LORD YOU ARE MY SALVATIONExodus 14:14 (AMP)- “The Lord will fight for you while you [only need to] keep silent and remain calm.”
Lord, you have guided me to be still and listen for your words. The words that are within my essence come to life each morning. Upon waking, my thoughts are calm for no matter what the day may bring you will give me comfort. You have been my comforter and my guide in my times of troubles. My haste caused me much pain and discomfort over the years. Now knowing your heart for my salvation there is peace. Lead me to the still waters of your creation so my thirst is filled. Look into my heart and know my longing for your safety. The shadows of my past has been removed by your consistent deliverance of my troubled mind. For the battles I once faced without you caused my spiritual death. Being silent and remaining calm has restored my being. This is my eternal salvation and redemption by your son Jesus Christ who brought me life. Jesus' resurrection brought me into your Kingdom. There is no need for me to battle alone in the weariness of my mind for now the Kingdom of heaven is my eternal home.
Prayer: May I remain silent and calm moment by moment. Knowing that your soft voice will bring me joy and rest from those who seek to harm me. May my words and deeds and actions reflect your heart in my daily walk. Remind me in moments of disharmony you have placed your shield before my heart. In your Holy name I pray.
Amen
BRING ME BACK HOME Psalm 119:25-26 “I am worn out and weary; my heart is exhausted, but I will keep your law. Restore me, Lord, and give me new life, and I will obey your every command.” (NIV)
Oh, Lord I am your Faithful child, for You are my Heavenly Father. You renewed my Heart to Love You Forever. I have been given an experience of death to the world. While I was in the hospital, I nearly died to the world and You restored my Spirit. I have prayed to you since childhood. Now, at 67 years old, you have guided me back to your Salvation and Redemption. I have sought You and I have received Your Grace. Grace because of your Divine and Majestic and Mighty power to give birth to Creation. I’m a part of your Creation and have never been far from You. You never gave up on me.
This restored Heart has given me life. My Heavenly Father whom I Love with all my essence. I have knelt at the altar listening for the whisper of you calling me, my Lord, for I’m dust. My spirit is now full of Glory for a life of joy and prosperity. Your plans for me to know Your precious Son Jesus the Christ. He paved the way for me to have everlasting Life in the Heavenly Kingdom.
Prayer: Divine Father of all of Creation I celebrate my sonship. I adore your Holy Son Jesus Christ, Who died on the Cross for my sins (and separation) from You. You have sought me since my birth. Decades have passed sitting before the altar of lights. Praying on my knees with tears fallen on the altar rail. My heart was lost and my soul was aching. Lost and confused seeking you. You called me while I was severely ill, giving me solace. Now in Your Heart I have returned Home. This life living in the Heavenly Kingdom in the here and now. In that very moment while in the hospital, I was born a new Creation in Your Being.
Amen
Advent Health ICU 2:00AM.
Wednesday July 10th 2024
Fonty The Vegan Vulture
Fonty was a vegan Vulture.
Other Vultures tried to offer their advice
Told him they were created as carnivores and eating
meat
Is an essential part of their diet.
He stayed true to his commitment to be a vegan
Ate fruit and berries but they never satisfied his appetite
He began to steal stale bread from pigeons
Crows kept him away from the cornfields
He was too weak to put up a fight
The Vulture Committee knew he wouldn't last much longer
Sure enough he died from starvation
The Volt joined together as a Wake and all said a prayer
Then they quickly ate him.
Judge Santiago Burdon
Stray Dogs and Deuces Wild, Not Real Poetry, Quicksand Highway, Fingers in the Fan, Tequilas Bad Advice, Lords of the Afterglow, Overdose of Destiny, Architect of Havoc.
The Achilles’ Heel of Liberalism: Rights vs. Responsibilities
By Christopher Bernard
The Tragedy of Rights
We live in a civilization whose power has so outstripped human wisdom, and so strained our moral sense, that it threatens our own existence. Though human extinction is unlikely, a collapse of the human population over the next century is almost certain: the heat waves of recent summers, and Hurricane Beryl, the earliest level 5 hurricane ever recorded, are merely a few of the stark warnings nature is giving us. Everyone knows the tedious clichés of horror we face, though few seem really to believe them – from the climate crisis to nuclear war, from the dangers of artificial intelligence to those of microplastics and forever chemicals, from the destruction of biodiversity to the depletion of nonrenewable resources, from the death of vast swaths of the oceans to the collapse of the Gulf Stream and a potential thousand-year winterization of Europe.
If we truly believed in the coming of these disasters – as unambiguously as we believe it when we see a truck barreling toward us at an intersection – we would, of course, respond, if only in pure reflex. But we obey another cliché: like a deer in the headlights, we freeze in panic. We don’t know what to do, or whether doing anything is even possible: every door seems locked, every path closed. We feel trapped in a society, culture and political system that seem to allow of no fundamental change, even when they threaten the destruction of ourselves and the system itself.
The humiliating irony is that we even know why this is so: a comparatively small number of people are making an enormous amount of money and acquiring a vast amount of power from the current political and economic order, and they either cynically don’t care what the future threatens (“After all, I’ll be dead, so what do I care what will happen to people I’ll never know? After all, I don’t owe anyone anything”), or they naively think they will escape its worse consequences (“The rich can always protect themselves. We’ll build bunkers in New Zealand or colonies on Mars if Earth gets too hot. We’ll just have to get out in time”).
How did this come to be? Is it just a result of forces beyond our control? Are we merely the result of the beanbag of fate tossing us back on forth between powers we have no influence over? And yet one thing above all things is clear: we made it happen. Collectively and individually, we are responsible for it.
And there lies an irony indeed.
At the heart of our world are two closely linked values that are foundational to our culture and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights: the rights of the individual and the maximization of personal liberty, the foundational ideas of liberalism, both left (“progressivism”) and right (capitalism, “neoliberalism”). Who can argue with the idea of personal freedom? We all love our liberty and are touchy about anyone who wants to take it away from us. These ideas are fundamental to the politics of a culture driven by the values of the Enlightenment – of science, reason and freedom – that began, four centuries ago, in the France of René Descartes and the England of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke; a culture that continues to dominate the modern world – a world that has created a wealth of prosperity, power and knowledge undreamed of in previous human history.
The selfishness of the rich is, of course, no new story: it goes back to the dawn of history and has powered our sense of human evil since biblical times (Radix malorum est cupiditas – “the love of money is the root of all evil”). But never before our time did we deliberately – and to borrow a decidedly appropriate legal phrase, “with malice aforethought” however much we have fooled ourselves, with generations of economists, into believing that this was a private evil that would yield a public good (as if a private monstrosity could yield anything but a public monstrosity however cunningly disguised) – never before now did we make human selfishness the principal driver of social life, never did we put it in the driver’s seat and let it take the rest of us wherever it wanted, in the innocent hope that all would be well, because, after all, either human beings are naturally good (as Rousseau believed) or the “invisible hand” would apportion goods equitably (as Adam Smith believed) or our natural vices would cancel each other out if we just constructed a political system cleverly enough (as our Founding Fathers hoped).
What? you ask, indignantly. What does a culture of liberty and human rights have to do with a culture based on selfishness?
But a culture that values my liberty as its highest good is a culture that makes my selfishness its only good.
One of the reasons we can see no way out of the labyrinth we have made, where every path seems to lead to an almost certain catastrophe, is that we are committed to a set of ideas that hobbles the very way we think. And at the core of those ideas is precisely the priority we have given to the rights of the individual over every other good. And this is what defines “liberalism” that, with its variants of “right” and “left,” is the dominant philosophy of our time.
Liberalism has believed that by prioritizing such rights we would be able to create a just social order and a more or less happy community. When those results did not happen, and they clearly have not, liberalism believed it was because it had not sufficiently secured those rights; it discovered new “areas of oppression” (on the left, groups oppressed by bigotry and prejudice; on the right, actions limited by governmental restraint) and moved heaven and earth to be rid of them through various forms of “liberation” and “empowerment.” And yet these “liberations” and “empowerments” have not succeeded in creating a more just social order; on the contrary, they have simply added to the economic inequalities and social and political insecurities that define our era. We have descended into a war of rights that can have no end because no group is able to gain a definitive victory – and all are headed toward defeat because the civilization we have created on the back of the liberal dispensation is headed for certain collapse – the only question is when.
There is, nevertheless, one possible way out of this moral dead end, and one that has been available to us from the beginning. And that is to place human responsibility – for oneself, for one’s community, for humanity as a whole, for life on earth – at the moral center of society; not our rights, but our obligations; not our freedom to do whatever we feel like, but our freedom to take on the burdens of the world, explore it in its infinite mystery, defend it when attacked, improve it where it can be improved; to love it with a genuine love, a love that is action and not mere feeling – for its own well-being, not just for what it can do for us. And, if and when we fail, to be penalized, immediately and inescapably.
The Myth of the Autonomous Individual
The doctrine of “rights” is based on the idea that the basic social unit is the autonomous individual. But no one is born an “autonomous individual”; we are born weak, dependent babies completely incapable of taking care of ourselves, into families that must take care of us or we will die: each of us is the result of the mating of a male and a female, and at the beginning of our lives we are entirely dependent on the female, our mother, for our very existence, and not just for a few days or weeks, but for years. We are born as part of a community, not as individuals. We have no “rights,” but we do have clamoring needs. If our parents only cared about their rights and did not put their responsibilities to us first, we would have been very dead very quickly. That is a hard fact – the kind that both neoliberals and progressives, indeed that all liberals – run from like the plague. Because fact is authoritarian; it imposes its will and does not care whose rights it scorns or whose feelings it hurts. The truth is a hard task master, but it is also a dependable one.
The family is the heart of the social order, not the individual. We are not autonomous individuals and we never were: we live within an intricate web of interdependencies without which we could not live at all. We easily forget that and equate humanity as such with apparently autonomous adults – but there are no such things as “autonomous adults” except as a legal fiction; adult human beings are as deeply embedded in dependencies as the smallest infants, though it is not always as noisily obvious. Liberalism made the fatal theoretical mistake of harping on the “rights” of the individual. If we held to a truer metaphor – of humanity as dependent on our parent, the natural world, on the universe itself, with responsibilities to the natural order to help keep it healthy and well so that we too may thrive – obligations, in other words, to the “gods” that created us – we would find it easier to make responsibilities primary; indeed, we might even go further and make rights not something we are born with, but something that we earn after fulfilling our responsibilities. Though this might seem too rational, and certainly too radical, to the liberal dispensers of our world!
But the touchy ego of the western male, the driver of much of western culture and civilization, likes to forget its first humiliating dependency; it likes to think it was born, fully formed, from its own brain, a secular Athena from the Zeus of matter. It takes its ego as primary, not as one of nature’s legal fictions that was once a great convenience when creating a conscious, freely choosing, partly self-creating living creature, but that may have become a bit too big for its breeches and may need to be retired soon.
We have not even looked at the deceit wrapped up in the doctrine of “rights.” The idea, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that “we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” must count as one of the most hypocritical statements in the history of political philosophy: if those rights were indeed “unalienable,” we could not possibly allow capital punishment or war (which deprive vast numbers of people of the “unalienable” right of life), or incarceration of any kind (ditto the “unalienable” right of liberty), or the impoverishment of tens of millions of people (ditto of the “unalienable” right of the pursuit of happiness) while a handful of billionaires soak up most of the wealth of an entire society. So much for “unalienable” rights! How typically “liberal”: the words sound so nice, so generous, so wonderful, but nobody actually believes them! Only the terminally naïve think we should actually believe or, heaven forbid! act on words we claim to live by. After all, the Declaration of Independence is only a piece of parchment slowly fading away in the National Archives, something we quote every July 4, then put away like a babbling senile uncle no one has to take seriously so we can get on with the real business of life: beggaring our neighbor . . .
Liberalism, with its privileging of the autonomous individual and his freedom above all other social values, has been, sadly, like communism: “wonderful as an idea” (“unalienable rights” on the one hand, “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs” on the other”) “but it’s hopelessly unrealistic.” Yet, in the case of liberalism, for a time it seemed it might work after all, with a generous tweak here and there. And it almost did, piling up prosperity, knowledge, and power from the late eighteenth century to our own paradoxical time. But all the time it was turning into a monster feeding on the globe’s resources and poisoning it with our waste, making the only planet where life is known to exist, and where a sane human being might genuinely wish to live without being confined to a technological prison on a lethal rock orbiting a murderous sun, potentially uninhabitable by the cunning ape that now dominates it. There is another irony: a “catastrophic success” indeed! Not that we weren’t forewarned, from the early socialists (and at least one French chemist) to the environmentalists (“environment”! but there is no “environment”: there is only the natural order within which we live; human beings are natural through and through – though we have become one of nature’s most destructive elements: a species of fire, lightning, hurricane, earthquake: one of the more savage pruners of evolution).
Responsibilities Versus Rights
Enlightenment thinkers rarely examined the role of responsibility in the social order. Montesquieu was one of the few, and his book L’Esprit des Lois was an important influence on the Founding Fathers. The one limitation on the privileging of rights in the American political system has been the doctrine of the rule of law; but a central weakness of liberalism has been its failure to see that this doctrine flatly contradicts the primacy of personal liberty – and the doctrine of the rule of law, though implied, is not in fact to be found explicitly stated in either the Declaration or the Constitution. It would have been different if Thomas Jefferson had included “and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable responsibilities, among which is respect for the rights of others,” for example. But alas, the idea seems to have slipped his mind . . . or perhaps these words would have been a little too sensitive for a slaveholder, or indeed for any employer!
It is one thing to examine what one has the right to do, quite another to study what one ought to do. And this is thorny because it imposes the necessity of defining the good, something liberals claim to be reluctant to do. Certain obvious social goods could be defined: social peace, orderliness, predictability, the adjudication of conflict and reduction crime, the fostering of social trust. But Enlightenment philosophers were often reluctant to go into greater detail, even though a substantive definition of the good is implied by any assertion that rights are socially desirable. And soon we see one of the foundations of liberal self-deception, most patently in the one of the greatest of all philosophers of liberalism, John Stuart Mill: the liberal claims not to define the good but claims to be open to all definitions of “the good”; the liberal is “tolerant,” “open-minded” – until he meets a definition of good that refuses to tolerate something the liberal, airily, claims is no evil at all (but who gets to define what is evil? The liberal claims “evil” is only what “harms.” But who gets to define “harm”? Only the liberal . . .) – and the “tolerant” liberal is suddenly no longer so tolerant after all. The liberal’s claim to have no substantive definition of the good is then seen for what it is: hypocrisy when not self-deception.
It did not occur to most philosophers of rights (Nietzsche being the most notable exception) that a regime based exclusively on expanding rights must inevitably lead to massive inequalities of wealth and power, and the oppression of the weak and poor by the rich and powerful, unless there was a means to protect rights when rights clashed, inevitable in such a system. The only way to prevent these oppressions and adjudicate between rights would be to enforce a regime of responsibility, not only to honor one’s own rights, but to honor the rights of others as well – above all, to make that responsibility the primary consideration in every social encounter. Two things would be required: a system of power governing society dedicated to the imposition of responsibility, since free people will do whatever they can to avoid it – and a culture that internalizes a morality of responsibility, often via religion, in its members: both a physical and a spiritual governor for the sometimes wayward animal that is the adult human.
An understanding of rights must be linked to one of responsibilities, obligations, duties, until responsibilities are enshrined, not only in enforceable law, but in a society’s moral code and assumptions. And responsibilities must be prioritized over rights; there needs to be, at all times, an unambiguous priority between them. Responsibilities are innate; rights must be earned.
But this is, as they say, a “hard sell.” In a society drunk on its rights, on its “freedom,” no one will want to hear it. As mentioned above, there has been an attempt, in America in particular, to claim the “rule of law” as the necessary basis for freedom, but laws are no better than the human beings who create them and those who enforce and adjudicate them – and human beings are very weak reeds indeed. At the heart of law is rapacity, selfishness, amoralism, greed, thirst for power, and hunger for revenge – with every so often, a drop of human empathy and wisdom, for human goodness may be weak and easily intimidated, but to deny it exists would be merely to concede victory beforehand to the monster that lurks, side by side with the cowed saint, in every human heart.
We have learned, through numerous studies in the psychology of children, that human beings are reflexively altruistic: our natural impulses are to help others. This is no veneer of virtue; it is our moral bedrock. We instinctively abhor injustice, suffering, and oppression and reflexively seek to end them. I would go further: we hate selfishness of all kinds, including our own. The last thing we want to do, when, in childhood and early adolescence, we are still ruled by our inborn impulses, is to think primarily about “number one.” Further, we instinctively desire to live in a moral order, in a place of justice and truth; we are appalled by injustice, duplicity and moral anarchy. Indeed we hate and despise these things – and above all, those who would impose them on us.
Selfishness, on the other hand, is learned behavior – our experiences teach us to be selfish. We become selfish out of a sense of self-preservation and only as our last option. Our first moral pleasure is helping others; our first moral temptation to evil is when we see a thread between our pain and someone else’s smile – and we see our own instinctive altruism as naïve, even perilous to our survival.
But the fundamental problem of a “rights-based” social and political order is that it privileges precisely those instincts we hate in others and ourselves. It is thus no wonder that such a social order leads to a hysteria of insecurity followed by a pervasive sense of nihilism and despair: when we are forced to think primarily, and sometimes exclusively, about ourselves, and to see others as either real or potential enemies, and always as competitors, we are going to end in rebellion against a social order that enforces mandatory selfishness. Yet the liberal order has placed the “self” of humanity at the center of the universe, the “self” of the nation and community at the center of humanity, and the individual “self” – “me,” in a word – at the center of the community. The liberal order has revealed itself as a kind of moral vacuum parading as the highest good, “progressive,” “vindicated by history.” Yet the liberal order is now well on its way to destroying itself and the world it has made. This, after all, is what evil does, what evil is: self-destruction.
Liberals are chronically unaware of this because they fail to make a distinction between their putative goals and the results their endearingly well-meaning but often damaging policies have actually had. When their policies lead to disaster, rather than critiquing the policies or the assumptions underlying them, they double down on both, insisting they will succeed in contributing to human flourishing if only more such policies are imposed throughout the social order. Liberals of both right and left – neoliberals and capitalists, and leftists and progressives both – have fallen, or rather leapt wholeheartedly, into the same trap. Yet when anarchy is imposed on anarchy, the result is unlikely to be a just social order. Capitalism, the economic avatar of liberalism, is the war of all against all; progressivism is its political counterpart. The notion that either one of these could possibly end well is the kind of irrational hope that could only result from certain forms of secular education, from business schools to the postmodern humanities.
Nevertheless, I refuse to give up hope. We are not nature’s most cunning species for nothing. And if we wake up in time to our responsibilities (especially our first and most important one: to protect life of our home, planet Earth), perhaps we will conquer our own worst impulses and survive; perhaps even thrive in a world where we will have earned the right to be happy.
_____ Christopher Bernard is an award-winning poet and novelist. His collection The Socialist’s Garden of Verses won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was named one of the “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021” by Kirkus Reviews. His most recent books are the first in the “Otherwise” series of children’s books – If You Ride A Crooked Trolley . . . and The Judgment Of Biestia.
If the goal of a person walking on the road is to reach the pass, his thoughts will be occupied only with this.
Even during the passage of life, until he reaches a certain age, he strives towards his dreams and goals. After passing the passage, he looks back.
The road some have trodden,
He analyzes his past life in his own way. He gets his own conclusions. But some people aim to increase the number of passes.
Some people lose their time by continuing on the path of hope.
That’s right but
Do not forget the summary
Passes too
Life account too!
About the author
Mashhura Ziyovaddinova, daughter of Botirjon, was born on July 18, 2004 in Chust town, Namangan region.
Currently, she is a student of the MPL-BU group in the department of Special Pedagogy Logopedy at Namangan State Pedagogical Institute.
She is the winner of many literature competitions.
Creator of project “Educated youth”.
Active member of “Leaders’ group”.
Winner of 1st place on “Start up projects” competition.
Alumnus of more than 10 projects and educational courses.
Delegate and member of more than 20 projects.
Mashhura’s journey is marked by passion for literature, reflecting her dedication to personal and academic growth. As she continues her studies, she embodies the spirit of promising individual poised to contribute meaningfully to her community and beyond.
Violin
When I was a child, I only wanted to be a doctor when I grew up and heal people.
Today, I was sitting in front of the window in desperation, I needed a doctor myself. My eyes are weak, I could not see the beauty of nature. I had only one dream in my heart – to heal people. At that moment I remembered that my father had a violin in an old chest. A few years ago, he taught me how to play the violin.
For some reason I never played it. As soon as I opened the window, the outside world was blowing cool. As I played the violin, the birds stopped chirping, the noise of the street was instantly silenced. My heart seemed to be filled with light.
Out of joy, I made it a habit to play the violin every day. The gentle melody that came out of it soothed the wounds of my heart. Every day, my violin lovers would gather in front of my window and listen to music. Then I realized that if we sincerely intend and strive for it, Allah will deliver everything.
Doctors can heal people, but God gave me the happiness of healing their hearts. Music heals and comforts the human soul. My father’s words: «Weakness should be turned into strength» came to mind today. I turned this weakness into strength and achieved my childhood dream. Now, every day, the audience called me the number one violinist.
Nosirova Gavhar was born on August 16, 2000 in the city of Shahrisabz, Kashkadarya region of Uzbekistan. Today, she is a third-year student of the Faculty of Philology of the Samarkand State University of Uzbekistan. Being a lover of literature, she is engaged in writing stories and poems. Her creative works have been published in Uzbek and English. In addition, she is a member of «All India Council for Development of Technical Skills», «Juntosporlasletras» of Argentina, «2DSA Global Community». Winner of the «Korablznaniy» and «TalentyRossii» contests, holder of the international C1 level in the Russian language, Global Education ambassador of Wisdom University and global
coordinator of the Iqra Foundation in Uzbekistan. «Magic pen holders» talented young group of Uzbekistan, «KayvaKishor», «Friendship of people», «Raven Cage», «The Daily Global Nation», Argentina's «Multi Art-6», Kenya’s «Serenity: A compilation of art and literature by women» contains creative works in the magazine and anthology of poets and writers.
Abdusamatova Odinaxon 2nd year student of the Faculty of History of Fergana State University
Abstract: This article discusses the use of interviews as a research method in sociology. It explains the differences between structured and unstructured interviews, and highlights the advantages and limitations of using this method. The article emphasizes the importance of careful design and awareness of potential biases in order to generate reliable and valid data.
Overall, this article provides a useful overview of the interview method for sociologists seeking to understand individual experiences and perspectives. Keywords: interviews, research methods, sociology, structured interviews, unstructured interviews, advantages, limitations, biases, reliability, validity, individual experiences, perspectives.
Introduction
The interview method is a widely used research technique in sociology that involves asking questions to individuals or groups of people in order to gather information about their beliefs, attitudes, experiences, and behaviors. Interviews can be conducted in various forms, such as face-to-face, over the phone, or through online platforms. In sociological research, interviews are often used to explore social phenomena and understand the perspectives and experiences of individuals or groups within a particular context. This method enables researchers to gain in-depth insights into the social world and uncover new knowledge that may not be obtained through other research methods.
Interviews can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. Structured interviews involve asking a set of predetermined questions in a specific order. Semi-structured interviews allow for some flexibility in the questions asked and the order in which they are asked. Unstructured interviews involve an open- ended conversation where the interviewer allows the respondent to lead the conversation.
The interview method has several advantages in sociological research. It allows researchers to obtain rich and detailed data that can be used to develop theories and hypotheses. Interviews also enable researchers to build rapport with respondents and gain their trust, which can result in more honest and accurate responses. However, interviews also have some limitations. Respondents may provide biased or incomplete information, and the interviewer’s presence may influence the responses given. Additionally, interviews can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Overall, the interview method is a valuable tool in sociological research that can provide unique insights into the social world. By carefully designing and conducting interviews, researchers can gather rich and meaningful data that can inform our understanding of social phenomena.
There are several types of interviews that sociologists may use in their research. One type is the life history interview, which involves asking a respondent to recount their life experiences in detail. This type of interview can provide valuable insights into how individuals understand and navigate their social worlds over time. Another type of interview is the focus group, which involves bringing together a group of individuals to discuss a particular topic or issue. Focus groups can provide insights into group dynamics and how individuals interact with one another in social settings.
Interviews can also be used in combination with other research methods, such as surveys or observation. For example, a sociologist may conduct interviews with individuals to gather qualitative data about their experiences, while also using surveys to gather quantitative data about the prevalence of certain attitudes or behaviors.
In order to conduct effective interviews, sociologists must carefully design their questions and consider factors such as the demographics of their respondents and the context in which the interviews will take place. They must also be aware of potential biases and take steps to minimize them.
Overall, the interview method is a powerful tool for sociologists seeking to understand the social world. By using interviews in conjunction with other research methods, sociologists can gather rich and nuanced data that can inform our understanding of social phenomena and contribute to the development of new theories and hypotheses.
Literature Review The use of interviews in sociological research has been widely discussed and debated in the literature. Some scholars argue that interviews are essential for understanding the subjective experiences of individuals and the meanings they attach to their social worlds (Gubrium & Holstein, 2002). Others caution that interviews can be biased and may not accurately reflect the experiences of marginalized groups (Lloyd & Smith, 2013).
One approach to addressing these concerns is to use a variety of interview techniques and to carefully consider the context in which interviews are conducted. For example, life history interviews can provide a rich understanding of an individual’s experiences over time, but may be time- consuming and difficult to analyze. Focus groups can provide insights into group dynamics, but may be influenced by the dominant voices in the group.
Another important consideration is the role of the interviewer in shaping the responses of the interviewee. Researchers must be aware of their own biases and be careful not to influence the responses of their participants (Bloor et al., 2001). Despite these challenges, interviews continue to be a valuable tool for sociologists seeking to understand the social world. By carefully designing their questions and considering the context in which interviews are conducted, researchers can gather rich and nuanced data that can inform our understanding of social phenomena and contribute to the development of new theories and hypotheses.
Furthermore, interviews can provide a platform for marginalized voices to be heard and can help to challenge dominant narratives and power structures (Lloyd & Smith, 2013). By giving voice to those who are often excluded from mainstream discussions, interviews can contribute to more inclusive and diverse research.
Overall, while interviews have their limitations and challenges, they remain an important tool for sociological research. By using a variety of techniques and being mindful of their own biases, researchers can gather valuable data that can inform our understanding of the social world and contribute to the development of more inclusive and diverse theories.
Discussion As an AI language model, I do not have personal opinions or beliefs. However, I can provide some additional points to consider in the discussion of interviews as a tool for sociological research. One potential limitation of interviews is the potential for social desirability bias, where participants may alter their responses to present themselves in a more favorable light. This can be mitigated by creating a comfortable and non- judgmental atmosphere and assuring participants of confidentiality.
Another challenge is the potential for researcher bias, where the interviewer’s own beliefs and assumptions may influence the questions asked and the interpretation of responses. Researchers can mitigate this by being aware of their own biases and using techniques such as reflexivity to critically examine their own assumptions.
Finally, interviews may not be suitable for all research questions or populations. For example, some individuals may not feel comfortable discussing certain topics or may have difficulty expressing themselves verbally. In these cases, other methods such as surveys or focus groups may be more appropriate.
Overall, interviews can provide valuable insights into the social world and contribute to more inclusive and diverse research. However, researchers must be mindful of their limitations and challenges and use appropriate techniques to gather reliable data. Additionally, the interpretation of interview data can also be a challenge. Researchers must carefully analyze and code responses to identify patterns and themes, and ensure that their interpretations are grounded in the data rather than their own assumptions.
Another consideration is the time and resources required for conducting interviews. Interviews can be time-consuming and expensive, particularly if a large sample size is needed. Researchers must carefully plan and budget for interviews to ensure that they are feasible and effective.
Finally, ethical considerations must also be taken into account when conducting interviews. Researchers must obtain informed consent from participants and ensure that their privacy and confidentiality are protected. They must also be sensitive to issues of power dynamics and avoid exploiting or harming participants in any way.
In conclusion, interviews can be a valuable tool for sociological research, but they also have limitations and challenges that must be carefully considered. By using appropriate techniques and being mindful of ethical considerations, researchers can gather rich and insightful data that contributes to a deeper understanding of the social world.
Furthermore, the type of interview used can also impact the data collected. For example, structured interviews with closed-ended questions may limit the depth of responses and miss important nuances, while unstructured interviews with open-ended questions may lead to inconsistent data and difficulty in analysis.
Another challenge is the potential for interviewer bias, where the interviewer’s personal beliefs and attitudes may influence the responses of participants. Researchers must be aware of their own biases and take steps to minimize their impact on the interview process. Moreover, the cultural context in which the interview takes place can also affect the data collected. Different cultures may have different communication styles and expectations, which can impact how participants respond to questions and how researchers interpret their responses.
Finally, technological advancements have led to the use of online interviews, which can overcome some of the challenges of traditional face-to-face interviews such as geographic limitations and cost. However, online interviews also have their own limitations such as potential technical issues and difficulty in establishing rapport with participants.
Overall, interviews are a valuable tool for sociological research, but researchers must carefully consider their limitations and challenges and choose appropriate techniques to gather insightful data.
Conclusion In conclusion, interviews are an important method for collecting data in sociological research. They can provide valuable insights into people’s experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. However, there are several challenges that researchers must consider when using interviews, including the potential for interviewer bias, limitations of different interview types, cultural context, and technological limitations. To overcome these challenges, researchers must carefully select appropriate interview techniques and take steps to minimize bias and ensure the validity and reliability of their data. Overall, interviews can be a powerful tool for sociological research when used appropriately.
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Bryman, A. (2016). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press.
Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. Sage Publications.
Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2011). Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data. Sage Publications.
Seidman, I. (2013). Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences. Teachers College Press.
Silverman, D. (2013). Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook. Sage Publications.
Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. M. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Sage Publications.
Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage Publications.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2011). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Sage Publications.
Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice. Sage Publications.
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Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. Handbook of qualitative research, 2(163-194), 105.
Graduation Day
Hi, my name is Rachel--and no, I'm not Jewish, though it wouldn’t bother me; people make that mistake all the time, because of my physical features and my name. But there is one real Jewish student in my class, and that's Ruth. She's cool. I'm a student at St. Mary's Catholic School on the west side of the city. I'm 10 and graduated two weeks ago from the 5th Grade, which means that next term I'll be in Middle School, which for the Diocese is 6th through 8th grades. The Bishop thinks that 5th Grade is far enough to take Elementary School, and am I ever glad.
Allie--that's my best friend--and I were co-Valedictorians and were supposed to give a short speech at graduation that evening at the church. We were gathered in our school that day to attend a special lunch that the cafeteria workers were preparing to mark the occasion. The lunch was at eleven and it was just eight thirty when Sister Catherine started talking to us about how to act at graduation that night. Like we don't already know how to behave: don't whisper, don't pass notes, don't pick your nose, and on and on. I mean, we're not stupid. But Allie is crazy about Sister Catherine, thinks maybe she'll become a nun when she grows up.
Everyone was dressed up for the special lunch. The food is pretty good at St. Mary's--for a grade school. When we get into Middle School, then we can have burgers and fries, but for now we're stuck with mashed potatoes and roast beef and, of course, green beans. If you ask me, I'm not looking forward to the change. I'm sitting there checking everybody out, then remember to check my cell in with Sister. Despite all the shooter drills and stuff at the public schools, violent incidents almost never happen at parochial schools and we aren't allowed to hold onto our cells during class, except during recess and at lunch. Just then Allie walks into class and plumps down next to me. I ask her if she wrote her speech yet, for tonight.
"Piece of cake," she replies. She is so smart. Even though we are co-valedictorians, she is way smarter than me. I'm good at Math and Science, but Allie is an absolute genius and writing and speaking in public. My Dad says Allie is going to be a U.S. Senator when she grows up, but my Mom says Allie can do way better than that! She was still excited from the week before: to celebrate finishing first in our class, her parents bought her a puppy! A full blooded Basset Hound, with papers and everything. I am so jealous. My folks said we can't afford one right now; we don't have much money and receive a special parish subsidy to pay for my tuition. Mom says to keep my grades up, else I'll lose the subsidy and then have to go to public school. Ugh! I suppose that Allie's family is well off; besides, she's an only child and my folks have three other kids besides me.
"You got your speech written yet, Rach?" ask Allie. I frown, twist my lips.
"I'm working on it," I tell her. She looks knowingly at me.
"You want I should come over to your house after lunch and help out?" I dissolve into a big smile. Like I said, Allie is my best friend.
Out in the hallway there is a weird sound, like a cap gun exploding:
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
It sounds just like the toy pistol my brother Franklin plays with. Mom won't let him take it outside the house because she's afraid it will make other people nervous. People in here are nervous now. I look at Allie and then we stare at Sister, who looks really upset.
"Stay where you're at, children," she commands, then advances to the exit and turns the lock over. Even through the locked door we can hear students running through the halls and shouting. "Follow me!" she says calmly, but there is an edge to her voice. She leads us back through the cloak closet and to a room that's used to store overhead projectors and DVDs and other AV stuff. She reaches inside and fumbles for a second with the light switch, then stands aside and we precede her into the room.
She pushes the door shut, locks it and says, "Don't make a sound!" We stand around until Sister tells us to sit along the walls that are out of the line of sight of the door, so bullets won't get us. Hurriedly, we comply. God, what's going on? I wonder. Suddenly a girl starts sobbing loudly, but Sister silences her with a hand on her shoulder. Through the closed door we hear more gunfire, closer now than before. Sister Catherine extinguishes the overhead light. Moments later there is a loud crash against the door and someone is shouting. This is too much: some of the other kids begin to whimper. It doesn't matter now, he knows we're in here. We can't hide.
Bullets rip through the wooden door, exploding into the opposite wall. A calendar on the wall flutters to the floor. Allie reaches out and grips my hand. I hold on tight. But the door holds; that is, until the shooter unleashes a cluster of shots around the lock, splintering the wood. With a crash the door flies open. We sit, breathlessly, in the darkness, afraid to make a sound. The light from the other room illuminates the shooter, first his arm as he reaches in to grope for the light switch, and then his face and torso as he calmly enters our hiding place. Clutched in his hands is an assault rifle.
I recognize him! I don't know his name, but I've seen him before, on the campus of the High School. And he looks so calm. I thought he would be a seething, snorting dragon of a creature, but he's only a kid. And I can tell that Sister is reacting the same way. Almost as if she wants to ask to see his hall pass. Sister speaks first.
"Bradley....? The shooter grins and winks at Sister and then shoots her in the chest. Sister Catherine folds up like a toy balloon and crumples to the floor. Allie lets go of my hand, jumps to her feet.
"Sister!" she shouts, after which the shooter fires into Allie's body--twice. Like Sister, she tumbles to the floor. I feel dizzy, as if nothing is real anymore, and am about to pass out when Delmar, the class dweeb, rises to his feet. He's out of the shooter's line of sight and so the killer can't see Delmar as he draws a pistol from his jacket, points it at the shooter, and squeezes the trigger. The shooter's whole head is vaporized and for an insane moment he continues standing there, gun in hand. Then, like Sister Catherine and Allie, he slips to the floor and drops straight to hell.
Epilogue
That was two weeks ago. Everyone skipped graduation; we got our diplomas in the mail. The Diocese said that all the schools must begin active shooter drills as soon as classes resume. It still doesn't seem real that Allie is forever gone. Every day I think to text her but then I remember. Everyone is like walking on egg shells around me and I hope that ends soon. The shooter was a 17-year-old student from the High School, who had been expelled the week before.
According to his parents, he had been "acting out" ever since. Some local political guy said Delmar is a hero and that it only proves that arming teachers and school staff is a good idea. Allie's parents are beside themselves; they were on the news on TV. They gave me her puppy, said they worked, couldn't take care of it, or give it the love it needs. They said it was what Allie would have wanted. I think it was too personal a reminder of the daughter they lost. I named her Allie.
