An old friend from way way back, who is wanting to get in touch with me, sent me a link via Classmates. They say you can access info for free and they entice you to enter your name and email into the data base. Only after you sign up for the free account do you realize just how limited your options are using the free service. You can look at a list of name of people from your high school who are also members, but you can’t contact them, and if they contact you, you can’t read the e-mail unless you buy the “Gold” or “Platinum” upgrade.
You think, eh, I didn’t have a great high school experience so I won’t need the upgrade.
But then when you start looking at the names of all those classmates, so many of whom didn’t even know you existed (what, don’t pity me, I was boring), but some of whom it would be nice to touch base with again, you start asking; should I open my wallet and pay the $2.95 per month to get in contact with people I probably have nothing in common with. Not only that, since I was way, way in the proverbial closet in those days, the people I went to hich school with never really knew me!
But still, it would be nice….
This is one of my comments on blog-pal Citizen Duex’s Haze Gray Blog. I don’t even know what the original topic was, but the comments concerning sociology were outstanding. CD and Scoot share their thoughts and experiences of people tending to segregate themselves into groups with which they have similar things in common. Scoot mentions racial comfort zones his students segregate themselves into. CD mentions he’s seen the same thing within the military. I add my two cents worth:
To me it’s the answer to the question of why we have gangs, and why it’s so hard to keep kids from joining…
…And political parties are nothing if no glorified gangs. Why do you think Jeffersons ideal of a partyless American government failed. After the revolutionary war, we were united in victory. Being a humanist and enlightenment fellow, he thought we would resist the baser instincts of tribalism in government, i.e. no political parties. He figured the American revolution was also the casting out of factionalism – that we were all Americans and that would be the glue that kept us together and united. He envisioned a government free of the influence from political parties.
He was wrong. No sooner did we start living with the Articles of Confederation, than we started using the State as the common ground to bond our tribes. Then when we ditched the AoC for the Constitution, arguments over the strength of that government structure created the division that fostered the formation of the stronger govt. Federalist vs the weaker govt. Republicans. Of coarse, Jefferson is probably as reponsible as anyone for the formation of that divide with his behind the scenes machinations against Hamilton (desevred), Adams (misguided), and even a little toward Washington himself (wrongheaded).
PS. To be clear, I’m not dissing TJ, just looking at his role in forming his “gang”.
Are ones choice of “blog-pals” also an example of self-segregation?
Uncategorized | Sonicfrog January 20, 2007 | 
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