Yesterday I had to defend my major to a very close friend of mine who called sociology an obsolete method of study. I found this curious given she studies psychology and in my mind we do the same thing on different scales.
Today I was reaffirmed with the validity what I study. It's not just intensely interesting, it's vital to interpreting, understanding, and, ultimately, changing the world we live in.
We engineer the world we live in. It's a science what societies do and it can be studied like a science. Common elements exist here, which can be combined and rearranged to cause different reactions. There's math, not just in the statistics that we study, but in the combinations of phenomena that reveal certain outcomes.
Social science gets pushed under the rug. Even by social scientists. But while math and science and technology get pushed to greater limits, more and more people feel lost in the world we live in.
People know how to make bombs. That's what science and technology taught them.
Sociology teaches us why deviant behavior, like violence, exists. Sociology looks for explanations for two reasons. So that the gaping, emptied people staring at the news headlines can get answers. No just what happened and who did it and where was it but WHY. Because I guarantee after all the questions have been answered there will be one left. Why.
Sociology, psychology, we can tell you. And if and when we don't know, we will find out. It is our goal to answer the questions.
Science can teach people how to make bombs. Science can even teach people how to disable bombs. But social science can teach you how to disable the people who make bombs.
I spend so much of my own life feeling lost. WHY echoes through my head from when I wake up at 7AM until I go to bed at 12AM. Why, why, why?
That's why I study sociology. Because everyday I feel closer to the because.
