Editorial #1

An in-depth look in modern society through the sociological perspective.

 

The world, as we know it, is one big ball of contradictions. It is a melting pot of differing races and cultures, an infusion of liberation and tradition, a continuously changing and evolving place that houses different types of people. These people of varying age, race, gender and social status are the ones that make up the society that we live in. Yet, for an unexplainable reason, we do not pay these people much attention. It is easy for us to overlook and dismiss another as just an insignificant face in the crowd. As long as they do not concern us, they can be who ever they are and do what ever they want, and we won’t be even bothered by it because we are stuck inside our own little bubbles of existence.

            For this activity, we decided to call what we did as Cracked Mirrors. We did this because for us, to be able to properly view the world in a sociological perspective, one would need the help of cracked mirrors that show shattered reflections. When one look into a mirror, it is believed that one sees an exact replica, a perfect reflection of oneself. Yet how can one be so sure that what he sees in the mirror is who he really is and not just a figment of what he believes he is. When one looks into a cracked mirror, it is inevitable that certain flaws that were once unnoticeable are shown. When one sees his shattered reflection, he has no choice but to let go in his mind the preconceived notion he had of his self and be forced to really see what is in front of him.

            How a person view the world depends on his personal experiences. These experiences, once they are accumulated, allow presumptuous notions to be formed and ultimately, that causes the person to be blind of what is going on beyond his own little world. To see the world sociologically, we must first shatter our personal view of it and then try our very best to try to view the world in other people’s perspective. The world, we now realize, is not simply done in the monochrome hues of black, white and grey. Rather, with others’ perspectives, we come to realize that the world is actually painted in Technicolor by the different facets that govern human life.

            We humans, by nature, are social beings. Whether with a mere acquaintance or with the most intimate of friends, it is in our nature to socialize. As such, the world at large can be viewed as an infinite source of interaction with others. However, such interactions are limited by the different variables present.

The society in which we move in is governed by the rules of modern times. The interactions among people are defined by the technologies and urbanities to which they have been exposed. The way every individual acts is affected and influenced by the way the people around him/her acts. Affiliations with people somewhat defined the way people act and react. The things that interest us are no longer the same things that interest older people because of constant change in our society. Although we have managed to preserve certain traditions of the past, there are still differences with the way we treat such norms as they have been smudged by modernity. We saw how these have set demarcation lines on what is and what was, who is above and who is below. Certain things accounted for other things; everything was interrelated one way or another.

We saw certain facets of the system of the world and our society from a functionalist point of view. There are reasons for the loss and maintenance of tradition and for welcoming and rejecting urbanity, thus maintaining the balance in our society. Yet, there are aspects that we approached from a Marxist point of view, reasoning that urbanity has led to drastic negative changes in our society. We saw that the continuing rise of modern technology, while advancements have made life easier, has also wedged an invincible barrier among the people. And yet these two views met on a single scale in that from both perspectives, everything is seemingly interrelated, one social phenomenon is always intertwined with another, the former affecting the latter and vice versa, whether positively, negatively, or both.

Applying sociological analyses on the things that happened around us allowed us to see the world from a whole new perspective, giving us the chance to enter another dimension that is somewhat free from our personal biases. Through this, certain things that have been ignored in the past suddenly had meaning. Through a sociological perspective, seemingly independent phenomena converged into one to form and mold society as we know it today.

 

Reviews

[The Echo News]

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[Calypso]

They is very good. You are able to inform and make reading this enjoyable.

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I liked this. I liked what you had to say about being able to look at other cultures, one needs to have the reflection of a cracked mirror. Very nice.

[Jeb]

There is not a lot of straight analytical righting on this site and it refreshing to see a well-formulated non-fiction piece here. You know, in the novel Atlas Shrugged (one of my favorites) there is a major underlying theme of the idea that there are no contradictions. That because people are inclined to work for the sake of themselves that nothing has a right to be interrelated. That is an interesting counter to the points ade here, you should check it out.