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With Hard Work and Determination, Anyone Can Get What They Deserve
This may be the myth that most aggravates sociologists. Especially in established capitalist societies like the United States and Europe, there’s a widespread belief that by and large, people get what they “deserve” — that is, that in general, wealth, income, and personal freedom correspond to how hard a person has tried to get ahead in life. It would be nice if it were true because that would mean if you needed a little more money, all you’d have to do would be to try a little bit harder; and if you tried as hard as you possibly could, you’d be fabulously wealthy.
It is true that, in most cases, some effort and dedication and sacrifice are necessary to achieve material comfort. There’s no question that most people of comfortable (or more than comfortable) means have worked very, very hard to get where they are. Saying that “anyone can get ahead” is a myth is not
to diminish the achievements of people who do work hard every day for the money they earn, however much it is.
What makes this a myth is that there is not a level playing field. For any number of reasons, some people face challenges that others don’t. There is racism, and there are health problems, and there are friends and family members who need to be cared for, and there’s just plain bad luck. It happens. Further, what can be hard to appreciate — because few people have been
on both ends of the wealth spectrum — is that the disadvantages of poverty are multiplicative, and the advantages of wealth are multiplicative. The more poor you are, the harder it is to climb out of poverty no matter how hard you work; and the more wealthy you are, the harder it is to fall out of that situation no matter how lazy you are.
It is important to make smart, prudent decisions no matter what your financial situation; and to get ahead, you do typically need to work hard. Nonetheless, the idea that people with more money must be somehow working harder or be more deserving than people with less money is a complete and utter myth.
Our Actions Reflect Our Values
I would like to believe that I know who I am and what I value, that there is something consistent and steadfast at my core and that all my actions flow naturally from that. Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true.
Not just sociologists, but everyone who closely and systematically examines human behavior — psychologists, economists, political scientists — have found that this is at least partially a myth. It would be very convenient for the
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social scientists if it weren’t a myth because that would mean you could poll someone on their attitudes and beliefs and then safely assume that you know what they’re going to do. In fact, again and again and again social scientists have seen that someone can, apparently in all honesty, tell you one thing, and then turn around and do something completely different. Further, people forget what they’ve done in the past, changing their past actions to be consistent with their present values — which are likely to change in the future. This certainly makes life interesting for novelists and poets, but it’s a complete nightmare for social science.
Why don’t people act on what they seem to believe? Well, sometimes they do; in fact, usually they do. But there are many influences on people’s actions, and their core beliefs are only one of those influences. There’s peer pressure, there’s convenience, there’s habit . . . and let’s face it, you’re a complicated human being. You didn’t come with a user’s manual; you’re writing it every day. The bottom line is that you can’t look at someone’s actions and assume you know “who they are”; and vice-versa, knowing all about someone’s beliefs and values tells you only so much about what actions they’re going to take in the future.
We’re Being Brainwashed by the Media
The ubiquity of the mass media in contemporary society can be frightening. With tens or even hundreds of millions of viewers or listeners, it can seem like TV hosts and radio personalities and pop stars have a huge amount of influence. Those people often get pretty extreme, and it can seem like they’re leading the charge in fashion, politics, attitudes, and behaviors. In fact, many people believe that those charismatic figures are so influential that everyone is essentially being brainwashed by them, that they can make people do just about anything they want.
That is a myth. Certainly, mass-media celebrities have great influence in certain respects: They can jumpstart trends and influence social attitudes. But there is little sociological evidence to suggest that TV programs, radio shows, or Web sites can influence people in significant numbers to behave entirely uncharacteristically.
Sociologist Stanley Lieberson has found that first names for babies often become popular due to the rising fame of celebrities with those names. And The Cosby Show is widely credited with helping to erode widespread stereotypes about African-American families.
Particularly in the present day, when people have an unprecedented number of options, they typically choose to watch, listen to, or read media that are consistent with their preexisting beliefs; if anything, media reinforce the beliefs and habits people had in the first place. Most importantly, though, people — even young children — are active and inquisitive consumers of the
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media. Do you believe everything you hear someone say on TV? Of course not . . . and neither do your neighbors.
Rather than getting caught up in debates over whether some media outlet or another has a political bias, remember that there is no such thing as a purely “objective” source. That’s not to say there’s no such thing as “the truth” — it’s just that there are different ways of telling the truth. With media from around the world available at a click of your computer mouse, you’ll do yourself a favor by looking at multiple different news sources, not just relying on any one source.
Understanding Society is Just a Matter of “Common Sense”
Among all these myths, the falsehood of this one should seem most obvious to those of you who have read any or all of this book. It’s worth repeating, though — not only because if it were true, every sociologist would be out of a job, but also because it’s potentially the most dangerous of all these myths.
There was once a time when it was “common sense” that certain races should be subjugated to others. It was also once “common sense” that women were not suited to vote, and in some societies it’s still widely regarded as “common sense” that women are unsuited to choose their own husbands or even their own sexual partners. Should people with mental disabilities be locked away in institutions, or maybe even killed? That, too, was once “common sense.”
Those beliefs probably — hopefully! — all seem ludicrous to you now, but it’s not enough to dismiss long-refuted beliefs. Sociology challenges you to question the beliefs you take to be common sense today. That’s a lot harder, but to really understand how society works, and how it might be made better for everyone, you have to be willing to question even your most dearly held beliefs. That’s not to say you have to discard them, but you have to keep an open mind. If you don’t, not only will you be closed to interesting new ideas, you risk falling victim to destructive myths. They’re still out there — for examples, see every other section in this chapter!
For lots of good reasons, it’s easy to get caught up in the assumptions and biases of your own society — but it’s a certainty that some of those are regarded as nonsense in other societies, and some of the beliefs that people around you take for granted today will seem ridiculous 500 years from now. You don’t have to be a relativist — that is, someone who thinks there’s no such thing as truth — to appreciate the importance of questioning even assumptions that seem perfectly obvious and normal in your particular society.
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Race Doesn’t Matter Any More
Just a few decades ago, African-Americans couldn’t sit in certain places on public buses or in restaurants. In 2008, an African-American was elected President of the United States. Does that mean race doesn’t matter any more? Has Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream come true: that people may be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin?
It doesn’t diminish the amazing achievements of civil rights activists, and the almost unbelievable progress that’s been made in social tolerance, but to say that the idea that race “doesn’t matter any more” is a myth. Many more options are today available to people around the world regardless of their race, but race remains very much a factor in how people are seen, how they are judged, and how they are treated.
What does this mean for social policy? It’s not obvious, except that “race blind” policies, whatever their virtues in particular situations, are not necessarily consistent with the way people see the world. What it means for sociology is that race remains, and will remain for the foreseeable future, something that must continue to be studied.
In Time, Immigrant Families Will Assimilate and Adopt a New Culture
If the falseness of this myth doesn’t seem obvious to you, that’s okay; for a long time, it didn’t seem obvious to sociologists either! For much of the 20th century, sociological studies of immigration were dominated by the theory that one way or another, over time immigrant families would melt into the “melting pot,” that they would leave their culture behind and join the culture of their new society.
Today, though, sociologists understand that there are many problems with this theory. The biggest problem is its assumption that there’s some kind of path from “less assimilated” to “more assimilated,” a path along which all immigrant families can all be located. It’s true that immigrant families somehow adapt to their new circumstances, but that adaptation isn’t necessarily linear; they may completely change their behavior in some respects while remaining exactly the same in others. Further, it’s problematic to assume that there is a single “receiving” culture into which families can assimilate — any culture is really many different cultures, and it’s a mistake to think that becoming “American” or “English” or “Japanese” means one thing in particular, one lifestyle or set of values or even one language to which newcomers need to assimilate.