If you don't buy in...

Sometimes I find it hard to actually study something that I totally dispute.  Typically I don't have this problem in history or that other things that deal with evidence and such.  But some disciplines don't really concern themselves with facts so much, but with ideology.  And there's where the struggle begins.

In so many ways I love the political sociology course.  It opened my eyes to all kinds of stuff that I didn't know anything about.  It exposed me to thinkers I never even heard of before.  That is all cool.  But some of the stuff is simply too much to deal with.

As you know, I am an objectives-driven guy.  For those who remember 416, my thing is always: what's the objective, how do we get there, prove it to me.  Yeah?  Shit, that's how you get things done.

So when I read stuff that don't care what the objectives are, or how one might get there, it really bothers me.  Take this thing I'm reading about for instance.

It's the Occupy Movement, if you think back a decade or so.

So these articles talk about bottom-up democracy, etc., and how Occupy did not work with the existing political system because they don't believe the end ever justifies the means.  And the end?  Equality and so on (which I have no problem with, by the way).  But they don't seem to consider how this goal of equality is to be reached.

They DON'T FUCKING Care!

So of course NOTHING happened.  Surprised?  It's sort of like fucking strategic planning at Etown.  Nothing meaningful happens, and what happens has nothing to do with achieving whatever goal (which are not articulated anyway).  

And somehow these writers talk about Occupy as some triumphant display of democracy.  What the fuck!  NOTHING HAPPENED!  A bunch of morons camped out in tents and peed everywhere, and nothing changed.  And somehow that's a good thing?

Anyway, that's an example of the difficulty I have with this course.

Now, when I write an essay exam, or write a paper, I can talk about that at length, and draw references to support my POV (though as an undergrad that's a BIG fucking gamble...see below).  But in short answers and MCs, I don't have that ability to challenge the ideology (oh how Gramscian I have become).

So no matter how much I think some of the stuff is crap, I have to study it.  Sigh.

OK, I said earlier that if you challenge the dominant logic as an undergrad, even if you are able to cite things to support your POV, it's a big gamble.  Why?  Well, they don't really expect or even want that sort of thing.  So if you don't give them what they want....

I should have remembered that, since I should know to give them what they want instead of what I want.  Remember that debacle I had with a history paper last semester?  Well, being the contrarian that I am, I decided to write that Churchill was a peacemaker when he made that speech "Iron Curtain Speech."  I thought it'd be cool to do that (I didn't actually believe that position, just thought it would be fun).  Well, they didn't think so.  Haha, bummer.

OK, back to work.  I have test next week and two papers due as well.  Need to edit the papers some more.  Wish me luck!