Spare The Rod...

[boxcarbooks]

Sociologist John Robinson, University of Maryland:

I just emailed him, we'll see what he says.

•Working fewer hours
•Marrying later
•Having fewer kids
•More appliances that save time
•Earlier retirement

Working fewer hours? I don't know what decade you're living in, but most people I know are dying from debt and multiple jobs.

Marrying later: I like that this does give credit to the responsibilities of childrearing and homemaking (typically done by women). Based on my personal (anecdotal) experience, I would say that marriage isn't a necessary or sufficient cause for child rearing. Why would marrying later necessarily give more free time?

Fewer kids: That, I'll buy.

More appliances that save time: Yeah, frees up our time to work nonstop. I will play the Luddite and say that appliances aren't saving time, they're taking away more of our time than ever: specifically, watches/clocks.

Earlier retirement: Whaaaa?!

MY DOCUMENTATION CAN BEAT UP YOUR DOCUMENTATION _ NA NA NA NA BOO BOO!!

Doubt it.

"There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act – the process of reason – must be performed by each man alone."

Yeah right. Now I give you some truth:
(symbolic interactionism)

[T]here is not simply one grand generalized other but [...] many generalized others in society because there are many groups in society. People, therefore, have multiple generalized others and, as a result, multiple selves.

(Ritzer & Goodman, 2006)

Taking the role of the generalized other, rather than that of discrete others, allows for the possibility of abstract thinking and objectivity.

(R&G, 2006)

In order to have selves, individuals must be able to get "outside themselves" so that they can evaluate themselves, so that they can become objects to themselves. To do this, people basically put themselves in the same experiential field as they put everyone else. Everyone is an important part of that experiential situation, and people must take themselves into account if they are to be able to act rationally in a given situation. Having done this, they seek to examine themselves impersonally, objectively, without emotion.

And of course Cooley's Looking-Glass Self:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_glass_self

We succeed or screw up on our own,by our own choices, even when it is in just going along with the poor decisions of the 'collective.' Blaming someone else didn't work for Adam, and it won't work for us, either.

Actually, the following list would disagree:

Aronson, E. (1972). The Social Animal. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2004). Social Psychology (4th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Charon, J. M. (1995). Symbolic Interactionism: An introduction, an interpretation, an integration (5th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 294-300.

Fromm, E. (1992). The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

Harris, M. (1989). Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches. New York: Vintage Books.

Jensen, D. (2002). The Culture of Make Believe. New York: Context Books.

Laing, R. D. (1967). The Politics of Experience. New York: Pantheon Books.

Lerner, M. J., & Miller, D. T. (1978). Just world research and the attribution process: Looking back and ahead. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 1030, 1051.

Ritzer, G., & Goodman, D. J. (2004). Classical Sociological Theory (4th ed.). New York: Mc-Graw Hill.

Twenge, J. M., Catanese, K. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2003). Social exclusion and the deconstructed state: Time perception, meaninglessness, lethargy, lack of emotion, and self-awareness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 409-423.

Zadrow, L., Williams, K. D., & Richardson, R. (2004). How low can you go? Ostracism by a computer is sufficient to lower self-reported levels of belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningful existence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 560-567.