Indispensable Change

Well, Yusef, on looking at this picture, I thought gosh,I know just who to call. HGTV Design on a dime. They will give you that new start your looking for.
Miguel

Great show. I love HGTV. Make it happen. I need the help.

And ask JB from DHome "In a fix" to fix your window treatment.

Yu,

OK, I kept my promise. I will now post comments on your web page vs. my space, as I have cancelled my account. WOW! It looks like you've been neglecting your sanctuary. What's the deal? You want me to fly in from CA and give your place a face-lift?

Hiro,

I dont need JB. I got my own power tools.

Joe,

Yeah, hurry up and get over here but make sure you bring plenty of home furnishing gift cards along with your sleeping bag.

Yu,

I was inspired by your comment about change. I decided to crank it up a notch. Are you equally moved, that change involves knowledge?

Superlative developments in the past have made immense modifications in the way we live, communicate and work today. Alexander Graham Bell who created the telephone through his practice with deaf people, wanted to send voice messages over extended distances. The first message generated was in 1876. Since then, we have progressed not just in communications, but also in all directions of our daily life: television, motorcars, and electricity to name a few. All these developments have had a significant impact on our society propagating a social metamorphosis. The assumption of knowledge and society vary depending on to whom you talk. With the growth in knowledge and knowing with in our society comes a change in attitudes and beliefs. There have been various writers attempting to make us understand social change. Regardless, in essence, it is a personal decision and preference depending to whom you listen to.

The means of communication and travel has, it is said, minimized the size of the world. The politics and economics have made that world a vulnerable place to live. The celerity of change, specifically, and particularly the rate at which the world is becoming a single, though highly disordered system, gives a kind of urgency to the approach that culmination is the ordinary state of affairs. It would be silly to argue that the contemporary condition of constant crisis is historically "normal," that men have "always" lived out their lives in a state of uncertainty not essentially different from the situation in which we find ourselves today. The contemporary world is more hazardous than the past, and the hazards affect more people. Social change, on the other hand, is not a uniquely modern phenomenon. Some kinds and degrees of change are universal in human experience. The speed of contemporary change is not very illusory, but it can be exaggerated, as when we pass a much slower-moving car on the road and it seems to be standing still. Medical knowledge and scientific knowledge advance through new methods of investigation this in return has left religious knowledge failing to catch up.

Knowledge and social change are interlinked through different forms and structures.

What is knowledge? Put simply, knowledge understands. However, understanding knowledge (or what has been understood) is not so simplistic. Many scientist and psychologist have tried to understand how we are capable of gaining knowledge. There are different kinds of knowledge, and there are differences in knowledge, religious knowledge, common sense knowledge, and scientific knowledge. Expert knowledge has developed in communities and institutions. An example would be the Royal society, which was given statues in the medical science through its members. Scientific knowledge is knowledge that is known to be true as it is subjected to objective proof theories ‘the double blind study’. Science is interlinked with social change, as a science develops the laws and paradigms and is separated from the common sense knowledge by the language it uses. When innovative knowledge comes, along it often replaces these older laws and paradigms. Traditionally the medical bodies were governed by the hippo-critical oath and apprenticeships were restricted to men only. Its authority to prescribe drugs has always socially sanctioned expert knowledge; employers rely on a certificate as valid proof of illness. However over the past decade or so expert knowledge has been on the decline as new and different methods of medical knowledge are introduced, contemporary medicine, as scientific methods come to the fore. It is said that scientific knowledge has over take religious knowledge. Previously religious knowledge was accepted at face value. However, it seems that religion has become less important in contemporary society. This decline has become to known as secularization. Traditionally religion brought communities together. The two main definitions of religion: substantive, what is concerned with its content, beliefs and practices, And functional, what it does, answering unanswered questions (is there life after death, and the meaning of life). The decline or secularization in religion may not be that people no longer belief in god as there faith may still be intact but they may be disillusioned with the church itself. However, since the last part of the twentieth century there has been an increase in new age beliefs. This is not to challenge the established religion but to become a new science. These beliefs are interested in alternatives rather than the traditional and challenge the contemporary models and theories. Although there would be many different models and theories of social change, we will look at a two, the knowledge society, and the risk society.

The knowledge society is referring to the post-industrial society. The sociologist Daniel Bell noticed that the balance of employment was shifting from the manufacturing sector to the service sector as it did with the agriculture to manufacturing. Agriculture was the predominant employer until manufacturing came along then with the higher wages people left the agriculture and moved to the cities where the largest manufactures were.

However the heavy manufacturing industry which was run a long the lines of a Marxist model of hierarchy of power where there is a clear delineation between managers and workers causing a clash between upper management who also owned the business and the work force mostly over the working conditions and profits and wages.

Between innovation and capital investment things were good for the large work forces creating more wants and needs especially in the service sector as society becomes the most dominant form of knowledge. However, along with innovation and capital investment came automation and technology and the once large work force would gradually reduce to allow for new sets of skills and knowledge that would be able to creating new products and improve old ones this in turn creating a knowledge society. With the newfound wealth of these new knowledgeable employees would lead to greater demands in the service sector. Even today, the advances that have been made are tremendous especially in the sciences.

The risk society is based on Beck’s theory. He argues that the social change is not the communications revolution but the knowledge that we face a possible global catastrophe with nuclear war, nuclear accidents, or global warming. During the industrial revolution of the early nineteen hundreds where you had the emissions from the chimney stacks of large major manufactures. The poison toxins affected not just the workers who worked there but also entire communities. However beck didn’t think this was effecting the world as a whole or even society; he reckons that the new systems and toxins from nuclear power stations and the possibility of nuclear disasters are of more a risk than any industrial toxin. The only way for environmental issues to reach the political stage is through scientific investigation. With the emergence of new kinds of environmental risks and knowledge, the unstable society the, risk society, exists. With in the environmental debate especially in political institutions, environment is seen as a global problem, but in societies, the people charged with dealing with them are nationally based. The Problem with the question of environmental degradation is an uncertain one because of its complexity and the fact that we do not know enough about it. However, as we live in a society that is measured on growth and consumption to maximize technological progress we ourselves are responsible for global warming, over fishing fish stocks etc. More over with political ideologies, treat the rest of non human nature in an instrumental fashion. With the increased knowledge in science, we are entering a new phase of production and reproductive technology. It is said that by over stepping these limits that nature will strike back at us.

There are many different forms of knowledge: there is medical knowledge, common sense knowledge, and scientific knowledge. Knowledge is socially constructed as in the royal society, but differ depending on the language and methods used. Scientific knowledge has come to the fore over the past years and has even surpassed religious knowledge. However with the greater knowledge comes greater uncertainty it is becoming more difficult to decide who the real experts are. With people, seeking new forms of knowing and well being in new forms of medicine and religion the decline and disillusionment is greater than it has ever been. Never the less these uncertain times are not all constructed by some higher authority, we as society have to take responsibility. With greater prosperity for most people in the western societies, we are driving bigger cars; living in bigger houses brings greater uncertainty. However, we are forgetting about the environment, with global warming and environmental degradation we are raping the lands for our own selfish needs and forgetting about the natural world. With increased knowledge come new ideas, and new uncertainties. We all live in a well-informed society, and risk society; knowledge is not separate from society but a part of society.

Chulo,

It'll be a non-invasive face-lift, since I start school again on January 3rd. So what's my reward? Will you promise to take me to Junior's Bakery for a slice of Cheescake?

Joe,

Change does involve knowledge but every so often change challenges our conventional views, often referred to as knowledge. I guess that it is all a two way street.

For example: The new string theories that are in ways supporting Theo-scientific notions of evolutionary intelligent-design theory.

Yu,

Very interesting exegesis....simple, yet so operative. Hey but you neglected to answer my other question....My cheescake!

"Oedipus the King's themes..My friend sent me a little something about this historical play. Not only did I agree with him, I found it to be interesting too.

Oedipus brought about his own fate through his arrogance, and through his attempt to escape his fate. Fiction, which is a new "invention" compared to drama, similarly bases the character's conflict on his/her inner flaw, but I don't think the "hubris" of a character, and the downfall it causes, has ever been so clearly expressed as in this play.

What is Oedipus "blind" to that he acknowledges by the end? Oedipus is a man who has killed other men, and left his only home for fear of terrible prophecies, yet as King of Thebes, he behaves as though he's led a life unscathed by difficulty and in addition, is capable of solving almost any problem, without the help of God. "I, Oedipus, who bear the famous name," he says in his first speach, "tell me what preys upon you...and never doubt that I will help you." Whenever an adviser warns otherwise, he pushes forward anyway, and even brags on that he solved the riddle of the Sphinx himself, "I thought it out myself," without any help from God. "And this is the man you think you can destroy."

(The story of the Sphinx is what is called "backstory" to this play, understood by the audience through previous plays. In brief, after Oedipus killed Laois and traveled to Thebes, he found the city over-powered by a terribe Sphinx, that had threatened the entire populace. The Sphinx would only give them peace if someone could solve its riddle, so each new man who came to the town was forced to try; if the man solved the puzzle, he would be required to marry the newly widowed queen Iocaste; if he failed, he would be killed. Oedipus, forced into attempting the riddle, solved it, and then was forced into marrying the queen.

Now Yusef, use you brain, it's not very difficuly. The riddle--What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?

Talk to you soon! How's everything in NY. Hey I need to take a vacation.....let's get drunk!

Although, I do have to admit his response was more in-depth than mine, not only did I respond, but I threw in a little brain teaser. Hope you like. Besos.

Joe,

The answer to your riddle is: Man. Four in the morning of our lives, when we crawl. Two when we learn to walk and three when older and in need of assistance. Hence, a cane.

:wink:

btw: sure you can have cheesecake but I rather go else where Juniors reminds me of the passing of a good freind named Carmelo.

Yu,

Asi me gusta! Good looks, brains and integrity. Now why can't I find one out here like that? Hey would my ex-professor count? LOL. No, esta muy ruquito. I haven't been to NY in a minute. When I used to be a teacher I had 12 weeks of vacation so on any given day you would find me roaming the streets of NY along with my good friend Antonio. Since, I have moved on and become an office drone. I never have much time off. And when I do, it's usually to study for an unfailing, enigmatical exam.

lick, lick!

TTYL