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Showing posts from May, 2019

Dating and Marriage I know "yuck" and "this again?!"

Dating, it is a dying activity that is either essential or the best method to build towards marriage. Or is it just changing? If you listen to your parents and grandparents there is only one good way to go about dating, you need to have a bunch of unattached activities with people who are nearly strangers or are strangers. Then from there, you need to keep doing that... then keep doing that. After you do that for a long time then you can think about "courtship" which is what teenagers and young adults today would call dating. After a courtship then you can get engaged and then married. I'll admit it does sound like a good method to find a spouse when we talk about it like that. But for me, it doesn't seem to work. A lot of people my age and younger feel uncomfortable talking to let alone going on a date with someone they barely know. So what do we do instead and how is it viewed by the generation just older than us? Well, their main issue with the way we date and ge

Sexual Orientation is it Nature or Nurture?

Psychologically speaking there was a conflict between nature and nurture for a long time, and there still is in some cases but it has largely been solved by a synthesis of the two ideas. Most people in the world, as well as many psychologists, would agree that genetics and traits that seem to come with a person when they are born (fewer psychologists would agree with this last part) interact with the environment of a person to make up who they are today. By environment I mean the experiences they have as they grow as well as other factors outside an individual that can influence their development. It certainly makes sense to think this way, certainly, our experiences play a part in the shaping process but there first has to be something to shape. People are not blank slates which are written on by those around them, they are minimally or partially written on slates which flavors our interactions with the world. Yet a lot of people when we discuss sexual orientation, specifically for sa

Family organization; exchange, system, and conflict

In order to better understand what goes on with families and how to help solve problems with individuals and families theorists have come up with many different ideas of how it all works. The three big ones I am familiar with are the ones mentioned in the title. They all have something to offer and they all have flaws. Exchange theory is honestly repulsive to me though, the idea is that your family, or other, relationships are based on some sort of balance of give and take. Your relationship with say... your parents is in good shape if you are getting at least a little more than you are giving. So if you start to feel like you are giving more than you are getting in benefits from the relationship then you might consider cutting it off. I hope you can see why that is just kind of disgusting to me. I won't deny that some people operate this way, we kind of think that way in United States culture hence we have so many divorces. I can see how things are seen this way but even when some

Populations, Overrun or Undervalued?

How many of us have seen a movie or read a book where the antagonist (or protagonist depending on what you think) thinks they are the hero because they are trying to save the species or something by killing a ton of people? Hands, hands anyone? If you have been watching popular movies in the last year you have. Most people are familiar with the movie Infinity Wars (great movie by the way) Thanos the baddest of the bad wants to kill half of the universe! How evil and terrifying right? Thanos doesn't see it that way and neither do some people who you walk by on the street. A book by a man named Paul Ehrlich titled "The Population Bomb" outlined the dangers of overpopulation with regards to resources, specifically food and water. This lead to many people believing that having many children was actually immoral. "Immoral, can you believe that!?" is what some of you might say. But how many of you have had the thought that you aren't sure you want to bring kids in