second of two, continued from yesterday

i have a degree in sociology.

people that know me know that i'm definitely not one to brandish accolades, in fact, i enjoy the feeling i get when i can tell someone looking at me is thinking that since i'm wearing torn up jeans and have four or five days' worth of growth on my face that i'm sort of an idiot. but all that's neither here nor there, but it is relevant inasmuch as i was thinking about my trip to dallas and for some reason got to thinking about how it related to certain theoretical perspectives of sociology.

i think the whole thing started last week when i was talking to laura, and started to think about how many times in college i'd talk to her while i was in dallas after cutting out of a day or two of class. specifically i remember that i missed (well not "missed" so much) my 9:15 social theory class, where i first learned about structural functional theory and conflict theory.

so to the point, being at home was like conflict theory. marx was the guy who came up with the whole idea of conflict theory and basically the gist of it is that society is in a constant state of upheaval, that comfort levels are, as a rule, very low, and that anomalies occur that see reality reach a state of equilibrium, or for lack of a more adequate term, peacefulness. i definitely felt like that in dallas. periods of peacefulness and comfort were more the exception than they were the rule. there was definitely an increased level of dis-ease for most of the time that i spent in the house, which is where i spent most of my time. it seemed as though i reached an increased level of statsis whenever i left home, like when i hung out with bone, or dunx and brad, or laura.

i was expressing a bit of confusion yesterday because of some uncertainty about the concept of home. when i made it back to my apartment thursday morning, i felt like i was walking into the feeling that i thought i should have felt when i walked through the door of the house i grew up in. starting to think about it, i came to the conclusion that the state of things while i'm here is pretty much the opposite of what it was whenever i was in dallas. long periods of stability interspersed with the occasional uncomfortable upheaval, which meshes pretty well with durkheim's theoretical perspective of structural-functionalism, which says that the default state of society is stability and stasis and that the exceptions are the instances where that stability is shaken up.

none of this matters, because it was weber, not durkheim or marx, who was right anyway.

feeling: slightly distressed, in spite of myself
thinking of: what i'm feeling
music: "what trouble are giants" rich mullins