When we talk about truth we talk about things that are always true. I feel that today’s world has gotten lost and are now working to trying to make opinion truth rather then just hard concrete evidence. There is a song out there that talks about how 5,000 people could never be wrong if they teach the same thing. However numbers in belief do not make things true. Having any number of opinions do not become fact. Truth does not change in different cultures and truth does not change over time. Truth stands firm and do not move at any moment. Now that we have established what truth is we are going to go over some theories which are not truth but might explain different things in the world.

The first theory we are going to go over is family systems theory. Family systems theory talks about how families work together and function. Such examples are like family roles that take place. This could be as simple as the mom role and the dad role. When it comes to kids it can vary a bit differently in the fact that kids do not all take the same role. The older kids could take on roles like the test child. This is the child that the parents test everything on it to figure out what works. The test child also ends up showing the younger kids what not to do in life. The other role that is common for the older kids to take is being little mom or little dad. This is the kid who tries to kid order in the younger kids in order and help the parents’ parent. The middle child most of the time needs to kid draw attention to them selves by taking the role of acting out or the role of being the family clown. They youngest child can take the role of being a spy and telling mom and dad what is going on in the family. Family systems theory can also go into the larger family and explains the unspoken rules that the family must follow. Such as in my family if you don’t show up for prayer at dinner they you get to do all the dishes. This rule was never told but learned by experience. These rules are in every family and are not talked about but learned by breaking these rules. The other theories do are not quite as complicated.

Let’s start with my favorite theory, exchange theory. Exchange theory talk claims that nothing gets done unless a person is getting something out of the task. A vary simple example is like why we go to work every day. We might not like going to work but the paycheck that we get makes it worth doing. Other examples are like in my life when my wife wants to go shopping and I don’t want to go for whatever reason. My wife will then say we can go get food during our outing. This then becomes worth it for me and I end up going shopping. This can be done in families however this is not always the wisest thing to do all the time. What makes a really good strong family is one that does things with out the thought of an exchange going on but for the fact that they love one another, not because they think they’ll get something like ice-cream out of it.

Another theory is symbolic interaction, which talks about how we gain meaning into objects as we interact with them more often. This could be as simple as words, which are just sounds that we have given meaning to. The last theory we talked about is conflict theory. Conflict theory does not have to involve conflict for this theory but can be as simple a disagreement to what color refrigerator, or where we end up living in the world. These theories help us understand but are in no way fact or truth.