Nowadays people think that we are lucky to live in the society we have. The fact that we have developed, become smarter and our life is full of comfort ,created and found various devices and cures to strong diseases that other generations could only dream of makes us feel ourselves supreme. However, our world is still not perfect and with new discoveries come not only new responsibilities, but even bigger problems. Our society needs positive changes without no doubt. But first we should clearly understand what the society change is. Some people understand social change as the “the alteration of mechanisms within the social structure, characterized by changes in cultural symbols, rules of behaviour, social organizations, or value systems” (William Form (2014) “Social change, Sociology”). It is a phenomenon that is always presented in any society, because we keep moving all the time. During this course I got to know a lot of new information and gained priceless knowledge on this topic which has influenced my perspective on this topic in different ways. Of course, as any other person of my age I had dreams and thought about contributing to society and changing it, but thinking and understanding are absolutely antonymic things. First of all, during this course I got to know history of this subject some sociology discoveries connected with this topic and a set of examples from history, people, their biographies, views and speeches that have influences masses of people touched everybody’s soul, so they could make positive social changes all together. I believe that after the course my range of knowledge will get only wider and I will be able to help this social change happen, since each of us should start improving himself first and start from the small actions like what we do know wish my peers and then with wise, knowledge and enthusiasm it might lead to something remarkable and great. As it was mentioned in the reading, we promote social change, but we act in our own historical time, while at the same time linking past, present, and future in our attempts to create a better world (Chapter 12, Paul Rogat Loeb Soul of a citizen). I agree with the author that some historical eras are just more pregnant with possibility. The 20th century was full of inventions, discoveries, social changes and powerful leaders who brought up the most significant issues during that period of time (the rights of women, the racial equality, the rights of workers, peace in the world, etc) We know that people survived after 2 World Wars, some epidemics and starvation. Finally, there is no country as the USSR, so some former Soviet countries try to build a new society. Due to the fact that most of us have a place to live, food to eat and tat anybody can get at least some free health care and education, people have forgotten about the impotency of being a citizen. Some people think that our society will not do anything about up-to-date problems before it is too late, and I think it is true and that is something I would like to change out of class. In my opinion, doing volunteering work like cleaning the park, feeding animals in shelters or giving food to some elder people who cannot physically come out of the house are very essential things, but I would like to go further and make a bigger contribution. I have always had an opinion about teachers’ importance, because these adults bring the most vital information to our minds. I would like to cooperate with some organisation or be a part of a team that would go to high schools or some other places where people would get the information. We would clarify to them what the social change is and how to make a positive social change. From my point of view, people are lack of awareness on this topic. Maybe if we try to do this, they would come out of there comfort zones and do something to improve our society and to change our world for the better, because there are a lot of urgent problems that need to be sold, but people do not think of them and do not associate themselves with them, so they are lack of enthusiasm in finding the solution.
References
Loeb, P. R. (2010). Soul of a citizen: Living with conviction in challenging times (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. (Chapter 11-12)
William Form (2014) “Social change,Sociology” http://www.britannica.com/topic/social-change
