Sociology 101

I just got back from my night class - Sociology 101. As interesting as it is and i knew it would be, it's depressing as well. Todays subject was on social and global stratification. Basically--the patterns of social inequality in the world....via caste system, or class systems....economic systems....just just depressing. I mean, why if Nike (for example) cant employee slave labor in the USA is it ok for them to do it in a third world country. Giving the desperate some economic growth is inspiring, but not if it's child labor or pennies per hour...it makes me sick to the stomach that this is even legal. As good as our society can be at times, and as much as we try to be a Meritocracy...there is still so much inequality. Doesnt the Constitution state we are all born equal in the eyes of God?? i know we are a capitalist society, and as such we are all about the bottom dollar, but what about humanity? What about the peoples of the world who are exploited and stepped on? It makes me want to cry. The world is such a complex place, i wish i had the time and energy and effort to learn more about it. I'm trying. I'm going to school. But it depresses me to hear about the things I feel i cannot change. Inequality and desperation fuel me and yet i have no direction to go in.

Once upon a time...as a young child, I saw a "lil mouse" under a parked car outside of my city home, and in the background, a cat stalking it. I reached out my hand for this "lil mouse" to "save it" from the mean cat. It came to me and bit my hand!!
I ran into the house and all hell broke loose. My parents were having a party and my dad and a couple of my uncles came out with brooms and other equipment bound on catching the "lil mouse" which was actually a small rat!!! They found it and beat it as i cried. Little did i know that if they hadnt i'd have had to have gotten those dreaded 20 or so needles into my stomach (or so was the rumor if you caught rabies).
Ever since then, my mom would say, STAY AWAY FROM THE charity cases!! Take care of yourself, stop trying to SAVE everyone!!! LOL STORY OF MY LIFE!!!! being bit for trying to be helpful. blah.

i have to do a ten page term paper on a sociological subject, i picked genocide. I am interested in the topic and it hits me emotionally. I recently met a holocaust survivor at the bat mitzvah that my hubby and i just attended last month. Her name is Sonia Kaplan, and she wrote a book about her life that i have to read. My professor also suggested i read this book called, Night. The problem i have with writing this paper is that it has to be OBJECTIVE. a research paper. how can you f'ing be objective about genocide??? wtf??? I had to pick a subject to substantiate, such as, what sociological conditions must be in place for a genocide to evolve? or what role did the economic conditions of the society play in the fostering of the evil of genocide? I am going to look at the Holocaust (which haunts me for some reason) and Rwanda (which also haunts me).
Do i just have a depressing disturbed case of the macabre? Because frightening social effects have interested me ...such as Hiroshima and Nagosaki...or is this just a fate of having older parents who lived thru these events and were always talking about them or watching old war movies....(esp my dad). My parents best friends were jewish and so we always had great respect for jewish people. I used to think that i'd lived thru Hiroshima or Nagosaki because i have had NUMEROUS dreams of being in a nuclear war. I do not know why but i've dreamed very often of it and in such realistic detail. I also recall being dead so quick i thought i was still alive until i realized i could fly, etc. These dreams scare me but also amaze me because they give me hope of an afterlife.
god i digress....
interesting topics. and so i must research all i can about nazi germany and rwanda, africa to find similarities in their societies and therefore make my case whatever my "case" winds up being....such as there must be economic or social stress in the society for this to occur. Or there must be desperation and fear to allow it to continue. i dunno. sometimes i wish that god, if there is one, would come down here and just let us go back to the garden of eden where the lamb could lie back down with the lion and feel safe....where we could be innocent again. where there would be peace and beauty and love and not the ugly materialistic dirty nasty meanness that is reality. my heart sighs. my soul is sad.