How Sociology Can Help You Be A Better Person

(Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash)

It can help you be more empathetic.

I scrambled through the course listing to find a last-minute option.

The only available courses for me were an intro sociology class and an intro psychology class, which I had already taken.

“Guess I’m taking sociology,” I thought to myself. “But what is it?”

The course description said:

“Sociology is the study of social life in all its forms. A variety of topics within the discipline will be explored throughout this course, such as social theory, social research methods, culture, with a strong focus on gender, sexuality, class, and racial inequality.”

It sounded interesting enough and I didn’t expect to get much out of it other than the credits.

But after the first week of classes, I was hooked. Everything taught in the class was interesting.

I registered for a handful more, and eventually switched my major to it because learning about how society treats the different classes of people was gripping.

Through learning about inequality and power dynamics in society, I understood the world more, and this made me a better person because I was more empathetic and understanding of people.

Instead of judging people based on one interaction, I started asking myself why this person was behaving in such a manner:

• What was their upbringing like?
• Is this behaviour part of their culture?
• Is this how their generation behaves?
• Do they have a mental illness?
• Or are they just having a bad day?

Asking questions like this helped me be more open-minded and empathetic to people because it helped me realize that I don’t know anything about anybody and I shouldn’t judge them because I had one bad interaction with them.

They could be going through difficult times with their family for all I know.

And this is how sociology can help you become a better person.

If you want to learn the core concepts of sociology, you can click here to check out my eBook SOCI 001 at my store.

Or you can check it out on Amazon here.

Book Bannings Are A Show of Power

Those who bully are often the scared ones.

Conflict theorists view power as a struggle for control between social classes.

Those with power are wealthy and influential and impose their dominance over the oppressed.

They use many tactics to achieve this and one of the ways is to control what the oppress consume.

An example is book banning.

Book-banning policies have spread across America and in Alberta, Canada. The government wants to censor what kids can read by forcing public and school libraries to remove books from their shelves.

They claim these books contain sexual content that shouldn’t be read by kids. 

And though there is some sexual content in them, these books are not solely about sex; they’re not pornography. 

Rather, they tell stories about groups with little or no power. The stories are about what it’s like to come out as LGBTQ+ to your parents, or about what it would be like if your entire gender were disenfranchised, or what would happen if individuals had the tools to think for themselves and were critical of the institutions of power.

The government is banning these texts because they fear representation (because anything other than straight is sinful) and civil disobedience (because they fear their citizens will employ their rights to criticize the government and rally to enforce change).

As Stephen King says, “Censorship and the suppression of reading materials are rarely about family values and almost always about control; about who is snapping the whip, who is saying no, and who is saying go. Censorship's bottom line is this: if the novel Christine offends me, I don't want just to make sure it's kept from my kid; I want to make sure it's kept from your kid, as well, and all the kids. This bit of intellectual arrogance, undemocratic and as old as time, is best expressed this way: ‘If it's bad for me and my family, it's bad for everyone's family?’”

And this is why power -specifically maintaining power- is the root cause of book bannings.