were worshipping things they shouldn't worship because they were worshipping animals but Durkheim turns that around and says they're not really worshipping animals if they're worshipping these natural symbols like the bear or the eagle they're not really worshipping that what they're really worshipping is collective effervescence it's their group power that the bear symbolizes or the eagle symbolizes and in celebrating that animal and it's symbolic significance they're celebrating themselves they're saying we as a group have this amazing power when we do our group rituals and the bear maybe we associate with that power but we're not worshiping the bear we're worshiping our collective power our group power and Durkheim carries this for further and says well when people have abstract symbols when they're able to say that this thing stands for this this bear or this feather stands for us over here well that's abstract thought that's being able to say life isn't just what's right in front of us this rock this feather this tree there's also this kind of other realm this magical sacred realm as we talked about it and sometimes we have to symbolize that sacred realm we can't see it and touch it and feel it but we can make symbols of it and pay attention to those symbols and if we've got symbolic symbolic thinking symbols in our heads symbolic representation of the world well then we're actually capable of thinking reasonable thoughts in other words he's actually saying here he's trying to make an argument that from works as we saw our religion is the opposite of science in his views science is rational thinking it's reason it's rate rationality and his view marks human beings should give up religion because that's a false way of thinking that's a untrue understanding of the world and science gives us a true understanding of world and in his view hit the conflict theory the thoughts we the ideas we talked about earlier in this class like the working class coming together in overthrowing capitalism and his view that was just science proving that not some religious belief about what should happen in the future and durkheim's saying well religion science aren't really opposite things human beings somehow had to learn how to think with reason and rationality and what how do you do that you have to have abstract symbols you have to have abstract thinking and the very first abstract thinking in human history was religious thinking thinking about this sacred realm and symbolizing it and so he's trying to say without religion we wouldn't be able to think rationally so they're not opposite things and science really what is science it's a collective representation of the universe and we imagine you know in our current scientific thinking there was this little ball of energy and it exploded and it created all the stars and you know planets and we're in that reality still and so I mean if you've studied science you know it represents the world we weren't there to see the Big Bang and things but it's a way of thinking about who are we where do we fit in the larger picture of the universe where are we going in that sense it's a lot like religion religion represents the world it tells people who are we where do we fit in the planet or where do we fit in life and where are we going and all those things and so science is just the latest version of what humanity's always been doing ever since the beginning humans have tried to figure out who are we where do we fit in the larger picture and they've tried to represent that with abstract symbols and so but the problem is for our current world in the modern world these early religions they're gone I mean those those tribes long ago ceased to be distinct groups and joined other groups and became new things and so now we have things like Christianity and Judaism and Islam and Buddhism and Sikhism and the current religions we have their representations their collective representations of specific groups like who are the Jews we are these people who are other Christians who are the Sikhs who are the Buddhists and four groups in an earlier time before Humanity was modern in today's world in the modern world he says we're all the modern world humanity is one single group really we're all connected on planet earth and we all depend on each other or at least you could say that about a big society like France it's all one group and even though you had Jews and Christians and Buddhists and other different groups in France really sociologically speaking it's all one group but the problem is because people have these older group representations of who they are they don't really see themselves connected to the other French people or I'm a Jewish person I'm a Muslim Francis steel dealing with this problem by the way they had a big debate earlier this summer where France said if you're a woman and you wear you know a hijab you wear your Muslim and you wear a head covering headscarf you can't go on the beach with the headscarf and a lot of the French people said well that's weird because we're a country that believes in freedom we had a revolution about that so why are we telling Muslim women they can't wear a headscarf and in fact somebody pointed out well Catholic nuns they wear habits they wear head coverings and they're allowed on the beach in France so why are we telling Muslim when women they can and the law got repealed but anyway France is still dealing with that question if we want to be unified as a country can we also have different religions because religions are the function of them is to hold a group together each other and if we have separate religions within a national society like France or the United States we may have conflict over those things because we're thinking of ourselves as separate groups rather than as one people all connected and so Durkheim actually says these old religions aren't functional anymore they're preventing humanity from functioning together as the one group that it is because people's mind is still stuck in who they used to be and Jews aren't really Jews anymore and Christians aren't really Christians anymore in in sociological terms we're all one tribes so we need describe that we're part of humanity needs a religion that it doesn't have right now it's got a bunch of old religions from the past and so the function of religion we can say is to provide social solidarity it's to provide a sense of a picture in your mind of how the universe works a picture in your mind of what group you're a part of and how you fit in to that larger universe I'm just gonna abbreviate on say that the function of religion is roots social solidarity holding a group together keeping it on the same page and that's what we're missing in today's modern world we are a group but we're a group that doesn't see itself that way and doesn't feel connected to each other and doesn't share the same collective representations of how we can all fit together together remember we said Durkheim is worried about this complex division of labor so we all go off and do our own things every day our own jobs we depend on each other because if Denis starts in the world then I can't get my teeth cleaned and if there aren't steel workers then dentists don't have steel tools to clean my teeth I mean we all eat each other in the modern complex economy but we don't necessarily feel connected in the ways like that's my brother I would go to bat for him I would die for that guy religions help people feel connected in that way and so that's what we seem to be missing he actually thought that science could be the collective representation of humanity as a whole so if you ask well how does humanity figure out who is humanity what is the human race how does it fit in the universe well science provides a lot of interesting answers to those questions and if human beings could all agree on science being the way to answer those questions it would serve the same function that religion always has a set of collective representations about how the planet about who we are or where we fit how we all are connected and ultimately though those sets of beliefs need norms they need sets of ideas about what's right or what's wrong what's the right way to do things what's the wrong way to do things and science doesn't really have that science is just a method for answering questions about how the universe works it doesn't really tell us what's the right way to act or the wrong way to act and in durkheim's time there was no such thing as sociology but he actually thought sociology if we could develop this new science of society then that could be like the secular religion it could be a religion for Humanity that wasn't religious that wasn't about supernatural things like unseen beings like God and angels and stuff but it would still be a set of beliefs that unites us that tell us where we fit that gives us a sense of norms in terms of what's right or what's wrong and sociology by focusing on society shows people how they're connected it can help show the steelworker how he's connected to the dentist and the dentist is connected to the sociologist and it would give us a sense of why we should you know treat each other right why we should pay each other decent wages why we should make sure we have good retirements and good health care systems and things like that and if we could feel more connected to each other we wouldn't have the kind of presidential debate that we had last night for example where people are hating on each other and vilifying each other instead we'd be all agreeing on the basic things of life and then trying to figure out what's the best way to get these things done but we're clearly a divided society in conflict with itself and our wins that out but Durkheim thinks what's really missing is a morality that unites us all and if you think sociology might provide the basis for that but remember he was writing in the eighteen hundreds before there was sociology we have it now I don't know if it's solving the problems the way he thought it could but but he his this work of his by the way you can see how it maybe ties in with symbolic interactionism he's the father of functionalism but in his latest work as he was finishing up his career writing about religion he began to talk a lot about symbolic the importance of symbols for orienting human beings and relating to each other and a lot of that work is actually more used in symbolic interactionism now than it is in functionalism so in some ways he was the father of functionalism but as he matured and drew as a sociologist his work shifted more towards symbolic interactionism in some way he's the father of that one of the fathers of that perspective as well but what about gamer Max Weber is the third major sociologist you've learned about and I'm running out of pens here to write with as usual now I want to start off by pointing out that Weber as he liked to do basically say well both marks and Durkheim are wrong and I've got the right answer and so even though marks and Durkheim are like on the opposite sides of things in a way there's one thing they share in common Marx and Durkheim are basically saying that religion is conservative religion is a conservative force I don't be a politically conservative although it often is I mean sociologically conservative meaning it holds society together it preserves society it conserves it it means it prevents change in other words the funk both marks and Durkheim seem seem to agree on that Marx says it prevents change because it keeps the same people in power and keeps things going how they are and prevents the powerless from challenging the status quo so mark sees religion as a conservative force in that sense and a politically conservative force because it keeps the same people in power Durkheim says it prevents change because it holds us all together it keeps us all thinking alike feeling connected to each other so it keeps us from having too much conflict and doing things too much differently because we've always done them it helps us maintain tradition and maintain belief systems and keep things going how they've always been gives us things to teach to our children so that they help maintain the things that we believed in so you could see religion as something that keeps society going how it's always been but Weber start his analysis by asserting that religion also can do the opposite of that religion at times in human history weber says that religion is a radical force meaning it causes major change in society that if you look back on human history thank you she's giving me a good pen I put right on the little I liked it when I wrote on the screen you know I guess I could switch over to that religion that says is a radical force so not a conservative force this one says conservative Marx and Weber Markson Durkheim do and Weber says knowing can be quite radical radical in the sense of causing major change just to give you an example of what we're talking about the civil rights movement Martin Luther King caused major change in the United States they challenged the laws of our country and challenged ways of doing things now that was a religious based movement that people in the movement the leaders of it were like Martin Luther King a reverend a religious figure and the people met to have their meetings and planned their actions and planned their protests in churches so could you really say that Southern churches were a conservative force that maintained America how it always was or would it be more accurate to say they were the seeds of a radical movement that challenged American society and even right now some of the most radical people that want change in America are evangelical Christians that say America's Way on the wrong track and we got to do things much differently than we're doing right now so I'm just giving you some reasons to maybe pay attention to vapers view that religion doesn't just keep things how they always word isn't just traditional it can sometimes be pushing for totally new ways of doing things and neighbors analysis helps us see that so that's where he's coming from that's one of the main differences between these founding fathers on their views of religion but Weber wrote a famous book called the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism it's one of the more famous books in the founding of sociology and it made a name for Baber and by the way he wrote this book there was a time when Bieber was very depressed we now know he spent about seven years just sitting in a chair looking out the window of his house and people wondered what happened to me because he had been a very driven guy before that he was trying really hard in law and scholarship and working very long hours and very driven guy to succeed and then all of a sudden he gets to appoint his life where you didn't want to do anything he just sat in the chair all day and then he wakes up out of his kind of stupor out of his depression and writes this famous book prostatic and spirit of capitalism and so I think my own theory is he was depressed about the state of the world and about as a young man what can you do with your life on planet Earth and he sat there thinking about that for seven years and then writes a book about it and so what's this book about well I'm getting ahead myself but he wants to understand basically the founding of America who were the Protestants he's talking about the Puritans the Puritans are the people that we celebrate on Thanksgiving the pilgrims that came over and where are the black and white clothes and the wind shoes and they settled America well the Indians are here but they settled out for them and they were they came to this country because of religious persecution they were something it was part of a religious movement club Calvinism and Calvinism was what you could call a radical sect a sect is a piece of a religion so you have overall Christianity which includes Catholicism and Protestantism Protestantism is a splinter off of Catholicism and created its own version of Christianity and then within Protestantism you have a lot of different sects like Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and others and common ISM was a radical sect of protestantism and they weren't well-liked in England where they lived and they got booted out and moved to like Netherlands for a while and then they eventually came here because the King of England said I'll let you practice Calvinism all you want in America if you want and so what is Calvinism and Duran vapers unique thing was to say if we look at this beliefs the spirit of Calvinism then we can see a lot of why America is the way it is today and so he's trying to say he's again arguing with Marx Marx if you recall was a materialist who said what makes societies what they are is how things are made and how people do things it's not their beliefs that shape how they do things it's how they do things that shapes their beliefs but Weber is offering a different view here and saying it was the beliefs of the Calvinists that turned America into what it is and today there are no more Calvinists in his you know that people going around saying they're a Calvinist and yet their beliefs are still with us because he's arguing that this work ethic the present that took another word for him we would call it the work ethic this idea that you're supposed to work hard and if you don't work hard you are a sinner you are being lazy you're being a bad person if you don't wake up early work hard and make as much money as possible that you could say is the main American belief and we get mad at people who won't get up and start doing their work and we say people who you know are making money there's something wrong with them they must not be virtuous they must not be blessed by God there must be something wrong with them and these beliefs are still with us in America in terms of valuing hard work and valuing wealth and so Weber asked well where do these beliefs come from what did they mean to the Communists and how did it create a whole new society they're being he's basically saying the beliefs they had created a whole new type of siding and the rest of the world really has had to become like America so I'm getting ahead of myself but what are their beliefs he said they had certain core beliefs and if you understand their core beliefs you can understand why though they live the way they did and then you can understand why how they began to shape our country and the world one of their core beliefs and one of the more controversial ones and why they were vilified the Kabbalists why people didn't necessarily want him around they believed in predestination the doctrine of predestination and that's the idea that God has already chosen who gets to go to heaven before while God was creating the universe according to Calvinists he already made a list of who's going to heaven and who isn't and it's already predetermined it's predestined and there's nothing you can do about it according to Calvin it doesn't matter how good of a person you are you can help old ladies across the street all you want you could donate all your money to charity that's not going to get you into heaven because that's not what decides it what decides it is God and he decided it a long time ago and you're either in it or you're out and basically most of us are out according to him there's only an elect the elect that's another word for the chosen that get to go to heaven and the rest of us are not and you might as well get used to that idea and so that's a pretty dark view according to most Christians all you have to do is you know have a good relationship with God and Jesus and you know confess your sins and things like that and if you do that you'll get to heaven but according to confidence no you may never most of us never will so that's a pretty harsh belief another idea that though was the idea that God also decided for you before you were born what you're meant to do here on earth that everybody has a certain calling that God already decided early on in life you know before you were born even well before you were ever born every book on here what your role in creation is and according to the Calvin that's our job as individuals is to help God create the universe that God is still creating the universe as we're in it and we are the ones making it happen and so the things we do here on earth are part of God's plan but you don't have a little label on you when you come out of your mom's womb that says here's what your calling is here's what you're supposed to be doing in life I didn't have a little label that said sociologists on it and you didn't either so you have to look for sign you don't know what your calling is in other words you've got to pay attention to the signs according to Calvinism God will give you signs of things that you should be like maybe there's things you're really good at that you're just better than other people at maybe there's things you just really love doing that you love more than other people do maybe there are certain things that just give you a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction and maybe those are signs that God is giving you that that's what you're meant to do like maybe you just love the smell of leather and you just always find yourself staring at people's feed and just thinking about how you could make a better shoe than the one they're wearing and how poorly designed their shoe is maybe God is telling you you really ought to think about being a shoe maker because that's what you're really into and you're gonna shine on it and your calling is to do the best you can do at your calling you need to have total devotion to your colleagues you wouldn't be a good covenant or a good Christian according to Calvin you have to devote yourself to your calling what does that mean well start doing it now start getting good at it when you are good at it get up every morning as early as you can and start doing it and do it as late as you can in the day and devote yourself totally to that calling that's your calling that's what God wants you to do so that's how you do what you're supposed to do here on earth is do your calling and the signs by the way we might not know if we're getting into heaven and you won't know until you die but a the Calvinist way of thinking you there might be signs that you are blessed there might be signs that you are among the chosen if for example you really do well in your calling and you've become quite wealthy at your calling that might be a sign that God has blessed you and you're among the elite in the elect and you might be destined for heaven so that's another good reason to devote yourself to your calling because if you become wealthy at it at least that might be a sign and maybe other people will take it as a sign and it's just a good idea to be successful at your calling and not put it off or blow it off or whatever and the final core belief he points to is asceticism asceticism means self-denial according to Calvin you're here on earth because God put you here it's all about God's glory God created the universe according to Calvin to glorify God he didn't create you to glorify you he created you to help create creation so for example don't call a lot of attention to yourself do you remember what the pilgrims what did they wear they wore black and white in other words you weren't supposed to wear a lot of colors wearing a lot of colors means you're calling attention to yourself look at me look at me look how great I am and Calvinism said no it's about God give the glory to God not to yourself another thing they wore was wooden shoes the idea was what wooden shoes might not be the most comfortable thing but you're not here for your pleasure and comfort you're here to do your calling and if you think about their church dominus churches I don't know if you've ever been to New England around Massachusetts and Maine and Rhode Island in those places but Calvinist churches are very simple it's a little white wooden building it's not a cathedral Catholics are famous for building large cathedrals and cathedrals are very expensive with lots of stained glass lots of ornate sculptures lots of marble and stuff like that and they're expensive and one of the things the Calvinist said is we're not building huge buildings to call attention to ourselves we are serving God and all we need to do that is a little simple white structure if you put all these three things together you get some people that are very successful in business why do you think you'd be so successful in business if these were your core beliefs if you decide to be a shoemaker what kind of shoe maker would you be if you are a Calvinist shoe maker maybe wooden but you're serving other people in the too so I'm not just saying what kind of shoes would you make but what kind of shoe maker would you be right you're Protestant you're Calvinist but what I'm asking things like what time would you get up in the morning when would your shop open most shops open what at 10 o'clock when would your shop open 6:00 in the morning what time does it close a lot of shops closed I like 5:00 in the afternoon when is your shop closed like 9:00 or 10:00 at night so you're there all day long making and selling shoes in other words you are very hardworking so that helps you maybe succeed what else might you do as a Calvinist that would help you be successful well let's think about that what should you do with the money if you make profit in your shoots let's say you decide I'm gonna start a shoe shop because I really my calling is shoes and you start making shoes and selling shoes and you're doing well people like your shoes and they're buying them what should you do with your profits according to these three principles what would be the most common this thing to do if I've got a thousand dollars that I don't need for my family because my business in my pocket what does a what would a Calvinist with these three core beliefs say you should do with that money what'd you say how far there's no that confidence would say that's not a good idea why is that not a good idea according to beliefs we just said so if I give her my money then she might not find her calling cuz she's just gonna take my thousand dollars and she'll go buy stuff with it but she hasn't found her calling she needs to go make her own thousand dollars that's the Protestant ethic don't take handouts from other people remember Claude Stanley in the movie we saw he was Protestant and one of his big core beliefs was I'm not going to take handouts I'm gonna go get a job even it's way less money so that's the ethic there and no you don't just hand out your money Catholics say give your money to the poor tied to the church that would be another possibility maybe give your money to the church but Calvinism says no then what church doesn't need your money we've got a white building that's all we need we don't need stained-glass windows we don't even need a priest we don't need all this fancy stuff so don't give your money to the church what should you do with it make better shoes meaning what how can you help your calling with the money grow your business don't keep it small and frugal open another church shoe shop open a chain of shoe shops become the shoe king of New England not just one little shop making money so Calvinists a total delusion you're calling means the only religious the moral thing to do with the money you got from your calling is put it back into the calling God made you a successful shoe maker so you can do what be a successful shoe maker he didn't give you money so you can buy fancy shoes or buy fancy hats and makeup he got blessed you with profits so you can grow your calling and so in their view that's the responsible point of view and so these guys these Protestant these pilgrims these curtains in New England were very successful people and America as you know is a successful capitalist economy and the rest of the world has had to in many ways since the time of the Puritans since 17 since the 1660 No 2 is when they came the rest of the world has had to become a little bit more like the Calvinists paper makes a distinction between proposed 'iv rationality and instrumental or I'm sorry technical rationality if you recall from earlier in this class Weber was worried that too much rationality was harming our world it was making us too much like robots having to do things we don't want to do all the time because rationality demands it we feel like we're in an iron cage and remember I said he wrote this book after spending seven years sitting by his window I think what he was trying to understand was why do I have to go get a job for example devote myself to a career spend all my time in their career he was supposed to be a lawyer and certain kinds of law jobs are really boring and mind-numbing jobs and I think Weber was asking himself do I need to devote myself my whole life to this job where I'm gonna spend most of my time doing stuff that's really boring mind-numbing really uninteresting to me and I don't want to have to do that but my society's telling me that's what you have to do and he's asking where did this come from now he was in Germany Germany is also a Protestant country that is known for hard work but he was a guy that liked to drink beer for example he liked the party he liked to do other things he wasn't necessarily the kind of guy that wants to get up at 5:00 in the morning get to his job at 6:00 and work until 10:00 at night every night and so he was asking how do we get to be a society or that's what most of us are expected to do propose some rationality that is rationality that hasn't purpose is maximizing your game that's what rationality means maximize your game minimize your loss that's what a good little Protestant shoe makers doing I got to maximize the profits of my shoe company I gotta minimize my costs and I got to keep maximizing my profits and if I've got to grow and add more shoe shops to get even more profit then that's what I got to do but you're maximizing gain for religious for a let's say a meaningful purpose basically it means get rich for God and if you are at Calvinism that makes total sense you wake up the morning and you're saying I got to get to work not cuz I'm so excited about making shoes necessarily but because I'm so excited about serving God every dollar I make is more glory for God if you really believe in that then it doesn't feel like a burden to get up in the morning it feels like you're waking up with the Sun and the sun's got to do its job for God and you've got to do your job for God and it's not a bad thing it's not taking you away from anything it's allowing you to be the little opening flower that God planted you to be if you really believe in the meaningfulness of your work as serving this much larger purpose then it doesn't feel like an imposition or a burden up and so the Communists they believed in this lifestyle they had core beliefs in it it was their faith and their lifestyle was based on their faith nowadays though many of us have to live like Calvinists we have to get up in the morning we have to maximize our wealth we have to try and keep making as much profit as possible but are we Calvinists the Calvinism went away a long time ago but why is it that other countries and other places have had to be like Calvinists because if you're a very successful business in a capitalist society then other companies have to be like you or they're gonna fail I was in Spain my junior year of college so I was looking at life like what do I want to be when I grow up what kind of lifestyle do I want to lead do I own a boat myself to work most of the time or are there other things in life that are interesting besides work like you know and other things Spain is a Catholic country so they were never pasta in the way the ways the Calvinists are and Spain while I was there I don't know how much today still but speaking for example has something called the u.s. bet everybody noticed yes it is right around lunchtime you go home so I was living at a Spanish family's house and I would go to school all day and at lunchtime you come home around 12 o'clock your Senora made you a nice big lunch because that was their main meal of the day it was lunchtime and you would eat that and you'd be all full and then you'd go to sleep for two hours and then you'd wake up I like 4:00 in the afternoon and you'd go back to work for a while till like 10:00 at night and I kind of liked this lifestyle like worked for a few hours in the morning come home eat a big meal sleep and then go out and do more work and it was a nice Pleasant lifestyle and it makes sense for Spain because Spain's really hot during the afternoon so in the spring and summer so going to sleep while it's hot is better than working but Spain while I was there began to say we can't yes this Spain needs to get rid of siestas why do you think Spain was talking about getting rid of siestas and watch so but it always worked for Spain for hundreds of years so why now did they suddenly say yeah it's because we're not as productive but why are they worried about not being productive because you're competing competing with Germany and America and England and France and they were pointing out while they're not taking naps in the mode of the day those Americans work really hard they work all day long and they're making a lot of money over there and if our Spanish companies are letting everyone take naps in the afternoon well we're not gonna be able to compete with American companies and we'll get bought by them and owned by them and so Spain was in the process when I was there becoming part of the capitalist global economy and realizing if we're gonna compete in this global economy we got to live more like those Protestants in America do in England in Germany and even in a matter New England was where these Puritans settled but there were a lot of other people coming to America in the colonies and later but these Puritans were such successful businesspeople that if you wanted to compete if you want to open your own shoe shop and you want to compete with the Puritans you better wake up at 6:00 in the morning you better keep your shop open all day you better reinvest your profits back in your business or you're not gonna be able to compete so Weber is making the case here that this little religious group that settled America 400 years ago created a lifestyle that now pretty much the whole world has to live by and it's not something inevitable in capitalism that we would have a world where everybody has to devote their whole life to making money but if we don't really believe in Calvinism but you're faced with the world over I have to get up every morning and devote my whole time to my job and invest my profits back in my business if that's the way we all have to operate now and even if we're not the business owner we have to do the things the business owner wants us to like work real hard and put our family second and other things second what really matters is your job and we're told we're bad people if we like go home to take care of our sick kid you better put your job first better serve your employer we say in America but if that ever seems to you like I don't know if I wanted to find myself by my job my whole life is my job my whole time is my job I don't know if you've ever said to yourself whether you like that or not me personally one of the reasons I got into sociology is I ask what kind of world do we live in where your job is the most important thing and other things aren't supposed to matter as much but he calls that technical round hobby and now it's like get rich to get rich in other words there's no larger meaning or purpose in it and if we look at the richest people in our world we sometimes ask well are they so much happier and fulfilled and better the billionaire running for president so much better person than the rest of us I don't know if how you think about that but um but anyway that's the kind of world they've created is getting rich for wealth sake rather than getting rich to serve this larger meaningful purpose so so it's an interesting argument that the capitalist world we live in isn't just an economic system Marx just said well that's how the system works the system requires us to live this way it's just a structural fact of capitalism that it needs to grow but labor is making a different argument that it's a cultural belief system we're living under that tells us we should grow we should get rid we should work hard and if we're not doing those things where somehow lazy or bad people or not doing things right and we could ask ourselves as a culture is that the only belief system to follow are there other values that might matter as much as rationality and maximizing well but anyway that's the world we have and he says he comes from a belief system not from a structural change so Marx we said you know Marx defined himself as a materialist it's a system of capitalism that causes us to live the way we do or the mode of production is what causes the beliefs we have but neighbors more of an idealist he's saying it's the ideas people have that guide them to live the way they do and so really the Protestant ethic this idea that we're supposed to work hard and if we're not working hard we're bad people that's the one of the primary and driving beliefs of our current capitalist world and he refers to it as a kind of rationalism without limits if your whole goal is to make wealth for wealth say well then no amount is enough and impoverishing other people at your own you know for your own benefit makes sense and you know if we make rational you can make well the main thing you know a lot of other things get left behind but so anyway so this is more of a cultural argument saying it's people's beliefs that guide their actions and their actions aren't the things they create and so maybe you can see to why he is a founding father of symbolic interactionism because she's really saying it's the ideas in people's head that matter more than things like the economic system that they have and in fact the economic systems they have are the result of the ideas they have in their heads so he's giving much more weight to ideas than serial realities as the determinants of how people act and what they believe in so anyway so that's I can see you're not really with me here maybe it's because every time I start talking about something that happened more than five minutes ago most Americans are like have no idea what you're talking about we're talking about things 100 years ago but hopefully you can see that it is relevant in the sense that today many of us ask well can I be happy in a job am I gonna be happy devoting myself to a single career is it even possible to have a single career nowadays and am I happy devoting myself mainly to work as opposed to other things human beings can do like families like pleasure like creativity you know for a lot of people who are creative artists a lot of people say well what I really love to do is make art but in our society if you're not making money then you're not doing what you're supposed to do so there's many art artistically inclined people that say well since I can't make money doing art I guess I'll have to spend my life doing something I don't really like doing and you know I don't know if that sounds tragic to you but that's what we're getting at here you know is the system we have the only one possible or is it a reflection of beliefs that we don't even have anymore it's like a system that was created based on beliefs that most people don't necessarily share so anyway that's what I have to say about the founding fathers views on religion your textbook goes into much more other things about religion like if we were to look at America today and ask well how religious are people how spiritual are they how much church do they attend and there's some interesting differences there that you can pay attention to your book I don't have much to lecture on about it but I'm hoping these what's called classical theory these early or classical theories of Marx fear durkheim I think they're still relevant today because the basic issues they're raising are still ones where we're debating as a society you know you can let's bring it up to the election America and one big group in America are what are called evangelicals and a lot of them generally GOP they vote for the Democrat Republican party but the current guy Trump is the candidate and he's not necessarily religious at all she and so there's a question of duties in evangelical support I'm Trump evangelicals are the closest thing I would say to the kind of Calvinist view traditional Puritan beliefs in America Mitt Romney by the way ran for president a few years ago he's Mormon Mormons generally support the GOP but the Mormons from what I can tell don't love Trump and Utah is one of those states that's not sure is it gonna vote Trump or not vote Trump and the Mormons I think I don't know this for a fact but Mormonism if you look at the belief system of Mormonism it comes very close to the Calvinism that very analysed Mormons put a very high value on a hardwork devoting yourself to your calling not to vote not calling much attention to yourself as an individual person Mormon churches are pretty austere and how they look they have some gold and stuff like that but they're pretty basic and I think I'm Mitt Romney one of the things he said when he was running for president is he was he made a distinction between makers and takers he said some people in America are makers they're the ones that have companies and they employ people and then there's the other people that are the takers and he was implying that people who get public assistance who get help from the government and things like that they're just taking from the people who make it's it's a pretty common astray of looking at things it's not a Marxist way of looking at things because Karl Marx would say Mitt Romney you don't make you just invest money and investing money you're making profit but you taking profit from the workers who made that well if you didn't sit in the factory making the stuff you just took the wealth so anyway but that distinction between makers and takers is is an interesting one and Mitt Romney was saying you know that's why we need to cut welfare and get people off public assistance and make people responsible for themselves personal responsibility was a key idea there but interestingly enough Mitt Romney is one of the biggest critics of Trump and doesn't support him and I think he's even said you know you should vote for Hillary maybe and so he is somebody that thinks that if we really want America to live up to its core values that Trump wouldn't be somebody that reflects that in his view on the other hand we also another big religious group in America are Catholics Catholics are associated with in America what we call white ethnics evangelical religion and Mormonism are associated more with water club white anglo-saxon and then Protestants but I would think of Mormonism is it a version of Protestantism that developed here in America after we were founded by the by the Puritans I sometimes wonder if they are in fact the descendants of the Calvinists there aren't many people going around saying they're Calvinists anymore but there's a big group of Mormons that used to be on the East Coast and now are in Utah also looking for religious liberty and ending up in Utah doing that but so the Mormons are kind of the extension of what Babers talking about Catholics are Christians too but they generally came to America more as immigrants in the 20th late 19th century and 20th century when I say white ethnics we mean white people who are now considered white but aren't part of the anglo-saxon they didn't come from England they are like Italians and Irish and read in Russian and there's different kinds of Catholics because there's Eastern Orthodox and then there's traditional Catholicism and a lot of the immigrants that came out of this country has working people to come work in the factories owned by white anglo-saxon people we're from a different religion and when we look at American politics sometimes the Democratic Party is more supported by white ethnic groups working people not because of the religion so much as because of their working-class position in society but some of the big issues we used to say is this country that there are Values Voters and their Values Voters are based oftentimes on their religious beliefs so what do you think are some of the values that religious voters might be concerned about when it comes to the election what would be some issues do you think well okay but specific issues aside from the candidate what would be Values Voters one of the issues that they look for when they're deciding on candidates can you think of any political issues that really have their roots or they bear on religious questions that different religions may have different rules about abortion is one of the big ones how do you feel about abortion and that has complicated this picture I'm talking about here catheters are especially opposed to abortion and yet for working reasons economic reasons they often vote Democratic but for religious reasons some strongly conservative Catholics are very much in favor of the GOP Antonin Scalia who was a recent Supreme Court justice who died he was Catholic he's from the Italian working-class background so he's a white ethnic from Italian background but he was never Democrat he's much more Republican for values reasons abortion and what big one do you think capital placement while I was really gonna get into marriage your marriage issues like divorce and gay marriage our other big values issues that often come down to your religion depending on your religion Protestants tend to think divorce is OK in fact one of the reasons they're called Protestants or why did when did Protestantism become Protestantism when it broke off from Catholicism why did it break off from Catholicism because the King of England wanted to get divorced and the Pope the head of the Catholic Church said you can't get divorced that's not allowed and the Qinglin said well then I'll start my own religion and then it'll be allowed and so they created Protestantism in England and so in the western part of Europe and so that division still exists in some ways and Protestants tend to be less worried about you know divorce but they a lot of them are anti-abortion as well so Catholics sometimes have to choose where they stand on this issue so do any evangelicals but a lot of them strongly vote conservative vote Republican I don't know how far capital punishment where people come down on that I think I'm not exactly sure what the religion says I believe the Pope and some other strongly religious people are opposed to the idea that human beings get to decide who dies or lives that that's God's decision not humans and so but I don't know some Catholics are very opposed to capital punishment some are in favor of it saying with evangelicals other groups obviously in this country aren't just evangelicals in and Catholics you know other big groups include you know and Jews and Buddhists Sikhs and your your book breaks it down and I think gives you figures on what percentages of our population are these different groups you hear a lot America is a Christian country that's not an accurate statement in my view the Puritans were the first colonists that started Jamestown and the early colonies but a lot of the early colonists weren't Calvinists especially the children of the Calvinists I mean the founding fathers like Jefferson and Washington and some of those guys weren't Calvinists anymore they called themselves deists and other kinds of religion so to say that America was founded by the Calvinists it's sort of true and sort of not true and in any case we define ourselves now is a secular country secular country means we don't have an official religion we're not a theocracy at the oxys you have one religion the official religion of your country and we define ourselves as a secular nation with no official religion religions your private matter not an official state matter but again we're seeing some of the cracks in trying to create a society where everyone gets their own religion and somehow we're all supposed to work together when we all have very different core beliefs and that's kind of what Durkheim was getting at if you don't have shared faith in a sense or shared collective representations of big things like who are we where are we going what are we all about then it's hard to work together in things like institutions and schools and elections and government and stuff like that okay so some people say America has a civil religion that we do there is a kind of Americanism that we all sort of believe it I believe that that's one of the reasons we organized this October voter fest is to say well we might seem very divided as a country and ready to kill each other but there are certain things we do believe in like you should be able to get up at a mic and say what you think that you should be able to you know enjoy some you know barbeque chicken in the fall you know I don't know I'm just saying there are things Americans do agree on that are our core values things like fries agent democracy and equality yeah core values you could say that we say we share as a country and they're supposed to make us feel like we can work together but and I agree with you that we should be emphasizing those similarities and that's one reason I get upset with our current political coverage and the debates is they only ever talk about the ways we're different from each other and things we hate each other about and the things that divide us and you know it should be an opportunity for us to celebrate the core things we do believe in rituals by the way rituals are a really important part of religious practice the only way groups can reinforce with each other that they really do believe the things they say they believe is to get together and have these rituals where we remember and celebrate those beliefs and those symbols and so you know we mentioned the Hopi Indians earlier in this class the rain dance even if it doesn't bring the rain has important functions like helping Hopi Indians maintain themselves as a group and their core beliefs and I would agree with you if America is going to have a working social solidarity where we're connected to each other and willing to work together and not kill each other then we have to have more rituals where we remind each other what are our core values what are our core symbols I don't have the you happen to be in the class on sociology - that's helping to put on this fest that we're having the October voter Fest but that's how you guys Costa Cabo is the October voter Fest oh it's a little interesting choice because Oktoberfests are really a German tradition not an American tradition but we're calling it the October voter fest we're not serving any beer but that's part of the German ritual is to have beer on Oktoberfest but what our poster that I can't not going to show you right now it has certain symbols on it that are meant to unite people in an almost religious way like what the Stars and Stripes whenever you see the red white and blue and the Stars and the stripes those are the kinds of symbols that are supposed to make you feel connected at the level of your heart at the level of your collective effervescence to other people where we say hey we're all connected we share this value we love that symbol just the you know the act of voting and wearing your little sticker going to your boots and doing the voting and having a little I voted sticker it doesn't matter if you're a Republican Democrat whatever we all kind of look at somebody that has one of those and we say good job you did what you're supposed to in America you followed the norms there are norms and you know rights and wrongs rules about how we do things or don't do things connected with voting and connecting with the ritual of voting and so those are you could see all of this as part of the civil religion of America when I say civil religion we mean government I know it's government sanctioned but it's not not a faith it doesn't depend on belief and unseen things like heaven after you die or a creator that is there that we can't see it's just about real things like you know that we can see much like voting booths and flags and stuff like that so in that sense it's a civil religion not an actual religion but it serves some of the same functions as other religions have which is tie us together feel connected orient us make us understand why are we doing this because it leads to that and that kind of thing so but I do feel as a country right now I don't know where we stand with this how many of you watch the debate last night quite a few is a very not that me it's a popular debate partly because it has some very famous people in it but part of America's problem for the last twenty thirty years if you ask me is people not participating much in politics and if we don't do our rituals like they'll be yeah then we'll cease to be a people and so if people don't vote don't go do the rituals don't reaffirm their faith in these the value of these things then we we don't really have them anymore and sometimes I think we don't have America more but it's just a simulacrum of it I started to think that last night as I was watching the debate I'm like is this like the best reality TV show ever like maybe they're just acting maybe they're pretending to run for president and it's like all set up with the script and everything I don't know it looked that way at times I hope not I don't wanna be a conspiracy theorist and think that some people are in a room back there going okay Donald you say this and then Hillary you say this and the American people are all gonna tune in but it seemed that way at times like a staged circus to me well yeah exactly well even if it wasn't planned out at this point there's almost a script to how debates go or you could you could have written the answers like if she says this here's what Donald should say and he said so it's like kind of I mean that gets to symbolic interactionism the way we were just repeating dramas we've already seen but anyway any of their thoughts or any of this religion no they're big topics that make people not want to talk so I don't know what to say about that I guess I'm not going to move on to my yeah they want the same core beliefs and or people still believe and we should be involved in other countries and whether or not there's tyranny going on there and fight for our country and try to prevent people from acquiring dangerous thing maybe yeah we could debate those I think I was getting more in terms of core beliefs it's more like core norms of how you should be as a person like should you vote or not I don't think there'd anybody be it's so great I don't vote I just don't care I don't see anyone do you like advertising that fact whereas if you say I vote I care about politics it's seen as a virtuous thing it's sometimes called Republican virtue not meaning the Republican Party but meaning if you live in a republic if you live in a place where you're supposed to help make things happen like vote on things and pay attention that there's certain virtues meaning good good behavior and we tend to think people who pay attention to news follow things who are well informed who vote on things who you know follow the laws and things like that that those are all virtues that means you're upholding the Republic and doing what you're supposed to do and people who don't do those things in fact the word idiot by the way comes from Greek and it means the people who didn't participate in the Republic Greece was the first democracy and that democracy said since you're Greek free citizen you get to come and vote on things and there were some people that were too lazy and wanted to go drink wine or whatever and in Greek society at the time they said well if you're somebody who can vote and does it well you're an idiot and you could say in some ways America has become a little bit idiotic in the sense that people don't want to participate or they haven't for the last twenty thirty years and if you don't participate then you may get what one movie called an idiocracy in other words it if you don't participate you may get idiotic society in idiotic policies but anyway my plea to saying you should pay attention you should participate if you're not you're not really being a good American you're not being a good American you could ask yourself well why are you here then now some of the worst Americans in terms of what I'm talking about actually voting and actually participating are the ones that want to close our borders and keep anyone out who's not a good American but are they good Americans are they doing the Republican virtues I don't know are you so anyway that's a good plea to you to vote I guess I'm gonna let you a little early because I we need to move on to the next topic which is symbolic interactionism and we're going to be talking about race and gender normally we would go into gender as the next thing I don't know if we will because on Wednesday next week you have to I think what I'm gonna do is this I'm gonna ask them to play a video hopefully this is okay with you we normally watched a video when it comes to gender it's called tough guys too and it doesn't make sense really to have you all sit here watching it but I think what we'll do is we'll go to the open mic I'll have them play it on the screen here so the people at home will be able to watch that the people at home you're also encouraged very much to come to the campus for the October voter Fest on Wednesday the 19th from 2 to 9 p.m. and any time in there you can come to it and but you know also this video will have played on our screen that means I'm gonna ask you all to watch tough guys to from your computers at home you'll just go onto canvas and go onto pages and watch tough guys too so is that gonna work out that you'll watch the video on a computer on your own time but we'll spend next week's our next Wednesday's class over at the theater that makes sense I'll remind you about it later ok see you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Marc Flacks

Views: 1,450

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Id: 86zqmj-80u8

Length: 80min 2sec (4802 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020