Sociological Mindfulness

In class this week, we spent our time discussing sociological imagination and sociological mindfulness, along with the importance of the two. Sociological imagination is recognizing how our surroundings and our relationship can shape us into the people we are today. Reading "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell, I was surprised by the results Wolf, a physician in the town of Roseto, obtained regarding the Rosetans' health. He found out that the death rate of citizens in Roseto was "thirty or thirty five percent lower than it should have been" and that no citizen below the age of 55 acquired heart disease or suffered from heart attack. Normally, this phenomenal result would be due to consistent diet or exercise. However, Wolf found that the lifestyle Rosetans carried out, being kind and caring to everyone in the town, was the reason the death rate was so low. Rosetans were shaped by their environment. If they lived in a town polluted with cruel, ignorant citizens, the death rate may in fact have been higher. It gives us something to think about; Do you think the community you live in and the people you interact with have actively shaped you into the person you are now?

Sociological mindfulness is understanding that our actions have consequences and have a big part in affecting people around us and even affecting us. In the excerpt from Michael Schwalbe's "The Sociologically Examined Life", Schwalbe mentions that sociological mindfulness "is especially important for helping us see that the consequences of our words and deeds often escape our intentions". Basically, he says we need to step back and notice how everything we do/say has an affect on other people, even though we might not mean anything by what we do. By understanding and taking a part in being sociologically mindful, we will learn to become more compassionate people, leading our world to a more peaceful future.

A great example that involves sociological imagination and sociological mindfulness is the movie Mean Girls. Karen, Regina, Cady, and Gretchen are a part of the popular clique, that go by the name "The Plastics". All they do is terrorize other people to make themselves feel superior. In the beginning, Cady, played by Lindsay Lohan, comes to a high school in North Shore as a polite and innocent home-schooled transfer student from Africa. Dared to become friends with The Plastics, she ends up becoming a corrupt, self-absorbed snob due to the people who surrounded her. In the end, after a burn book that her and her friends created gets exposed, she becomes sociologically mindful. Cady thinks about everyone she's hurt since she's been there and apologizes sincerely. By becoming sociologically mindful, she becomes a better person and becomes more aware of her actions when seeing how they directly hurt her peers and how her actions came back to haunt her. She also realizes she's changed as a person because she moved from a place where she was mostly with animals and her family to a place where everyone else in her clique were snobby, shaping her into a snob.

This clip shows how Cady is shaped by the high school "girl world" she is exposed to and this, along with her individual motives, leads her to forgetting about sociological mindfulness. Not being sociological mindful, her actions have the consequence she didn't want and make the situation worse for her.