 Hey, baby, are you really a doctor? Yeah, I have a PhD. Can I see it? You can hear about it. When do you want to get together? How about Thursday at noon? How about every Thursday at noon on CFUV? You want other people to hear us? I want everyone to hear us. Welcome to the first ever episode of First Person Plural. Each week we are going to address a specific topic with a sociological eye. We hope to introduce you to a way of thinking that recognizes the ways in which we live in the world together. We begin this journey by posing a simple question. Who is in control of your life? This question has been answered by philosophers, theologians, politicians, and over the past two centuries or so, a breed of scholars who call themselves sociologists. Georg Zimmel, in 1922, wrote about the ways in which people create groups with each other in Dekrutzung Soziolechais, literally translated into English as intersection of social circles. Reinhard Bendix in his 1950 translation of Zimmel's work, felt that social circles was too vague a term and thus entitled it the web of group affiliations. The question of how the individual and society create each other was addressed in Zimmel's text. The development of the public mind shows itself by the fact that a sufficient number of groups is present, which have formed an organization. Their number is sufficient in the sense that they give an individual of many gifts the opportunity to pursue each of his interests in association with others. Such multiplicity of groups implies that the ideals of collectivism and of individualism are approximated to the same extent. On the one hand, the individual finds a community for each of his inclinations and strivings, which makes it easier to satisfy them. This community provides an organizational form for his activities, and it offers in this way all the advantages of group membership as well as of organizational experience. On the other hand, the specific qualities of the individual are preserved through the combination of groups, which can be a different combination in each case. Thus one can say that society arises from the individual and that the individual arises out of association. An advanced culture broadens more and more the social groups to which we belong with our whole personality, but at the same time the individual is made to rely on his own resources to a greater extent, and he is deprived of many supports and advantages associated with the tightly net primary group. Thus, the creation of groups and associations in which any number of people can come together on the basis of their interest in a common purpose compensates for that isolation of the personality, which develops out of breaking away from the narrow confines of earlier circumstances. Zimmel seems to be answering the question that we control our lives by the ways in which we choose our social circles, but then our social circles help shape who we are. We pose to the question, who is in control of your life and how do you know this? To a number of people in Victoria. We greatly appreciate those who took the time to answer this question for our broadcast. Even though most said they were in some control of their lives, we heard a range of answers. There were those who said unequivocally that they were in control. I am. Well, I make it so. Yes. I am. Because I make all the decisions that affect my life. There were those who said they were in control, but showed some hesitation. I am. How did I come to feel that way? I just know that I am. Well, if I'm not in control of it, who would be? Me. Because I can make my own choices. I think I'm a mature person who's well informed enough about what's going on in the world and where I am in the world and I can make my own choices. I think for the most part I am because I am well aware of what's going on around me and if I don't know, I'll make a point of going to learn and I mean my friends do help me make decisions, but I am in the most part in control. Because I wake up in the morning and I tell myself what to do and that's a good question. There were those who said they hoped they were in control. Who's in control of my life? Salvador. No, that's not true. Who's in control of my life? I would hope I am. How did I come to believe that? Because there's only me at the end. Well, I hope I am. I just had open heart surgery, so that's a reason to be in control of your life. Me. I make my own choices. She said question only. That's a hard question. I like to think I'm in control of my life. Basically because I pay the bills and I make my own decisions about where I'm going to work. But having to work is not my choice, so there's not a who that's in charge, unless it's me. There were those who said their friends or families were in control. My mom. Because she tells me what to do. Do you do what she tells you? Yeah. Alright. Like kids. Because everything I do, everything I say, everything I do has to do with them. Everything. My girlfriend's in control of my life. My parents are in control of my life. My animals are in control of my life. And I think my cars are in control of my life. Because they all cost me a lot of money. There was one who said society controlled his life. Who's in control of my life? I say society's in control of my life. Because I can control certain aspects, but in general I'm led to believe that I have to get a job. I have to grow up and do all these things that are expected in society now. So that's why I think it dictates what I do with my life. Finally, one suggested no one was in control. No one controls one's life. The elements. Society. Life itself. Depending on whatever you're doing, you're still not in charge. You think you are, but you're not. Just look around you. Would we have all this upheaval? Any decent person would say no. You are not in charge. UCLA sociologist Harold Garfinkel has related a story about teaching that seemed relevant to our project this week. Not so much because he talks of control as his experience is similar to the one we had, even while posing this question to strangers. Garfinkel assigned his graduate seminar a sociological experiment whereby they would get on a bus with only a few people on it and instead of sitting in one of the empty seats, they would walk up to someone and ask for their seat. This breaking of a social norm seemed benign enough. However, after three weeks, none of his students had accomplished the assignment and they complained that it was too difficult. Garfinkel decided to prove to them that it was not difficult. So he had the small class get on the bus at one stop and then he got on at a later stop and was to perform the experiment in front of them to demonstrate the ease of the assignment. All went well until the moment that Garfinkel had to approach the stranger and ask for the seat. He reports that his palms began to sweat and he felt physically ill as he asked the question. In that moment he realized how truly difficult it is to ask something of a stranger outside the expectations of society. We enjoyed talking to each person who answered our question, but we were also amused as to how much the control of society affected our ability simply to ask the question. We had to overcome our own feelings of impropriety to accomplish this assignment. So while asking about control, we proceed for ourselves how much society controls us. In the stately personage said, No little boy, I don't want a little boy. The little boy whose heart was too full for utterance. Chewing a piece of licorice stick, he had bought with his scent stolen from his good and pious aunt, with sobs plainly audible and with great globules of water rolling down his cheeks. Glided silently down the marble steps of the bank. Bending his noble form, the bank man dodged behind a door, for he thought the little boy was going to shy a stone at him. But the little boy picked up something and stuck it in his poor but ragged jacket. Come here little boy, and the little boy did come here. And the bank man said, Lo, what pickest thou up? And he answered and replied, Up in. And the bank man said, Little boy, are you good? And he said he was. And the bank man said, How do you vote? Excuse me, do you go to Sunday school? And he said he did. Then the bank man took down a pen made of pure gold and flowing with pure ink. And he wrote on a piece of paper, ST period Peter. And he asked the little boy what it stood for. And he said, Salt Peter? Then the bank man said it meant ST Peter. The little boy said, Oh. Then the bank man took the little boy to his bosom. And the little boy said, Oh, again, for he squeezed him. Then the bank man took the little boy into partnership and gave him half the profits and all the capital. And he married the bank man's daughter. And now all he has is all his and all his own too. My uncle told me this story and I spent six weeks in picking up pins in front of the bank. I expected the bank man would call me in and say, Little boy, are you good? And I was going to say yes. And when he asked me what ST period John stood for, I was going to say Salt John. But the bank man wasn't anxious to have a partner. And I guess the daughter was his son. For one day says he to me, Little boy, what's that you're picking up? Says I, awful meekly, pins? Says he, let's see them. And he took them and I took off my cap. All ready to go in the bank and become a partner and marry his daughter. But I didn't get an invitation. He said, Those pins belong to the bank and if I catch you hanging around here anymore, I'll set the dog on you. Then I left and the mean old fellow kept the pins. Such is life. Thank you for reading that story to us and I guess maybe we should explain why the story. Mark Twain, an American author from the 19th century, was lampooning Horatio Alger there. Horatio Alger wrote like hundreds of stories in the 19th century. 1800 is 19th century, right? Basically about how poor boys make good rags to riches and his name has become synonymous with this idea that if you work really hard, get a good break, then you will be able to move up the social ladder, so to speak. It's kind of interesting because his stories really weren't that encouraging along that line. I mean he's sort of become synonymous with pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but in truth his stories really didn't tell that. That weren't told that way, right? Now the usual theme behind Horatio Alger's story was if you were poor but you worked your head off and you were kind of smart besides, then a rich person would find you and take you under his wing or probably not wood but might find you and take you under his wing. There was nothing predestined about it. It wasn't really within your control. It was at the discretion of the rich person. Horatio Alger himself in one of his stories said that the majority of the people were doomed to live in squalor and misery. So Horatio Alger himself did not promulgate or indeed believe the Horatio Alger myth and in fact he died broke. Did he really? He did. He died broke. Well gee, cheer up. I'm sorry, but that's kind of ironic. Isn't that ironic? Well if you had to waste all his time writing these stupid stories and if he found a rich person to suck up to them, by gosh maybe he would have done better. And if you believe that. Twain's story is interesting though because it was contemporary to Alger and he seemed to be complaining that Alger was, well I don't know the way I read the story anyway you can tell me what you're reading of it is but when I heard the story I thought that one of the things that Twain was saying to Alger was not only are rich people not nice people who will help you out if you're good and kind but if they find out that you're good and kind they'll take all your pens and sick the dogs on you. That they in fact far from being generous people who helped out the poor they were mean-spirited people who got rich on the backs of the poor. Your thoughts? You can interpret the story a number of different ways that's what literature is for. I'm not sure whether Twain meant to ascribe actual malice to the banker in the story the second one, the quote real world close quote banker but at a minimum he meant to ascribe apathy to him. The writer obviously doesn't care about the little boy's ambitions and just runs them off. And this obviously has not read Horatio Alger I mean. Well if you're ready to be recognized for this fiction. Well I think the story is interesting I think that the Mark Twain story is a nice little find in that it is a kind of deconstruction of the Horatio Alger myth and I think that the Horatio Alger myth is an interesting thing in line of stuff that has happened in well not just the United States but really in the western world in the last 20 or 30 years there has been a kind of I don't know what you would call it a resurgence or not of individualism the I guess it may be started in the 70s with self-help gurus and people thinking about that you are in complete control of your world movement and not only that but not only are you in complete control of your world but this kind of philosophy that if you just think positively and if you just work hard enough and if you don't let anybody bother you and you know think about yourself and yourself alone that it will somehow make the world around you better that there was a kind of selfish altruism that the better that you are to yourself the better the better the world would be I think that's strange but the obvious source for that is Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and I think the reason that book was as popular as it was is that it allowed rationalization by people who really were out to serve themselves first, last and always and it was it served their purpose that is why the text was taken up independent of whether it had any validity or veracity sure and it was kind of a misreading of that text too or any other words beginning with the I mean I'm thinking now of the movie Wall Street which is the classical Greed is Good movie he even says that Michael Douglas at some point in there I know he's telling us a shareholders meeting of I don't know which corporation Greed is Good and so what started in the 70's is this kind of self health thing kind of grew into the 80's into a full blown you know just get what you want to get kind of thing and so even complete self absorption rejection of the public self or the possibility of creating one yeah and rejection of any sense of community of enthusiasm for violence yeah yeah our violent language anyway I don't want to go so far as to say people on Wall Street are running around a certain privileging of symbolic violence an admiration out of somebody who can speak intelligently but if somebody could say I'm going to rip off your head and spit down your neck yeah and look like they might mean it because I mean let's face it both Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas looked really kind of scary on Wall Street their persona was not I wouldn't be that scared of running into the kind banker I wouldn't be too scared of running into either one of them on the street but I'd be scared to death to run into them on Wall Street yeah I mean you I'd be very sure to cover my assets that was a growner well anyway so I'm interested in this as a sociologist and you might be interested in this as an MBA because I think that this is a very good example of how stories get reproduced and replicated and changed in society and I'm especially interested in the fact that the story of individualism is a changing story I mean it seems like you mean to say that it changes over time one version is taught to one generation version I don't want to say that it's taught that gains currency within one generation another revised version retains currency with the next and by the time it gets to the third generation it's sometimes unrecognizable yeah so it's like a gossip game you know the gossip game right you whisper something to somebody and they whisper something to somebody else and so forth and the first person says what they said and the last person says what they said and it turns it never is the same thing it's totally distorted by the end of it that's kind of what happens like Horatio Alger gave this one story and the story has become something else in Wall Street the story in the 70s of self-help became the story of greed in the 80s and kind of loss of public self in the 80s so these things change over time and they change as they move from person to person and kind of lose I mean you might even argue that the story of individualism kind of began with Descartes and you know with Rene Descartes where I am I'd say you can start the story probably earlier than that yes as much as but he's credited at least with starting this idea of being something separate from God being something separate from nature that in fact the rational mind is what makes us separate from divine from supernatural natural makes us somewhat who we are that we are human and that separation from the world and backing off and becoming you know like us and our thoughts is a brand of individualism that really wasn't propagated much before him you disagree you have more philosophy than I do so I think that there are any number of any number of intellectual movements that preceded Descartes both in Europe and in Asia that emphasized the individual or society that basically told the individual forget about all the societal nonsense you're really in control of your world and most of what I know about the qualifier of course is that most of what I know about both schools is tainted by the very effect you described that it's reinterpreted every generation and then the reinterpretations are reinterpreted well filtered to put it politely to the point where it's unrecognizable yeah so just by virtue of the fact that you've never read ancient Chinese philosophy in the original language but rather read an English translation of it could present itself as more individualistic than it was intended I'm not saying no no we shouldn't extrapolate at all but I am saying that after it's been photocopied about 47 times the chances that it will be significantly different from the original are going to be pretty substantial user analogy with which most of us are familiar and that brings up what I think is a very interesting concept one that I'm not 100% comfortable with as a sociologist but it's still an interesting idea that Richard Dawkins put out in the book The Selfish Gene and I'm just going to read a little quote that I got from him off of the internet I'm not sure that this is from the book do you know this is from the book? those are Dawkins' words these are Dawkins' words but not I don't know whether it's from the book or from him talking about the book anyway examples of means are tunes, ideas, catchphrases clothes, fashions ways of making pots or building arches just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or egg so means propagate themselves in the mean pool by leaping from brain to brain via process which in the broad sense can be called imitation if a scientist hears or reads about a good idea he passes it on to his colleagues and students he mentions it in his articles and lectures if the idea catches on it can be said to propagate itself spreading from brain to brain means should be regarded as living structures not just metaphorically but technically when you plan a fertile mean in the mind you literally parasitize my brain turning it into a vehicle for the means propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell and this isn't just a way of talking the mean for say belief in life after death is actually realized physically millions of times over as a structure in the nervous systems of people all over the world you're listening to First Person Plural on CFUV Victoria's Public Radio 101.9 FM 104.3 cable and on the internet cfub.uvig.ca giving sociology an edge it makes it sound like the social is kind of biological and it's got a little bit of a deterministic flair to it that I'm not necessarily comfortable with but I like this idea of ideas take on a life of themselves and that their replication works like genes in the sense that just like you mentioned the Xerox copy they get distorted as they get replicated I think you can model it either way I think if you model it simultaneously it will be good but what this points out is that ideas drive people just as much as people drive ideas once I put something in your head you're stuck with it you don't have to repeat it you don't have to say it to anybody else you don't have to let it influence your thinking but there it is there is the tape recording of it so to speak nonetheless maybe it will go away over time but for the moment there it is no one knows really how memory works but theoretically it's in your memory I think the genetic analogy amuses me because I've heard often that a chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg and you can model it that recalls this model that people are vehicles for carrying Dawkins wrote the selfish gene as you mentioned and the theme of that book was that natural selection doesn't work on the level of the individual of the human individual but it does work on the level of the gene if you look at natural selection as being about genes trying to survive by fitness then it works very nicely in practice that's also been observed I know parenthetically on the population level the populations are subject to natural selection so it's funny natural selection doesn't work for the organism but it works for the genes within the organism and the groups that organism forms and what amuses me here is the idea that people can be driven by ideas and if you look at it from the other perspective people often think that they're in control of their actions they do this and they do that and so they are people have agency I don't believe in the divine machine model nor does anybody else and you can test that bullet comparically and find out that in fact they don't when it comes down to brass tacks they at least perceive themselves as having some influence over others and over themselves sure they they do things that talk to anybody sure yeah the very fact that we communicate back and forth and if you speak at all you're trying to influence someone if only by suggesting what you say to their scrutiny yes unless you're home talking to yourself but the idea that the idea is driving people is a more a more valid model a more consistent model than people driving ideas interest me on a scientific level I'd like to see if anyone has pursued that clinically or rigorously and see what their results have been I think it would be wonderfully counter intuitive and I think it would open up a lot of a lot of avenues for future study I think that all the people have free will what they're going to do is largely influenced by what they think to be the case but what by what they hear by what they observe by what they in any particular case think is immutable and what conversely would respond to their will or their actions yes I think that it must be influenced by it you're not going to plan a trip to Fiji if you don't know that such a place exists yes and I think that this is also interesting if you look at you know the idea of trends the idea of you know he darkens mentions fashions and catchphrases and so forth you and I have a kind of joke between us that will share with the people right now and that is what we call the Howard Jones effect and Howard Jones effect is things that are in our brain that we don't know how they got there and basically before we met each other in the 1980s in separate incidents that's ambiguous okay we met each other in 1990s in the 1980s before we met we both had an experience that we shared with each other after we met in which we were flipping through the television or yeah I guess it was flipping through TV and we saw a video of Howard Jones and thought to ourselves that is Howard Jones we have never listened Howard Jones music before in any kind of conscious way we don't remember ever seeing an interview of him buying an album by him we have no idea how we knew what Howard Jones looked like and what his music looked like and yet we know we knew it we have no friends who are especially fond of Howard Jones we have no friends who indeed have ever mentioned Howard Jones to us except when we have brought out this phenomenon with them we don't dislike Howard Jones we're just sort of amazed that we knew about him without knowing how we knew about him and there are lots and lots of things that we know about that we don't know how we learned them they just found their way into our brain some way and we know that everyone has a sense of learning one note for example the children do not need to be told today I want to teach you English or French or whatever the language of hand is one simply speaks in front of them and they understand it so I think that one in this I don't know if you would call that passive yeah you would it's passive in the sense that there isn't a thinking about the thinking that goes on just because that sort of has a Freudian tone to it that I don't necessarily want to imply here. But in any case one absorbs. Yeah there is a kind of mindful learning and there is a kind of mindless learning and I think that we absorb things mindlessly, frequently. We are bombarded with messages, words, images and so forth all the time and I'm sure that the way I learned about Howard Jones as I had been flipping through in TV once before and it was on that I wasn't paying attention but it still got in there. Dawkins ideas about means is kind of related to that in terms of the idea driving me the person. The ideas sort of have a life of their own. Messages that get repeated in our society and in the media in conversations and interactions with each other in our relationships at school and our relationships with our parents and so forth. These things have a life of their own and they get into our brains whether we intend them or are mindful of them or not. And I think that the Horatio Alger myth and looking and tracing kind of how the in the idea of the individual taking himself up by his own bootstraps is interesting because the very idea of being an individual is a mean. The construction of the individual as an individual is a mean. A quiet individual. I mean I know we're having kind of a post-modern moment here but but I think that that that's interesting in and of itself that here was a story that started out talking about something very social. And as probably I should have mentioned before we get started with the really clever part that the reason I think that the stories were popular the Horatio Alger stories were popular when they were was that it touched on something in the culture whether it was simply a need for palliative or whether it was something that people actually believed and wanted to see reinforced. Some people test their cultural conditioning and some simply reinforce it and some do both and some do neither. Yeah. Both the both phenomena exist, both actions exist. So we had this moment in history in which some people were getting very very rich very very rapidly. They have the nickname robber barons in part because by the beginning of the 20th century these people were regarded as having stolen having taken what they had in some sense or another. And what we have in Horatio Alger is a kind of smoothing over of that that Alger's stories were the only hope that it was some glimmer of hope for the people who were left behind by the robber barons that a generous Rockefeller or a generous Vanderbilt was going to turn around and make it okay for a few poor people and that made the whole event much more palatable. Is that the word? Palatable? Yeah. Easier to swallow. I think that the distortion of the Horatio Alger occurred over several generations. One generation basically took the method-based value and said if you work hard maybe somebody who is extremely rich will notice and take you under his wing. The next generation said if you work hard somebody rich will notice and take you under his wing. The next generation said if you work hard you will succeed without regard for the method by which one would succeed, the mechanics by which one would succeed. Yeah the rich person disappears totally from the story at that point. Or it's not material it's generalized. The next generation was told you just work hard. Yeah. You work hard now. And it just totally is lost. And the other 99.9% of the story indeed the point of it if it ever had a point is completely gone. Yeah so here we have this social story that turns into a story of individuals that turns into basically just a pale version of itself. A caricature of itself. Yeah a caricature of itself. Will you tell your baked ham story? Yeah excellent. So okay the story of the ham is not a story of the baked ham it's a story of a fried ham and a fried ham. A mother and a daughter and a grandmother are all in a kitchen together and they're cooking ham for breakfast. And the daughter starts to put the slice of ham into the pan and the mother her mother says don't do that before you do that you need to cut off the ends of the ham. And the daughter looks at this and looks at the ham and turns to her mom and says but mom why? The mom thinks about it for a minute and she's not sure why. So she turns to her mother the grandmother in the room and says why do we do this? And the grandmother said well it's just the way I always did it. I don't know why. So she gets on the phone and calls the retirement home and gets a hold of her mother the great grandmother and says why don't we cut off the ends of the ham when we put it into the pan. And great grandma said well because my pan was too small. From generation to generation this pointless activity of cutting the ends of the ham off before you fry it had been passed along without understanding the source of this information and as such daughter after daughter after daughter was pointlessly wasting the ends of the ham without any idea where the source of the information had come from. And once they figured it out nobody ever cut the ham off again. So we can call this passive learning or passive culture either way because they each shot woman in turn picked it up from her mother. Yeah just by watching. Okay. Yeah not by actually telling anybody but just by doing it the way that mom has always done it. I think there's something to be said for passive learning and passive culture. One doesn't want to have to explain to a child before teaching him a language that one is teaching him a language. Sure. And I think it goes quite well the way it goes already and I would not like to see a change but I think we fail to realize that is how we absorb a great amount of what we quote no close quote. And I think we fail to ask questions fill the test and indeed in extreme cases start to insist that quite the opposite of the case that we're absolutely sure of things that we required in the most haphazard manner. You and I obviously not always known who Howard Jones was. Sure. Older than he is. Are we? I believe we are. I guess maybe we would be. Yeah. I don't have a problem with how should I put it with passive learning and passive culture. I don't think one should have to document everything one does and then document the documentation and so forth ending in the obvious the obvious logical that must resolve because it can't go on indefinitely. Sure. I like empiricism. I use empiricism. Culture is a neat invention. It's a neat human invention and it's I mean neat in the sense of you know needle keen. Cool. And the reason it is is because you don't have to get up every morning and reinvent the wheel. Of course you can rely upon it to let you know what to do in ways that require very little energy on your part. But pursuit and extremists it can become ridiculous. Or assuming that it isn't your under your control that it isn't your invention that it isn't a human invention humans thought of it and passed it on from generation to generation. It is possible for humans to think of something new and start passing that along. It begs the question of what an active will is. I would say that it's not an active will. I would say that I never set out to find out who Howard Jones was. Sure. But nonetheless I found out who he was. One notes things. One has cognition. But we've also transformed Howard Jones in that experience into something that never was intended. And by discussing him now we're passing along the meme the Howard Jones meme. And we're changing the Howard Jones meme from video star from the mid 80s to social phenomenon. The guy you found out about without really wanting to without really seeking to and possibly without needing to but again we don't dislike this man. We simply note that we didn't intend to find out about him. So how are we going to sum this up this week? I think that that is what happened with the ratio algebra. People started telling the story and after a generation or two of telling the story they both forgot that it was a story and forgot that stories are not always true. Indeed they can't be. That's a more subtle point. Yeah. Language space isn't logic space and it's not a logic space. You can't apply the rules of truth or falsity to it with any rigor. But I think this is a much simpler phenomenon. People simply put things in each other's heads. Dawkins calls them memes. Sometimes I refer to the same seven sentences. Yes. The same seven sentences. Close quote. Meaning that people just. That there's a ritual. Yes it's ritualized. A ritualized litany that people say without thinking. Without being mindful I should say. And passive learning has a certain immediacy and effectiveness to it. It's not completely ineffective. I point to empiricism and say again that I like it and I use it. But one can overdo it. But I think that one of the things that makes a mean stop in its tracks so to speak the vaccination against it as it were is to name it. To market. Sure. When you suddenly realize that it's been replicated when the daughter knew that the whole reason that you cut off the little slice on the end of the hand was because her great grandmother 50 years earlier had a pan that was too small. She no longer had to deal with the hand in the same way. And I think that that's the vaccination against the mean on any kind of specific name. I mean this happens. You can't vaccinate against all means. You only can vaccinate against each single mean. So you are in fact a doctor and you can in fact give vaccinations. A sociological vaccination. Not a medical doctor but a PhD in sociology. But this is a sort of vaccination that you can certainly get with beneficent effect potentially. Yes. So I guess in one way what we hope to do on this show in the weeks to come is to find these means and vaccinate people against them by calling them by name and examining them. At least once a semester when I was teaching a student showed up at my office to tell me you've ruined my life with the sociology stuff. This was not because I assigned astronomical amounts of homework that cut into their party time. Sociology it seems made the world a bit uncomfortable because those things that were taken for granted could not be taken for granted anymore. For me personally the thing that got ruined first was James Bond movies. I could no longer escape without considering the ways in which these movies were constructing women and men and imperialism, ethnicity, violence, war and even sex. Thinking about these things sort of ruins the whole bond experience. So when I saw the matrix a few years ago I understood the feeling that something was not quite right with the world. The matrix is the perfect allegory for sociology. I'm aware that deconstructing this movie in this way will probably ruin it as well. So if you loved the matrix because of the cool special effects and didn't want to give it any thought beyond it has the coolest armed battles in cinema history, then I suggest you tune me out for the next few minutes. Also if you haven't seen the matrix I may ruin a punchline or two here so consider yourself warned you listen at your own risk. However like Morpheus I invite you to consider an alternative understanding of the movie. I invite you to see the movie behind the movie. What is the matrix? Control. The matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this. No I don't believe it. It's not possible. I didn't say it would be easy Neo. I just said it would be the truth. What Neo sees before him is a real world in which robots cultivate human beings like crops and use their bodies as batteries to generate electricity in order to keep the robots working. Human beings are in fact the source of the machine. In order to keep humans from knowing their predicament the machines construct a pretend world not too perfect but satisfying enough to keep everyone but the most sensitive amongst us purring along from birth to death feeding off each other's energy to keep the machine going even to each individual's detriment. They ever stood and stared at it marveled that it's beauty it's genius billions of people just living out their lives oblivious. In the mid 1950s William H. White wrote a sociology classic called The Organization Man describing the white middle-aged junior executive who left a suburban home wife and 2.1 kids every day to be part of the larger corporate enterprise. He blends well with his corporate role and becomes the organization. He does nothing to rock the boat. Instead the organization man's actions remain consistent with the purpose of the organization and fuel the organization's existence helping to maintain its status. The copper top human batteries that Morpheus reveals to Neo are the ultimate organizational human beings. They are plugged into the machine most literally. The metaphor of society sucking the energy from human individuals is a dark view of culture indeed and one that is not unique in cinema history. Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times a 1936 silent classic depicts Chaplin's tramp is getting caught in a machine running through the gears smoothly without control over his fate and ending up exactly where the machine leads. Chaplin's metaphor was directly influenced by a Marxist understanding of capitalism and understanding that workers are divorced from their work product and alienated from themselves becoming instead of full human beings a cog in a machine. Something we might call a cyborg in this century both human and machine. What truth that you are a slave Neo like everyone else you were born into bondage born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch a prison for your mind. The matrix is a more postmodern version of this tale. The cyborgs are virtual characters able to enter the matrix as machines and able to return to the real though dismal world in order to escape the evil machines and battle them to free the human race. But it is a battle for humans who do not want to be freed. The matrix is a system Neo that system is our enemy when you're inside you look around what do you see businessmen teachers lawyers carpenters the very minds of the people we are trying to save but until we do these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. We have to understand most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many of them are so inert so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it. It is Neo's coming of age in the story that in fact separates the matrix from its darker predecessors. The ultimate metaphor in the matrix is Neo's ability to see the matrix's true nature. Neo is the one because in the end he can see the matrix while he is in the matrix. He no longer believes in its apparent structure nor takes for granted its apparent reality. Instead his ability to recognize that he is in the machine while he is in the machine enables him to take over the programming from the machines and manipulate its power to his own means. I know you're out there I can feel you now I know that you're afraid you're afraid of us you're afraid of change I don't know the future I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end I came here to tell you how it's going to begin I'm going to hang up this phone and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see I'm going to show them a world without you a world without rules and controls without borders or boundaries a world where anything is possible where we go from there is a choice I leave to you unlike marxian utopia based in a class struggle that leads to dissolving of all classes Neo's subversion of the machine comes from his intimate knowledge of the machine and his ability to see through the illusions of the machine he is unplugged and as an unplugged agent in the system he seeks to unplug others to provide them with the same knowledge that sets him free two basic questions that never quite get answered in sociology are how much does society influence human behavior and how much does human behavior influence society one of the difficulties of these questions is that this thing we call society while all around us really doesn't exist in empirical space when we say society did this or society made that we generally think we know what we mean but unlike the matrix and its machine creators society is something of our own doing it is our own creation so in a real sense the question how much does society influence human behavior is a nonsensical question but it is clear that human beings act collectively that we influence each other's behavior and that we often do this with little thought as to the source of our information or as to our motives for our actions like the matrix this construct we call society can limit our actions the reason however that i don't see the matrix is a dark view of human society is that unlike the organization man the message of the matrix is that the knowledge of the matrix leads to the freedom from the matrix neo still has to operate within the structure of the matrix in order to accomplish his goal but he is an active agent he asserts influence over the system but such knowledge will ruin the illusion and that leads me back to my sociology students uncomfortable and their new found understanding of the system that is all around them such knowledge can lead to a dismal world where bond movies no longer provide two hours of escape but rather remind you of all the problems from which you seek escape but that knowledge can also lead you to a powerful position of influence on the very system that binds you as morpheus tells neo no one can make that choice for another person once the choice is made however there is no going back if you understand the social nature of human activity the apparent reality of individualism is shattered yet the irony is that it is such knowledge that gives the individual more power you take the blue pill the story ends you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe you take the red pill you stay in wonderland and i show you how deep the rabbit hole goes that's all for this first episode of first person plural we invite you to take the red pill and join us each thursday at noon here on cfu v 101.9 fm in victoria british columbia we can't predict the future but we believe you'll enjoy learning a little more about the matrix of society each week of course learning about society might not be comfortable but it can be powerful we'll see you next week why didn't i take the blue pill you have been listening to first person plural on cfu v 101.9 fm in victoria british columbia simulcast it on 104.3 cable and cfu v dot u v i c dot c a first person plural is produced weekly by dr patty thomas and carl wilkerson all music for first person plural is composed performed and produced by carl wilkerson more information about first person plural or patty thomas and carl wilkerson visit our website culturalconstructioncompany.com