Vagaries of Perception

Collective Conscience?

Is everything just an illusion, a grand social construct?  Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect that has been trying desperately to justify an existence that is supposedly without meaning or purpose? 

Social constructionism is the idea that through human choices, rather than laws related to human judgement, the social mechanisms, phenomenon, or categories are created and developed by the individuals in society.  Social constructs are the by-products of these choices, and this explains why nothing in society is absolute or standardised.  Every individual has their own social reality because of these constructs.  This involves examining social factors and beliefs, and how they become institutionalised, known and engrained in the human psyche.  The social construction of reality is an ongoing, dynamic and fluid process, open to change (yet denied by society), that is reproduced by people acting on their interpretations and knowledge of the society they live in.

Don’t Study Sociology If You Want To Be Happy

Freedom?

Sociology is about confronting and challenging the morality of our fragmented society because, when we pry beneath the surface, we quickly realise that everything we have been socialised into is an ideal, and that very few people can live up to the unrealistic standards of society's institutions.

Studying Sociology will lead to the eventual realisation that the world is penetrable by insight.  It is not necessarily a happy experience, nor a negative one.  Instead, it is supremely insightful.  Meaning becomes an abstract social thing, and not a fuel for your life as we have been led to believe up until this point.  Whatever social problem comes up, you can imagine the great causal chains which supports, but also holds back, groups of people.  An analytical mind can be a burden, but also a liberator.  Once you can see the ball and chains that restrict people, you can begin to free yourself from them.  If you can at first liberate yourself through knowledge of the ephemeral beauty of life, you can eventually emancipate others by subtly altering the structure of their individual lives to include things that will release them from this socially constructed trap.  Now that you know better, you have to do better.

No More Page 3

The first responsibility that needs to be accounted for is to acknowledge that there is power in these images in a national newspaper.  Advertising, magazine covers and editorial spreads all have power.  There are people who have dedicated their lives to studying, researching and understanding how people will have an emotional, intellectual and moral response to an image, sound, voice or text.  This is what people have researched, and this is why they are paid such large salaries.  But to pretend that all this knowledge and the outcomes of research means nothing morally, that these people are servants of the people and seek to reflect back what the people want, is ridiculous.