It has been said that the best indicator of the future is the past, if that holds true then “sick societies” should be required reading in public schools nation wide! Many of the practices mentioned in the reading were familiar to me yet I am aware that they are not to most. I was surprised to learn some of the intricacies of some of the practices as well as some of the seeming discrepancies within the cultures that practice them. Why, for example, do the women and elders in the African nations accept the beating of wives to certain extents? Why, if women are so beneath the men in those societies is it at all ok for them to make such public and graphic displays when the proverbial lines have been crossed? What I believe the answer to that is that they as a society are just rougher and more violent in general but that’s just my opinion.
Besides shedding light on the practices in general and offering them as suggestion of the differences in cultural norms, I think the author was bringing to the forefront the statistics that most people, including those with whom were familiar to some of the practices, such as the late date in which many of them were (and still are) practiced. I also think that the author succeeds in his objectivity by merely relating the customs and sharing the feelings of others who may have witnessed the acts. Nowhere in the reading does the author try to speak against or rally to change the customs, they are simply presented in a factual manner.
The Essay on Society Holds Everyone Together And Without These Conditions Our Ideals Values And The Basics Of R
Our Society today is defined as an interdependent organisation in a stable community. Civility in our society is factored into law and order. Law of persons are further factored into subjective law and the rights and duties of society. We distinguish between two classes of legal persons; human beings and juristic persons entitying beings upon the law. Society functions on value and morality ...
Even though western society as a whole likes to believe that those customs are nothing but a bad memory from the past, I think that it is very relevant in today’s society to read pieces like “sick society.” Of coarse reading to share the stories with future generations so as to avoid history repeating and to broaden understanding of the dangers of such practices but also understand why those practices existed in the first place! Does a modern, American, teenage girl see the startling similarity between the analogy the author makes between foot binding,
female circumcision and breast implants? Doubtful! As a woman of 35 who still battles those inner demons at an age when she should ( and firmly expected to) know better, and as the mother of a beautiful 14 year old daughter who is everything I ever wanted to be and more yet only sees her own flaws and weaknesses; yes, the reading is very relevant to me. I wish that readings and discussions of the sociological perspective as well as the sociological imagination theories were started in middle school if not sooner!
