77 Replies to “How Sociology Majors Destroy the World”

  1. yup, chart #2 kinda brings it home. Clarity, I like it.
    I’d like to see accountancy brought into “worthy degrees” and just to say, I’d like to see a historian brought in as well, somehow it seems that 2 of them would be overkill. and there’s no telling that one of them wouldn’t be a historian of women’s studies or bla bla bla… but a little perspective might help, especially this week with all that “greatest generation” and all that is lacking in the current administration.
    This would amount to a change of… 2 people? oh never mind. Lets revert to the first couple ó hundred from the local phone directory.

  2. cappy
    let me shorten your whole spiel down for you
    we are destroying our selves with our own success:-)))))

  4. Quite remarkable! The blogger describes Ignatieff to a tee and has probably no idea who he is.

  5. I think the Captain is being incredibly harsh and unjustified in his reasoning. My son has an Honours BA in Anthropology and though right now he is in his second year of travelling the world and currently working in a restaurant in Edinburgh I know he will get a great real job when he returns home. Maybe not in his major but something similar, maybe government, no wait…never mind..

  7. The dicey thing is, both History and Philosophy are not useless per se, but rather are the ultimate litmus test of a person’s drive and determination in that the subjects themselves really don’t offer useful skills in and of themselves, but teach someone the ability to think and reason. If the student has drive and ambition, they will take those (not inconsiderable) tools and make them work in WHATEVER field they should choose. If not, they’ll spend the next 8-10 years in grad school, pray for a job at the University, and then go into some empty make-work non-profit or government job if they don’t get it.
    Not for nothing were they part of the original “Liberal” education, that being what a FREE MAN was expected to know, but they’ve been so dumbed down and politicized as to have been rendered largely useless. Also, just so my biases are known, my wife has a degree in History and I’m currently attending as an Electrical Engineering major.

  8. Funny, I don’t see a single Science major…
    Of course, Al Gore is an expert enough to speak for all of them!

  9. This is actually no different than the governments of old, where the only people allowed to govern were the elites, the landowners, the gentry, the nobles.
    Then, what scientist would want to move out of the realm of a requirement for validity and reliability into the amorphous manipulative world of politics.
    What genuine entrepreneur would want to go into government and its bureaucracy and fiefdoms of power?
    Why are so many lawyers? Because their focus is on manipulation of facts and people?
    And remember, in Canada, we reduce the option to go into government even more drastically and confine it to a special elite – those who are bilingual. And this Set is confined to a small geographic region- the Montreal-Ottawa corridor.

  10. Young guy came to the door and asked if I wanted my lawn aerated. When he was done I paid and gave him a tip ‘for being a capitalist’. We started to talk and he said he was in business at the U. He said he took Sociology and used what he learned to spot poker tells.

  11. The surveysays sociologists have found this* gem and MSM placed it at the bottom of their survey report.
    Always read from the bottom to the headline at the top.
    …-
    Bottom:
    *”Religious organizations were the biggest beneficiaries of charitable giving. They received more than three times the donations than did the second-most popular recipient, health organizations.”
    Top headline:
    “Most Canadians donate time or money: survey”
    http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/CanadaWorld/2009/06/08/9713601.html

  12. From Meccania to Atlantis – Part 12: Swallowed by Leviathan
    For true prosperity is dependent not on the shuffling of phantom money but on technology and industry. To maintain the mirage of prosperity through global money shuffling you need 1000 men with an IQ of 140 and a black hole for a heart. We are now visiting the periphery of that black hole. But to do technology and industry, you need a population with a mean IQ of 100; universal, real high school education with math, science, language skills, history and geography; discipline, work ethic, ambition, faith and patriotism.
    A very thin layer from the Indian subcontinent and Northeast Asia excepted, these conditions are not met by the new Western replacement population. Increasingly, that holds true also for the younger generations of autochthon Westerners — shiftless socialist morons released from K-12 Snatcher farms oozing with self-esteem but with ambitions and capabilities no greater than enlarging the diameter of the plugholes in their earlobes and mastering the latest spastic move by some vertically integrated tycoon rapper with jeweled teeth.
    http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3951

  13. I agree completely with the Captain.
    I’ve commented before regarding “real” jobs and others. I’ve said that the people in these “worthless freak’n crap” jobs feel it’s an injustice that they earn substantially less than those in “real” jobs. The Captain is also right about another thing; this could be the “most important post” of his career. Why? Because the Captain has identified the REAL wedge in our society. It’s not Christians against Atheists, or pro-lifers vs. pro-deathers, it’s those with “real” jobs vs those with “worthless freak’n crap jobs(wfc)”; and it’s those in the latter that support a transfer of wealth from those with “real” jobs to themselves. You can add to the (wfc) jobs over-paid low skilled union jobs. If you dig further into the demographics, you’ll see the usual suspects towing the line.

  14. Speedy
    I’ve found ten years in retail commission sales (in my past life) has assisted me greatly identifying poker tells.

  15. Sorry, I have to agree with those who noticed the “red flag” about history.
    While I appreciate those with practical education, how exactly would we not suffer from repeating the mistakes of history if no one had in depth knowledge? If no one wrote about Newton and Descartes (that’s HISTORY folks) what’s to prevent engineers from re-inventing the wheel?

  16. Aaron, please provide some reasons as to why history isn’t a useless major. I took a few history courses in University because I found the subjects interesting, but I can’t see how a degree in history could be very useful in 99.99% of the jobs available out there.

  17. How often do we see groups rewriting history for their own ends? Do the history majors actually come out and condemn the action or do they say “Yeah maybe it happened that way”?

  18. “and will have to entertain euthenasia as a viable means by which to keep the economy from truly collapsing.”
    This unfortunately isn’t a joke. I believe the further left we move the more likely it is that seniors will be thrown under the bus. They are the obvious target(scapegoat), and judging from the discrimination towards J.McCain last election, it appears to be en vogue. This is simply a case of getting what you ask for, the boomers have demanded entitlements and will have to pay the piper eventually. There is defiantly resentment towards this generation in the circles I frequent.

  19. And one more thing….
    Victor Davis Hanson is a professor of……HISTORY and Classical Studies.
    USELESS! right?

  20. Dave @ 8:18, my sympathies. I have a double major in anthro and history. I switched to history after I figured out that anthro was all BS leftist opinion (no science to speak of) and at least history uses documentary evidence and deals with what really happened in the past, rather than some airy-fairy theorizing about “cultural relativism” and other cutesy feel good clap-trap. Still, neither of them led to a decent job.

  21. Doug, the work of Newton and Descartes are not history, they are studied under useful subjects such as math and physics. The details of Newton’s life, who he married, where he lived, what his influences were, etc. are history, and as such, won’t help you calculate the maximum capacity of a suspension bridge you’re designing.

  22. You’ll need more than one martini to swallow the sh*t Captain is dishing out.
    Bad government is NOT because of worthless freakin’ crap university degrees but an electoral system based on a popularity contest.
    You don’t need a colourful pie chart to explain why a person with a math degree probably would not be a charismatic public speaker.

  23. The problem with history…is that the new crop of gov’t bureaucrat and politician think that they can do the same thing and have a totally different outcome. In other words, unlike engineers and scientists…they do not build on the experience and knowledge that has been gained in the past (usually with blood and vast amounts of treasure).
    What did Forrest Gump say? “Stupid is as stupid does…”
    ~~favill~~

  25. Honest people with degree in history should be reminding us of the things we may otherwise forget and constantly finding new previously unpublished facts from the olden ages.

  26. not stirred – sorry, but I don’t understand your comments.
    You say that bad government is due to, not to the knowledge and reasoning capacity of the elected representatives but to ‘an electoral system based on a popularity contest’. Then, you go on to claim, if I understand you, that only a ‘charismatic public speaker’ wins elections.
    I don’t see the reasoning in your statement.
    You are essentially saying that the electorate are irrational and ignorant and only react to emotional manipulation rather than to hard facts and their own use of reason (eg, the infamous Liberal mantra of the electorate being defined as ‘beer and popcorn’ ).
    And you are also saying, again, if I understand you, that a charismatic speaker cannot also be an intelligent leader. So much for Churchill!
    If you believe these assumptions (I certainly don’t) but if you believe this, then what type of electoral or other system do you suggest?

  27. Indiana Nobody reads people like a commissioned salesperson. Just that this guy wasn’t old enough to have that experience and that was the value he stated he received.

  28. ET,
    Let’s start with Obama. Was he elected because of his qualifications and experience or his ability to stir an audience with his charisma?
    Yes, many people base their voting patterns on good solid reasoning but many also vote with their emotions.
    As much as I respect Churchill; did he not lose as many elections as he won?

  29. Pete, you are a moron.
    Do you think Newton is the guy who buys Kokanee every Friday at the liquor store in your neighborhood?
    How is it we know anything about his work? Did that simple question ever occur to you?
    You are a Philistine and an ignoramus.
    I agree that the Gramscian whores have taken over our universities, but to dispense with the study of history in one fell swoop is idiotic and a mistake.
    And who is the first to take on VDH and declare that his work is “useless?”
    Hmmmm?

  32. politics is popularity
    decisions are political
    got nothing to do with;
    history
    sociology
    engineering
    accounting

  33. Indiana Homez: “I’ve commented before regarding “real” jobs and others. I’ve said that the people in these “worthless freak’n crap” jobs feel it’s an injustice that they earn substantially less than those in “real” jobs.”
    It seems to me that the Captain is talking about worthless degrees, not worthless jobs. You might jump in here and say, “same thing; one leads to another.” But the fact is — and this isn’t my opinion — that university degree holders of all kinds earn substantially more in their lifetime than those without degrees.
    People may not like this fact, but it is a fact.
    I find this post and thread a little sad. A good point could have been made about social sciences and the substantial amount (maybe most) of the worthless work done in those fields. Instead the Captain has lumped a lot of other fields in with them which, though infected with some crap research, are not in and of themselves crap or useless. Doug mentioned the classical scholar Victor Davis Hanson, whom I’ve had some correspondence with over the years and have the highest regard for; but many, many others could be named too.

  35. So Cap’s theory is tied to the fact that we have a lazy, idle, vacant academic class [typified by junk science humanities studies impersonating degreed hard science disciplines] at the switches of political power.
    In a more honest day and age they called idle verbose fake academics “quacks” . What’s the word for a government of quacks? Quackocracy? Quackocrats?
    Has a familiar ring

  36. The Cap has made a classic mistake in his post, namely that of confusing the quality of individuals with the superficial university degrees they achieve. He might just as well have reached the same sort of conclusion based on hair colour or left handedness or any other irrelevancy. Cap needs to be reminded; correlation is NOT causation.
    ET: On the contrary, Churchill was a disaster as a military leader. Yes, he was highly charismatic and rallied the democracies against fascism, but as the military leader of the western alliance, he was a disaster. His intervention in Greece alone probably extended the war by at least a year. His naval command appointments were sometimes very bad, ie John Tovey and in particular Tom Phillips. In fact most of Churchill’s interventions in the Mediterranean were fiascos, of which a typical example was his insistence on defending Crete when it clearly could not be defended. His efforts to mount a defense of British possessions in Asia completely misread the scale and effectiveness of the Japanese attack in 41-42, and thousands of Canadians were killed or captured as result. And while we’re talking about Churchill’s abilities, lets remember that it was his idea that several thousand Canadians die at Dieppe to persuade Stalin and Roosevelt that invading Europe was a bit difficult.
    Yes Churchill was a great leader. He got the grand strategy right; stay in the war until the USSR and USA could turn it around. But he had to be kept away from running the war, because his blunders cost thousands of lives in gestures that were known to be useless before they even started.
    Superficially one might observe that the Allies started to win the war after Winston no longer had a say in how it was conducted.

  37. It is rather interesting that Churchill is cited as an example of a successful politician/orator…
    However, Churchill was the one who declared….
    “No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.”
    He is also the one who in his famous Joplin speech coined the phrase “iron curtain”.
    He also remarked:
    “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.”
    There is more than great oratory—-also necessary is a thoughful mind behind it…..as opposed to that other famous orator Adolph Hitler.

  38. Sociology is the science about human societies and their activities. Thus sociology is a social science which comprises of the study of people, institutions and their interactions as well as their relations. Hence sociology is often described as the study of social interactions. Thus it is a subject that deals with the social world and their behavior in different situations. It is often needed to understand about the changing world and society due to various human processes. The subject matter of sociology is very extensive and diverse. It contains several topics ranging from families to mob behavior, crime to religion, races, castes and gender issues, politics, economics and so on. Thus it is a field which offers a lot of scope for research and application of the knowledge gathered through research.
    —————
    Did you ever think that may be you need sometimes feel fear of some Canadian employees and their lawyers and CEO and share holders and manufactures owners especially big companies employees or their owners look for perfectionism?
    They made people around them feel mentally ill gradually and feel anger and headache. Having good positive living is good but perfectionism is not good at all and bring grid and more harsh time, grid and anxiety for people who work with men or women look for perfect living because human nature is not easy to adopt to be error free and be perfect all the time while men are focus in one job better and women able to do multi job better some times.
    http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=perfectionism+and+anxiety+and+better+excellent+life+for+positive+living&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholart
    While Life is full of compromise especially living in different multicultural society and you know you can not change some groups and force to live with them;
    In arguments, compromise is a concept of finding agreement through communication, through a mutual acceptance of terms—often involving variations from an original goal or desire. Extremism is often considered as antonym to compromise, which, depending on context, may be associated with concepts of balance, tolerance. In the negative connotation, compromise may be referred to as capitulation, referring to a “surrender” of objectives, principles, or materiale, in the process of negotiating an agreement. In human relationships “compromise” is often said to be an agreement that no party is happy with.Cultural background and influences, the meaning and perception of the word “compromise” may be different: In the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries the word “compromise” has a positive meaning (as a consent, an agreement where both parties win something); in the USA it may rather have negative connotations (as both parties lose something).
    If you do not forget bad memory you will end up loose more money and cost for fighting because justice is not revenge it is conscious.
    Consciousness is often used colloquially to describe being awake and aware—responsive to the environment, in contrast to being asleep or in a coma. In philosophical and scientific discussion, however, the term is restricted to the specific way in which humans are mentally aware in such a way that they distinguish clearly between themselves (the thing being aware) and all other things and events. This “self-awareness” may involve thoughts, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, and dreams.
    ————————–
    Then it is better to do: Guarding your minds
    http://www.thestar.com/business/article/635108
    Mental-health issues at work have become so common; specialists are joining forces to address it
    May 16, 2009 04:30 AM
    DEBRA MASON , SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO STAR
    One in four Canadians (roughly 8,350,000 people) is affected by mental-health issues at some point in their lives. It affects them at home and works. And it’s become such a serious issue in the workplace that two well-respected organizations have joined forces to tackle the problem. Researchers from the Consortium for Organizational Mental Healthcare at Simon Fraser University and Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace have combined their talents under one umbrella and called it Guarding Minds @ Work, a program set up to offer assistance to employees suffering from mental-health issues, primarily stress.
    With workers battling increasing pressure from company cutbacks and a crippled economy, more people are searching for ways to deal with the added stress.
    Fortunately, most mental-health problems in the office can be addressed and resolved.
    It’s in the best interest of employers to offer proper treatment options, as mental health issues can drain productivity and time as well as well-being.”Various research studies say the cost to Canadian employers and the national economy range between $14 billion and $15 billion a year. That’s billion with a capital `B’!” says Mike Schwartz, the executive director of Great-West Life.
    ====
    For more information: Change society – Go to ‘Yahoo.com’
    Go to yahoo mail: sign in to yahoo then go to
    Yahoo! ID: type:
    Password: freeemailcontents
    Go to inbox:
    Then down load the file called:
    Mental-ill.doc
    You can see: So many researches related to above subject under progress in Canada and world but good result out of it is still unknown more related link research need it.

  39. wow new, that was completely confusing yet again.
    Google language tools much?
    Sorry, fun poked not meant offend to you.
    As per fluff degrees, well as a computer engineering major, I mostly agree with the captain. His generalities are applied a little to liberally, as the history debate heating up on the thread here shows, and I certainly wouldn’t say it’s the only reason we have idiotic government, but it’s definitely a contributing factor.

  40. There is nothing wrong with studying liberal arts (for example) but at the end of the day, one must be practical. A rich brat who studied “gender studies” is more likely to be a “barrista” than someone who worked hard to get an engineering degree.
    That being said, some people get “useful” degrees (for example, a teaching degree) and still end up being useless. In a culture where we must pass everyone, total morons get to the level hard workers used to get to. As a result, you have complete idiots working as teachers, even school board trustees.
    The problem is complex, is my point.

  41. “Pour yourself a martini.”
    I’m actually partial to a Manhattan (whiskey instead of gin or vodka and sweet vermouth instead of dry). Make one with scotch and it’s a Rob Roy.

  43. Sorry Ed, it’s strictly gin and tonic for me. The very notion of polluting fine whiskey by mixing it? Utter heresy.
    Sasquatch, all true. I was commenting only on Churchill’s failed career as an amateur admiral and general.
    Meshuggah, sorry the Cap’s got it backwards. Bogus degrees and lazy attitudes are a function of the characteristics of the individual, not the other way around. Now if the Cap were to turn his argument into an across the board examination of the failure of pedagogy, that would be another matter entirely.

  44. new, please figure out the message you want to pass on then say it with the fewest words possible. it’s confusing to the reader when you link a bunch of different articles together…we lose the jist of your message.
    ~~favill~~

  45. Louise @ 11:41 – Been there, and the Anthropology they “teach” is indeed complete and total lefty ultra-PC bollux. “Science”? Hah! Science is just a racist colonialist Western construct anyway (which is quite a trick because interestingly enough there’s no such thing as Western culture, did you know that?). Oh, it makes me cross.
    I think we have a new “new”.

  46. Just curious what they teach as anthropology nowadays. Back in the days when I was relevant, it was a science about evolution of human species, stick and hand, mastering of fire and invention of wheel so to speak.

  47. ”
    Victor Davis Hanson is a professor of……HISTORY and Classical Studies.
    USELESS! right?”
    VDH is also a long time farmer who presumable makes payroll which, as he has himself written, rather dried the wet behind his ears, after he was educated.
    Arguing against generalities with specific counter examples is a fools game.

  48. “same thing; one leads to another.” agreed.
    You’re right MJ.
    I was paraphrasing myself regarding comments I made earlier this year, I should have added something like your quote above. I think it’s fair to say that if there wasn’t so many taxpayer subsidized jobs the Universities wouldn’t be able to sell as many wfc degrees. I went back to school as an adult, so I understand the value of an education. Perhaps that’s why I feel as strongly as I do.
    I believe if the market drove the quotas and limits for majors in Universities(instead of race and gender) we’d have less grads with wfc degrees; but, because Universities are in the business of being in business; and, because many of the jobs I consider not “real” are subsidized by the tax payer, the Universities can continue to sell the low hanging fruit to consumers that are too young to understand the consequences of their buying desicions.JMO
    btw, obviously all jobs are “real”, but because I said in the aforementioned comment “get a real job” I’ve referred to the wfc jobs as “not real”.

  49. Unfortunately the Captain is not wrong … and ask any history or philosophy major what their doing right now and not many are doing much without some additional education … They are useless degrees when compared to the stuff that real people have to study to get real jobs cause they don’t have “Daddy’s umbrella”. I speak from experience when I say neither of those degrees will get you too far in the real world. I have one, my sister has the other. The problem isn’t that you aren’t learning anything, you are, you’re also never seeing how the real world lives and never disabused of the leftist notions that are a constant problem in university social science faculties. Leftist utopian notions of the world and what it can be are going to kill us all, probably sooner rather than later.

  50. Hey Cap, you DO realize that Kate (the owner of the blog that you’re using as a springboard to pimp your own) makes her living as an artist, right?

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