#but Sociology is. pretty much Done since the whole Point of lectures is to discuss back n forth with the prof

[hoodieimp]

How in the fuck has it been a week already--

[dancerstudying]

first semester: grades + some thoughts

hi friends! so, I just finished my first semester of college (aka university to those of you not in the US). after a week of finals and lots of stress, I’m now at home, safely ensconced in the couch doing as little as possible. however, final grades were due today, so I thought I’d take a moment to run through what my grades were and kind of reflect on them. I wanted to do this both bc I thought it could give people a better idea of the transition b/t high school and college grades-wise, and also as a record for myself.

a note/disclaimer:

if you don’t want to know what my grades were, you don’t have to read this! I’m not trying to brag and I don’t want this to be something to compare yourself to! everyone is on their own path and has their own definition of success -- a bad grade for me might be a great one for you, and vise versa.

also, this will probably get pretty long. grab a snack.

some background about grades in the US

grades are given on a scale from A to F, with A being the best and F being a fail (we skip E tho idk why). grades are based on a combo of exams, quizzes, assignments, and essays, with the specific percentage/which of these counts determined by the professor. this varies from school to school or even from class to class but generally the scale is

A: >93.3%

A-: 90-93.3%

B+: 86.7-89.9%

B: 83.4-86.6%

B-: 80-83.3%

ok I’m tired of typing things out but you get the point. this pattern continues in the 70s for C and the 60s for D. usually anything below a 60 is an F (fail) but again this can depend. some classes are graded on a curve, where the grade boundaries are moved either up or down so that the majority of students get a B-/C+, which is supposed to be the average. this prevents grade inflation and also helps you out if the class is very difficult and test averages are in the 50s or 60s (pretty common for classes like organic chemistry).

some background about my grades in high school

I feel like this info is important for context and also to give an idea of the academic level I generally operate at (okay that sounds v pretentious). anyway, it’s pretty generally expected that you can expect to see a drop in your grades from high school to college. this differs based on a ton of things, but almost everyone experiences it so it’s totally normal and to be expected! anyway, I went to a fairly competitive and well-ranked public (government funded) high school, and I grew up in a well-educated university town, so I felt I was pretty prepared for college. I took mostly AP/honors courses and ended with a 3.95 GPA (unweighted) when I graduated. basically, I was almost a straight A student with a few Bs in there (thanks to pre-calc and AP Spanish). 

I’m now at a fairly selective school, though not anything close to the Ivy League -- I think the acceptance rate for my class was 17-18%. of course, selectivity is not a great indicator of how difficult classes are, as many selective schools (particularly Ivy Leagues) have rampant grade inflation.

my majors are neuroscience and dance and I’m on a pre-med track.

anyway, let’s get down to the nitty gritty: my grades this semester.

early modern England (3 credit hours): A- 

I took this course because I placed out of introductory writing but still needed a writing-intensive course and it seemed interesting enough. honestly, it was much more difficult than I expected. I consider myself a fairly good writer, but the professor I had for this course was a tough grader for papers. I did manage to get an A on my final paper which was a victory. after easily getting all As in writing and history classes in high school, an A- is a little hard to accept. however, I worked really hard in this class and am honestly satisfied with my grade as I know most people do not do as well in this class. it was also a 2000 (sophomore level) class, so I was definitely being challenged.

intensive ballet IV (3 credit hours): B+

so, this is my lowest grade. at first, I was really disappointed by it, but it is a 4000 level course (mostly juniors and seniors) and we’re graded based partially on skill, so I have to accept it and move on and just hope to do better next semester as I’m taking ballet IV again. I know I could have worked harder in this class so I’m not going to complain about it, just learn from it and try to improve.

intro to cell & molecular biology (3 credit hours): A

this is probably what I’m proudest of. this class is known for being a true weed-out course for pre-meds and most people just hope to pass, but I got an A! it feels especially good because I know I worked hard for it and didn’t just skate by on natural intelligence. I also hadn’t taken biology since freshman year of high school so there was a steep learning curve. I didn’t just do well, I honestly learned so much and doing well in this class confirmed for me that pre-med is the right choice.

general chemistry I - lecture (3 credit hours): A-

I have such a complicated relationship with chemistry, and honestly, I’m really glad I’m done with this class. I hate to blame professors but sometimes you just get a really bad one and this was one of those cases. his lectures were extremely disorganized and he didn’t explain things clearly at all. it’s partially my fault that I didn’t get an A, though, as I definitely could have put more time and thought into studying, especially for the final. it was just so hard to stay motivated when I could barely follow lectures. I have to take gen chem II next semester but thank god I have a different professor.

general chemistry I - lab (1 credit hour): A

not much to say about this one. I’m happy to have gotten an A since it really intimidated me at first -- lab in college is way more serious than in high school. I learned how to write a proper lab report which is an important skill as a science major.

honors colloquium (1.5 credit hours): A

I loved this class soooo freaking much. everyone in the honors program has to take a first year seminar and I chose one about modernism and if it’s still relevant to the contemporary world. it was also a discussion based class which I love and I got to write my final paper on literally any topic I wanted and how it was related to modernism (mine was about the modernist search for identity in The Handmaid’s Tale, and I’m so proud of that paper, especially considering I wrote it the day it was due). anyway, not a super hard class, but still proud of that A.

urban sociology (3 credit hours): A

another class which I loved. I found it kind of easy as it was mostly memorization of concepts and theorists and I have a good memory, but I did put more effort in than I would have to an “easy” class in high school, and was rewarded by getting 100% on the final! would highly recommend sociology to literally anyone -- I’m taking another sociology class next semester and am considering a minor in it.

dance company (1 credit hour): A

this is like, not a real grade because dance company isn’t even a real class -- it’s just on my schedule so I can get credit for performing in the fall dance show. I’m pretty sure everyone who shows up to rehearsals and performances gets an A. regardless, I’m happy for the boost to my GPA.

so that’s it! overall, I ended with a 3.7925 GPA. I have to confess that it is slightly lower than I would have liked, but I’m overall happy with my efforts considering this was my first semester of college. my class load next semester is a little bit lighter, both in terms of credits and in terms of difficulty of classes, so that will hopefully make things a little more manageable. I have to have a 3.6 by the end of this year and a 3.8 by the end of sophomore year to stay in the honors program, and considering I’m almost at a 3.8 now I think it’s completely doable. 

I hope this was useful to those of you who are starting college soon. obviously this differs from school to school and especially if you’re not in the US, but in general you can expect a slight dip in your grades. it shouldn’t be anything dramatic if you can keep organized and on top of things, but there are a lot of transitions associated with starting college so don’t feel badly if things don’t go according to plan! you have time to make up for it, and med schools/law schools/grad schools know that grades your first semester of freshman year are not necessarily fully reflective of your abilities and will likely pay more attention to your grades later on.

thanks for reading this whole rambling thing! also, I might make a separate post about differences in grades between high school and college (how things are weighted, harshness of grading, etc.) so let me know if you’d find that helpful!

[thousandmaths]

How Quantum Physics Democratized Music

This was a public lecture* given by Michael Berry. I went almost entirely on accident: somebody just put up a large-postcard-sized advertisement for it on the math department wall, and I just happened to notice it on the day it was happening.

I was confused by the clickbait title and I had to see it for myself. I’m glad I did. This post is fairly long, although hopefully not half as dense as the usual fare here.

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The title is indeed clickbait, and like all clickbait it has some element of truth to it. Moreover, he was aware that it was clickbait, and so he wasted no time in explaining himself: 

In 1982 the CD player was invented, which Berry cites as a “democratization of music”— more on that later.

In 1958 the laser was invented. Later, this would be used to make lightweight information-storage mechanisms, which in turn make CDs readable. This is critically important for the improved portability of the device (and, yes; improved. Walkmans existed— more on that later, too.)

In 1917, Einstein published a paper on “stimulated emission”, a previously unknown type of photon-electron interaction, determined from what Wikipedia calls the “old quantum theory”.

Hence, the answer to the question “How did quantum physics democratize music?” is “Through a complex process by which humanity used Einstein’s theoretical discovery of subatomic particle interactions to create a CD player” (a sentence which echoes this post).

At this point, Berry starts to tip his hand a little bit as he starts packing a healthy amount of nuance into the story he has just constructed. It begins with a joke: “A rhetorical sin, which I am not guilty of here, is ‘NothingBut-ery’”. By which he means that, of course, quantum physicsts were not remotely close to the only people whose contributions culminated in the CD player and the subsequent democratization of music.

Ah yes, there’s that phrase again. In what sense is the CD player supposed to represent a democratization of music? He is careful to note, before starting in on this, that it is not that the technology itself is suited to the sociological change that it inspired. A piece of technology, observed in a vacuum, is value-neutral; it’s the use of that technology— and hence, in particular, the marketing— which gives it meaning.

This disclaimer aside, he gives an analogy: photography. The history behind obtaining faithful images of some location has a long history. Yet the 1839 announcements of Daguerre’s daguerreotype and Talbot’s negative are often cited as the “invention of photography”. To Berry, this is because they were the first people who were able to mass-produce these images, and this led to something of a democratization: before these inventions, the most convenient way to see some French garden, say, was to go to France. But now, at least theoretically, you could have a single person go to France, and share their experience— not just in writing, but in faithful visuals— to a very large number of people.

Similarly, Berry argues that the CD player did this for music. Again, the history is complicated. The gramophone is usually considered the first audio playback device, since Edison’s phonograph was not reusable. But what the CD player was that the gramophone was not (nor was the record players that succeeded it) is portable. Then came radio: radios were portable, but the CD player was again different in a qualitative way: you can choose the music you listen to on a CD player. (Of course you can change stations, so there was some personal control, but one must admit that this is still considerably less versatile than you’d hope.) And I promised I would say something about the Walkman, which used cassette tapes. Again, you have some degree of control here, but moving around on a cassette tape is not the easiest thing, and without considerable conscious attention your best bet was just to listen to the tape start to finish. With CD players, you had not only album-level control, but even song-level control (not to mention the improved fidelity, of course).

In this sense, the CD player represents a democratization of music: you can now, theoretically, listen to any sound you could afford to obtain a CD of, at any time you were willing to put headphones on.

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The next level of qualification Berry makes to the titular story begins with a quote from one of his students on an end-of-course evaluation. Although generally satisfied with the course, he wasn’t happy with how sparse the applications were, because, after all, “even if we didn’t understand [quantum physics], this stuff would still happen anyway.”

After the initial emotional response subsided, he realized that the remark was actually quite insightful, and sent it to his friends in the philosophy department. They apparently agreed; he says that they talked about it for several weeks.

Of course, the student is right. As a way of demonstrating this, he tells a story. Although obviously tangential, it was definitely my favorite part of the talk.

Why is gold gold? You know, why does the metal have the color that it has?

The question is not arbitrary, but the theoretical underpinnings of the problem are a “simple” application of deep tools. And it’s not even some weird steel alloy thing: gold is on the periodic table. So just take the relevant properties of the element, write down the relevant Schrödinger equation for figuring out which wavelengths are reflected, and solve it, badda-bing-badda-boom. 

Cue chuckles/eyerolls from anyone who has ever, ever tried to “solve the relevant Schrödinger equation” for... pretty much any problem.

For those of you not in the above category: doing such a thing is functionally impossible. To take it from “functionally impossible” to just “unlikely”, you have to make a ton of (reasonable) simplifying assumptions. And even then, you’re not going to do this thing on the back of an envelope over a cup of coffee; this computation is going to take your local supercomputer a day or two to run.

But some people in 1990 were able to simplify the problem in just the right way to get an answer from their computers, and when they went to visualize the output of the program, they discovered that the color of gold was...

Silver.

Obviously something went wrong.

What went wrong is that the Schrödinger equation is not the right tool for the job. The thing is, gold is heavy. Like, really heavy. In fact, it is so heavy that its electrons are moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and that means our old friend Einstein has something to say about relativity. The Schrödinger equation doesn’t, and so we need to throw it out in favor of its relativistic cousin, the Dirac equation. And they did this, and they ran the computations, and indeed you get the desired golden hue.

A semi-related anecdote: these sorts of relativistic effects are also largely responsible for typical car batteries. More specifically, in a common lead-acid battery, 80% of the voltage that you get from lead-acid batteries comes from relativistic effects. Conversely, tin-acid batteries aren’t a thing (despite tin being chemically similar to lead) because tin is too light and therefore doesn’t enjoy the extra voltage (at least, not in an appreciable amount).

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Getting back to the student’s concern:

The usual thing that people cite when they want to convince you that relativity is useful is the essential role that it plays in GPS— I am old enough that when first heard people mention this as an application, it didn’t feel particularly relatable, but that objection no longer exists now that smartphones are pretty widespread.

However, it seems like there is a qualitative difference between relativity’s role in GPS as opposed to the color of gold or the workings of lead-acid batteries. And this is what the student was getting at; presumably they wanted to see more of the former type. Certainly physics in general is quite interested in things of the latter type— understanding things that happen naturally, without regard to whether their happening depends on our understanding. And I am no physicist (but I play one on the internet?), but I suspect that for most physicists, even those who are more experimental, the latter type seems to be what they’d care about more? 

[ Disclaimer: it is certainly what I care about more as a mathematician, in case you couldn’t tell by the ~6 paragraphs on gold and lead and the 1 on GPS. ]

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I found the next part of the talk rather meandering and hard to follow, but fortunately he concluded his presentation with a discussion of prime numbers**. If you hear or read enough pop-math accounts of the Riemann hypothesis, a phrase you will undoubtedly come across is “the music of the primes”; it is the name of a rather famous book, and seems to stem from a quote of Enrico Bombieri:

To me, that the distribution of prime numbers can be so accurately represented in a harmonic analysis is absolutely amazing and incredibly beautiful. It tells of an arcane music and a secret harmony composed by the prime numbers.

Well, you hear this phrase enough, and you start to say ‘geez, what do these things sound like, anyway?’. And if you decide to start looking around the internet for answers to that question, you’ll discover a whole lot of nothing.

Probably quite a few people have done analyses. But if they’re anything like what Berry played for us: the reason you can’t find anything with a casual google search is that it sounds exactly like white noise. (To be clear, what I’m talking about is something like the Fourier coefficients of the characteristic function of the primes, not, e.g. this which is really about prime gaps)

However, you can do something with the zeta function and spectra (here’s where I have to mumble because my notes aren’t good enough to form a sentence), and you can produce the sound of that. It’s not what I’d call ‘music’ but it definitely has a notable sound.

Of course, this “earmaths” is just a toy for now, but we’ve had a lot of success with generating ideas in some areas of math by turning it into pictures. So it seems logical that we might at least try to get some of those other senses involved.

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[ I won’t make another entire section on the Q&A, but it was pretty amusing: for instance, one person asked him to talk more about Theory of Everything. His answer was nice and diplomatic, with the obligatory comment that string theory is currently a mathematical theory, not a scientific theory. He was rather more direct when talking about the interaction between physics and philosophy (also STEM with the arts): he found it worthwhile to have friends in those disciplines, but “I’ve never found that talking with philosophers has helped me to do science... that’s not the point.” ]

[ * If you’re not neck-deep in academia, the phrase “public lecture” may not mean anything in particular to you. What it means to me is: the presenter is likely senior or a leader of their field— and often both— and the work is supposed to be unusually nontechnical. There’s a bit of self-selection bias here: public lectures are not easy to write, much less to deliver. So, take the kind of people who are invited to give a public lecture, and intersect with the kind of people who wants to give a public lecture... and perhaps you start to see why my default assumption is that these talks are going to be pretty good. ]

[ ** Because chaos theory, apparently. He did not endeavor to explain the connection until the Q&A— and the resulting explanation convinced me that the omission was wise. However, in my travels around the internet I did discover this explanation:

If you choose a number n and ask how many prime numbers there are less than $n$ it turns out that the answer closely approximates the formula: $n/\log n$. The formula is not exact, though: sometimes it is a little high and sometimes it is a little low. Riemann looked at these deviations and saw that they contained periodicities. Berry likens these to musical harmonics: “The question is what are the harmonics in the music of the primes? Amazingly, these harmonics or magic numbers behave exactly like the energy levels in quantum systems that classically would be chaotic.”

This correspondence emerges from statistical correlations between the spacing of the Riemann numbers and the spacing of the energy levels. Berry and his collaborator Jon Keating used them to show how techniques in number theory can be applied to problems in quantum chaos and vice versa. In itself such a connection is very tantalising. Although sometimes described as the Queen of mathematics, number theory is often thought of as pretty useless, so this deep connection with physics is quite astonishing. 

Berry is also convinced that there must be a particular chaotic system which when quantised would have energy levels that exactly duplicate the Riemann numbers. "Finding this system could be the discovery of the century," he says. it would become a model system for describing chaotic systems in the same way that the simple harmonic oscillator is used as a model for all kinds of complicated oscillators. It could play a fundamental role in describing all kinds of chaos. The search for this model system could be the holy grail of chaos... [We] cannot be sure of its properties, but Berry believes the system is likely to be rather simple, and expects it to lead to totally new physics. It is a tantalising thought. 

quoted from Julian Brown’s 1996 piece “Where Two Worlds Meet”. ]

[finnland-lizzy]

Human Rights, Global Ethos and the Problem of Religion

1.    Introduction

This is a learning journal for the course “Human Rights, Global Ethos and the Problem of Religion”, which was taught by Partow Izadi and took place from 01.11.2018 until 13.12.2018. The main themes were the theory of Bifurcation, and the idea of humanity’s need to find a global ethos because of it. Religion was also discussed, as a double-edged sword being both an engine for progression and hindering it.

In this journal I give a short overview over what I have learned and document any questions and thoughts I had during the lecture. Since many of my original notes in class were taken in form of pictures, mind maps or tables these were now translated into text.

2.    Social Evolution of homo sapiens

Humanity is constantly in a process, not standing still, but developing evolutionary. This means that only the values, institutions and traditions survive which are sustainable. No other criterium is important but to see whether something will be able to stand the test of time. When Homo sapiens sapiens first came into existence, people lived with their own family, their clan, and every outsider was just that. But as time passed on humans learned to care for people, they have no blood-relation with, such as people who live in the same area. Gradually humanity managed to exist in interdependence with others in the same village, the same county, and, with nationalism from the 18th century on, also in the same nations. Humanity has learned to accept more and more diversity, while still being able to live as one community.

This concept seemed very familiar to me. The idea of increasing interdependencies leading to greater civility I had learned in Sociology class as coming from Norbert Elias. In this classes teaching though the tone was a gentler one, introducing the idea of humanity learning altruism in this process. I think this is highly contestable. At the start of almost all social or political theories there is the question of how the philosopher sees the human. Are humans fundamentally good, kind, able to learn, able to better themselves? Or are they bad, rotten, selfish, slaves to their own desires? Opposite to Elias this class is based on a very positive view of humanity, but its not proven very well. Growing altruism is just one explanation for the increasing size of human societies, the extension of what early humans only gave to their families, and we can slowly give to all of humanity. Another explanation, such as that humans are fundamentally selfish and only societal forces form us into civilized people, is also likely.

For me as a person I would like to believe in an altruistic, good, human. But as a scientist I think the basis is too thin, even though we have had at least 200 years of beginning research on humanity, we have not concluded what humans are fundamentally like. But I can accept this as a basis for what is to come.

3.    Concept of unity and diversity

This brings us to the concept of unity and diversity. Xenophobia is a natural human instinct, and the bigger the group becomes, the harder it is to maintain a sense of unity with the growing diversity. Nevertheless, diversity is also the basis of any innovation, and of the development of any community, because differences create sparks that start intellectual fires, but only if diversity is seeking unity. Diversity on its own is creating problems, subgroups and subgroups in society, that are so sure of their standpoint, they cannot see beyond.

This one hit me hard, probably because it is a simple truth which I should have been aware of before, but never really put my finger on. I do a lot of so-called activist work in Germany, especially inside my university for LGBT+ rights. There I met many people, and I certainly also have tendencies like that myself, that only want to further these issues for the sake of furthering them; to the point in which all things the other political side say must be wrong, since only our interpretation is correct. I have tried to stand between these lines in university politics, because I don’t think that this helps furthering LGBT+ rights in any ways, more like the opposite. We tried to exclude certain topics from discussion, and I often try to get to talk to people one on one and try to humanize them and help them see their political opponent as human also. But it is hard, because the “other political side” doesn’t trust me, because they know I fight for LGBT+ rights, and “my own side” doesn’t trust me, because they feel I am too flexible and not truly on their side.

Discussing pluralism in class opened a whole new interpretation for me. I was only familiar with Franz Neumanns theory of pluralism, which is a very positive one. In this pluralism different political ideas are discussed with one another with an open mind, until, because all ideas are out in the open, the best one can be found. This is not the sense of pluralism we discussed in this class. Pluralism here means that society is made of fundamentally different actors with different beliefs, that cannot be reconciled with one another and the differences of opinion just have to be accepted. Obviously, in this interpretation pluralism cannot be a suitable foundation for unity.

People happen to be very sure in their particular mindset most of the time, as all of us are, I would go as far as to call it human nature. But unity can only exit when different social groups are willing to cooperate with one another. And by that I don’t mean compromises, I mean the actual idea of Neumanns pluralism, of sparks flying when different people interact. When different cultures collide, neither the dominant culture nor the other cultures can stay the same. Everything must change. As our teacher said very fittingly in class: “This is a painful process.” But it can only be done this way.

Any other way to create unity, taking for example the building of “Eastern Germany”, the German Democratic Republic, which was done top-down, with a considerable amount of force, in the end only leads to revolts and possible revolution.

4.    Theory of Bifurcation

The theory of bifurcation is part of systemic theory. It is based on the beliefs of social evolution and unity and diversity. There are two modes of existence: steady and crisis. The mode of crisis of a system is a bifurcation. A system cannot come out of a bifurcation as it went in. It is destroyed in a forking, which either leads to a higher form of existence, e.g. with new technology, or to humanities downfall to a worse existence.

In a Bifurcation the consequences of human actions become visible much faster than in steady development. And every single decision made by any actor in a Bifurcation influences the outcome; makes the coin tip in either way.

Nevertheless, Bifurcations still last about 200 years, so are not easy to analyse, especially when one is inside. Judgement becomes incredibly cloudy. What social values and institutions are sustainable? What to throw away and what to keep?

I personally think this theory is an over-simplification. It attempts to make sense of incredibly big, social processes and its definitely a very interesting approach. It also combines a Micro and Macro perspective, which I think is better than just choosing one of the two positions. What does not convince me about it, is a lack of empirical research on the topic. When was the last Bifurcation? Is the little explosion of a new religion (Chapter 9) a Bifurcation, or does it run parallel to one? If so, can the time span between Bifurcations be classified? Why does this theory take such a big leap, speaking of this all-or-very-little-scenario, when there might be simpler explanations, such as that any time of turmoil in our world eventually leads to the former system being destroyed and replaced by a new one (which might be more or less advanced, or pretty much the same)? I personally think this theory is intriguing, but again I could not find enough scientific evidence, such as studies, to back it up.

I am by the way not trying to say that a scientific theory only has merit when it has been approved by many studies. But the scientific community has a process. And especially as a young student, who just started her bachelor, I have been taught to look for signs of theories being respected in the fields of my study.

I think it would be great if a few papers would be published on this theory of Bifurcation, more than I could find after extensive research online. It is such an intriguing idea, and might be easily approved or disapproved of, by combining the fields of history, political science, sociology and comparative religion.

In this class it was also suggested that we are in a Global Bifurcation right now. Humanity, and our planet in general, is dealing with problems nations, anything smaller than a global society, cannot solve. Climate Change, large-scale migration, an unfair world economy, wars and terrorism are the main ones. Because these problems are so big, they can be seen like strong waves of an Earth quake, leading up to a Bifurcation. Humanity either has to work together as a competent whole, existing unity in diversity, or (almost) die trying, as we would in a climate catastrophe for example.

But this explanation is coming at the theory of Bifurcation from the end. Because a global society seems the only option to deal with these big problems, then this would be one of the forkings the system could take, and annihilation is the other forking. And because there is a fork, we must be in a bifurcation. The theory certainly fits reality in this regard, but once again we don’t really have the data to back this up, unless we could compare it to a previous bifurcation.

To come at the theory the opposite way would be to look at the problems that exist first and to what different outcomes they could lead. In my opinion, that doesn’t necessarily need to be a forking. Humanity could deal with these threats in all kinds of ways, and because we are so inventive and there are so many factors in play, I think its too simple to only speak of two separate option, to fly or to fall. Maybe we’ll fly with wings that don’t work too great, but they’ll work for a while until we come up with something better.

5.    Global Ethos

How can humanity grow together to form a global society? Every group of humans need to have some common values, ideas, understanding, and I would also postulate that they need another group of humans to distinguish themselves from. That is a very human process, as Alfred Schütz describes in “The Stranger”. Groups, among other things of course, define themselves by distinguishing from others. In a global society that other group wouldn’t exist anymore, because all humans would belong to the same group simply by being human.

This global society needs global values. It was taught to us in this class that just as there are laws of nature, on which everything that happens in our physical world depends, there is a global ethos, on which everything that happens in inter-human relations depends. While humanity tries every day to figure out more of the laws of nature, and builds technology based on them; we do not concern ourselves that much with global ethos. I believe it could be argued, that many religions have tried to find a global ethos, and that their teachings are in the end technology, that can be applied to the world. And if these teachings work, and make for good inter-human-relations, then the interpretation in those teachings was close to the actual global ethos.

Nevertheless, it is of course true that in human sciences there has been no great focus on finding a global ethos, even though it would be so useful in building societies (not just a global one). Generally, in sociology we try to find out human values by social experiments, e.g. altruism by asking people to donate money under different circumstances and measuring the response. To synthesize global ethos, we would have to conduct social experiments that last a couple of hundred years; which leaves us, in the end, with the study of history. But because the documentation and interpretation of history is not objective, this is also not an easy way to get there.

Just in a conversation with people from different countries one can easily find some similar values. The point is to deconstruct social practices and have a look behind them. Why do we shake hands? Why do we tell women to cover their hair? Why do we celebrate by having alcohol?

In our class discussion we could quickly agree on values such as kindness, hospitality and non-cruelty.

Another thought that came to my mind right there, was the social experiment “imitation game”. Perhaps in this way one could also try to filter out global values. One would need always groups of three from the same culture, and a laptop, and a camera. The teams would then play with each other, acting as the questioner, the answerer and the judge. As the questioner they would ask questions, trying to determine what values the other group has. As the answerer they would either answer truthfully in their culture or pretend to be from another. And as a judge they would have to decide whether the teams they have played with are the genuine thing or not. This is just from the top of my head, and I have only ever worked with imitation games in gender studies. Perhaps the setup would have to be much more complex, and the outcome would of course heavily depend on both the setup and the interpretation of the results.

The problem is that values lead to customs, so what people believe in influences their behaviour. In culture very often this behaviour freezes, is institutionalized. Over time, people tend to forget the underlaying values and just act according to customs without reflection. It can then seem like my values are quite different from another humans, when I only look at the custom. In my culture women are encouraged to show their hair, make it look beautiful, while in her culture they are encouraged to cover it up. But what if I open my mind to the possibility, that the underlying value is the same?

To take these musings away from being purely theoretical, we need to have a look at how a global ethos could be implemented, assuming it does exist. The only organisation with enough authority would be the United Nations. In fact, they have tried, both in their Charter and in all of their works, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

6.    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Declaration is a compilation of Human Rights, written just after the Second World War, in light of all the terrible things that happened under the Nazi Empire, but also elsewhere during the war, e.g. to Japanese living in the US. True to its name, it is mostly a compilation of rights, but also of responsibilities, which are equally as important.

Every single person on this planet is responsible for every other person on this planet, as soon as we know of their existence. Its quite a strong statement, but one I always believed to be true. Our actions always have consequences, whether we do something, or choose not to, and I think its important to take everyone into account who could be harmed by my behaviour. Every human deserves the same respect and care, and it can only work if we truly are and feel responsible for everyone. This responsibility spreads from helping someone I meet in person, to the clothes I buy and the entertainment I consume.

Everybody else’s rights are my duties, and my rights are everybody else’s duties. Only then can this whole human rights for everybody thing work.

7.    Individualism and materialism

Every word in the English language that ends in -ism is fundamentally a box, an ideology, something people believe unquestioningly.

Individualism refers to “worshipping the individual at the cost of everything else” and is the opposite of collectivism. Materialism is worshipping the material over the immaterial, such as happiness and well-being.

When we first discussed these problems in class, I immediately knew where we were going with them, and I was a bit bored by that. Yes, if defined this way it is out of question that individualism and materialism are a bad influence on the health of our society, and that they have become something of a quasi-religion.

I can’t quite explain why this concept doesn’t move me that much. Perhaps it is because, even if it was something, we would universally accept to be true, human nature wouldn’t change. We just love it being all about me, me, me, me. We love consumer culture, to have more than we need. I just don’t see how the revelation of individualism and materialism can help that. There are already movements in this world trying to work against it. Both on a political-economical side, taking individualism and materialism as the worst trades of capitalism and arguing for socialism instead; to social movements asking people from being more mindful of their consumption to giving up all consumerism.

I just don’t feel like the concepts are helpful in our current discourses anymore. But perhaps that’s just me and I would love to be convinced otherwise.

8.    The horse and the rider

In this class we were also talked about humans as having basic animal instinct while at the same time having (at least the potential for) possibility to see beyond and strive for a better existence. One metaphor for this can be the horse and the rider. The horse is driven by its animal instincts, to run for example. It needs to be guided by the rider, if it should have a purposeful run, and it also needs a lot of care from the rider, so it keeps running. The horse gets a stimulus and immediately transforms it into a response. The rider on the other hand can see farther ahead than the horse and can guide it towards a better, more meaningful response. Nevertheless, the rider cannot go without the horse, so they should be viewed as one.

I generally understand this concept, I think it is one of the first things we learn in “Ethics” (Religion class if you are not religious) in Germany. The metaphor is a bit out there in my opinion, since a rider can permanently go away from his horse, be distinguished from it completely. I think if animals were the colour blue, then humans wouldn’t be blue with an add-on of red, but purple. Something new, which came out of one plus one component, but strongly mixed. But I understand that the metaphor works, because the rider needs to take care of the horse, and can’t do without it, but also needs to control it, as we humans don’t do in individualism and materialism.

9.    Social Cohesion

One thing we also talked about in class was social cohesion. According to our lecturer social cohesion is decreasing. He offered examples of this happening at least in Finland, that the spirit of community used to be stronger. The topic is very interesting to me, so I looked up some studies from Germany. In Germany social cohesion (by the researcher’s definition), is increasing (https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/de/themen/aktuelle-meldungen/2017/dezember/gesellschaftlicher-zusammenhalt-in-deutschland-besser-als-sein-ruf/). Sadly, I could only find a German source.

10.                      The problem of religion

Religion as a concept has been facing two problems in the last decades. On the one hand, there is a declining religiousness in our world, due to for example political reasons (e.g. The German Democratic Republic diminished religiousness of its people) and as a general social trend. On the other extreme “religiousness”, and using religion to justify terroristic acts of violence, has also been on the rise.

There is a new dogma in Western society, especially in countries like the United States. You can either be religious OR believe in science, there is little to no room in between. Obviously, science isn’t something you can choose to believe in or not, but that’s written on another page.

Religion has had an undeniable influence on humankind, both in a direct and indirect way. There are two types of religions, folk/tribal and world religions. The latter include for example Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism. A world religion is not categorized by the number of followers, but by its influence on cultures.

Religions have both a light and a dark side, so to speak. They go through a sort of life cycle. When they first start out, they are like bursts of creativity and novelty. They bring positive, new developments, and can act as engines for social cohesion. On the other hand, the longer they exist, the less important their original thought becomes. They institutionalize, and practices slowly overtake values. They box themselves off, and every little disagreement leads to a new splinter group.

Religions then lead to a lot of negative consequences, weakening social cohesion, e.g. in an area with more than one religion, and conflicts between followers of different religions can be brutal.

On this notion of religion leading to social cohesion I had a thought: Perhaps it would be possible to draw a comparison between formerly nations lending citizenship, and in a global society the world lending citizenship, and formerly religion leading to social cohesion, and in a global society possibly a global ethos leading to it.

While religions are not “universal”, and quite prone to splintering, the hope is that wouldn’t happen if humanity could agree on a global ethos it would believe in. Replacing the idea of a god, or some deities, with belief in itself.

11.                      Religion as one, and its bifurcations

The life-cycle of a religion can also be seen in a macro context, integrating it into the theory of Bifurcation. This is also founded on the belief that something like a global ethos exists, on the same level as the laws of nature, and that history has two modes of existence.

After the initial “explosion” of a religion, it goes through a life cycle that can be compared to the flying track of a ball. When the religion is at its highest point of influence, a new religion is born, taking some of the values from the previous one and bringing new ones into play. In this way over centuries every religion is actually a part of a development upwards, closer to the discovery of a global ethos.

The essence of all religions is similar: Do something for the sake of the greater good, instead of for yourself.

Our teacher provided us with some evidence in class, that could indicate this theory to be correct. All world religions share specific teachings, such as the passive “Golden Rule”, or the more active idea of loving one’s enemy, even though their scriptures were written in different parts of the planet, by people who had never met and sometimes even had no influence on one another.

One important thing to note at this point is that the theory of Bifurcation of religions only work if these religions actually have an influence on one another. So, on the one hand we have this realization that many religions have similar core values, which indicates a global ethos, while on the other hand some religions may follow one another in bifurcations, one feeding off the other in an upwards development.

I think this theory is quite plausible, especially because of the indicators presented. Nevertheless, I think its important to remember that societies and politics also influence and shape religions, such as when a religion is suppressed by a government, out of non-, or at least only quasi-religious reasons, such as in many communist countries. Social movements, that are non-religious, can also have a huge influence, feed off one another, and lead humanity closer to a global ethos. Of course, this fact does not conclude this theory to be untrue, I just think its important to keep the whole make-up of developments in mind, and not focus too much on religion as a defining factor.

12.                      Conclusion

This course has been very enlightening for me. It was at times quite frustrating for me to first be presented with a theory, and with scientific evidence so much more later. I also think it would be helpful to offer some course literature that is critical of the theory of Bifurcation, and everything that goes with it, to gain some perspective.

Nevertheless, I think in these few weeks I learned many new things, especially about religion, and was able to hone my discussion skills as well. I think its always good to learn about new theories, so that they can be used as tools, as new glasses to look at the world in a different light and make some sense of it. I also thought it was interesting to think in this very holistic set-up, contemplating really big general questions about the world.