Back when I was a biochemistry student, focused intently on learning everything I could about curing cancer, I was amazed at the uselessness of so many of the other "academic" college majors, and supposed areas of "expertise."
For example, one art student was learning how to make old-timey-looking prints from making an etching into linoleum tiles. Why? I still have no idea. I remember thinking to myself, "what's wrong with these people, that they are bothering to learn how to draw and make prints, in an age where we have cameras and copy machines."
That was the day that I realized that no matter how much we progress, as a society, there will always be some backwards communities, that just prefer to do things only the backwards way.
This is basically where the soft sciences come from. Take for example, sociologists, who are routinely disproven by other more rigorous sciences.
For example, I have repeatedly read sociologists make claims that X number of years ago, people did not move beyond X miles from where they were born. It almost sounds scientific, doesn't it? Of course this was a "pre hospital" era. People were supposedly born at home, and often died in the same home. Naturally, I discount it, simply because, after all, it's being said by a sociologist. That's almost as bad as having an anthropologist tell the "truth."
It is true, that I'm not the most agreeable person to begin with. Though, I am willing to concede to things that at least appear to be true. The goal of sociology seems noble on the surface, doesn't it?
Like many things sociologists claim, I never believed any of that make believe stuff they pretend to jibber jabber about. It seems silly to even entertain the notion.
The side of me that appreciates history, often suspects "there is nothing new under the sun," and knows all too well, that well, there is nothing new under the sun.
For one thing, in history class you'll learned that many people are nomadic. Some nomads would travel seasonally hunting and gathering foods, while others made permanent migrations. Of course, settlers settled into settlements, as they still do. However, this obviously does not gel with the supposed story of the sociologist-softees, that people hardly ventured beyond their birth enclaves. That, and that sociology is just a propaganda machine, bent on creating this radical notion that somehow we are vastly different than the people before us, as though we evolved from immobilized barnacles! This idea seems to keep their work funded. Also, you are required to take the class in order to graduate, which keeps them well funded too. If you are a sociologist reading this, I just want you to know that I have no problem with your being well funded, and I empathize with this dirty rat race you have chosen for yourself. This same little bias seems to be a notion deeply embedded in the other soft sciences as well. It's about as silly as arguing that all humans crawled until the year walking was invented. What they want you to believe is that globalization is somehow novel. It's not as new as they like to erroneously pretend, nor is The Earth flat.
From my perspective mankind has not really come a long way from Biblical times. The advances since Biblical times have been quite minor and trivial. To this day, we face the same issues that our ancestors faced. Nevermind that Jesus, and moreso his disciples, traveled from town to town. Of course, the sociologists would discount this story as being "less than scientific," because it was sourced from The Bible, though personally, I'll take The Bible over a jibber jabbering sociologist any day.
Furthermore, these days, we don't even have to look at some overpriced fancy DNA sequences to decide for ourselves what we think our ancestors were up to, rather than what well funded sociologists want us to believe they were up to. Obviously, people, and their DNA, have been moving around for a long time. Take for example, the Macedonian, Alexander The Great. He seemed to move around. Genghis Khan as well, seemed to have moved beyond his birthplace. Napoleon also seemed to have traversed the planet fairly well given the primitive state of mechanization into which he was born. The travel industry is not new. So, we really have to question what these propaganda peddling sociologists are claiming in their "scientific" novellas. Strange how such nonsense is repeated in an echo chamber a few times, and becomes canonical "truth." Maybe there is some truthiness to it, though they are probably just wrong. Once again, we're talking about sociology majors. There are reasons sociology students are not in your calculus or chemistry classes, yet you are required by law to take their classes.
So this silly notion that sociologists bring up in their silly little stories about how "people X number of years ago, did not move X number of miles from where they were born," is really just an often repeated myth that remains true for their little echo chamber. It's well funded because it's key to keeping up myths of nationalism.
In reality, for as long as people have had the ability to get up and go, they did. The greater the ability, the further they went. Now of course, moving around has been significantly improved through mechanization, however the notion that people were all somehow isolated involuntarily is certainly worth questioning in my humble opinion. Feel free to decide for yourself if you prefer the soft science story telling, to the obvious evidence to the contrary.
The next time you are being presented by something claiming to be "science" emanating from the "soft" sciences, such as sociology or anthropology, just remember, there are still people on this planet that have yet to even invent the wheel, yet they continue to live amongst us. We don't have to buy it, even if we are forced to take the course. Pay attention to the material you are forced to learn, versus the material that you actually want to learn and apply. There is a clear hidden agenda by forcing students to take jibber jabber filler classes, and it must stop. There are entire departments at colleges that must be removed. Higher education itself is a hired propaganda machine, that anyone can fund to say anything.
