Walking Out Of Sociology

We have all come to the moment in the quarter where we are posting our final thoughts. Some of us will walk out of Sociology 101 on the 14th and never think about the subject again. I am not going to be one of these people. My mom asked me if I had to describe my sociology class in one sentence what I would say, the biggest thing I took away from sociology and what I would have to say is that “America isn’t the greatest country in the world, but it can be”. Walking out of sociology I will hold that truth knowing that society is struggling but it doesn’t have to be. These treatments of being socialized and the ideologies that affect us all at both a conscious and unconscious level are bad, they are hurtful and oppressing, but they don’t have
Johnson opens up the article with something I personally am guilty of. I believed if I did not contribute to the oppression of people, if I did not openly do something to another individual than I was not part of the problem. I believe most of society thinks like this and Johnson calls this out automatically by saying, “silence and invisibility allow the trouble to continue”. If we do not actively choose to change the situation, we are choosing to enable the oppression. By our silence we are actively choosing to be part of the problem. This was eye opening to me. I never realized that choosing not to say anything was choosing to agree with the problem. So I believe that Johnson really helps his audience make a decision, to be active, or to be passive. Like many of you, I am controlled by the myths that Johnson points out, of “It’s always been this way, and always will be” and “the myth of no effect”. I have always believed the problems of this society are too big and too permanent for me as one individual living in a world with billions, that I will have no effect, that I will not produce results, but this thought has only been created in my mind by the Ruling Elite in order to keep the oppressed, in a state of
Our society today is lacking faith in the future. We need to choose to do what we think is right, even if we don’t know the long term effect. Taking the first step without seeing the whole staircase, we need to be active participants in change because if we don’t, who will? To have faith to begin traveling we need to ask the important questions, what is it ,that is bad, what needs change, what used to be good, what can be good again? We need to be inquisitive in our everyday lives and start recognizing and being aware of what socialized ideologies affect us on an unconscious level. The next idea that Johnson brought up to his audience is the idea of choosing the path less traveled so that others can also choose the path less traveled. Ralph Waldo Emerson really understood this idea when he said “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” If we as a society continue to follow the path of those people before us, the path that the ruling elite have made so easy to see and travel on, then we will never be able to rise up from our situations and come to a place where we are changing our lives, and changing our paths. And this act isn’t easy. To walk into the darkness, to have cut a new path is going to take effort and work, and we will face resistance, but the payoff is greater than we can even imagine even if we never get to experience the