Beneficial Effects Of Understanding Sociological Imagination On Individual

Social Imagination by C. Wright Mills is described as seeing ourselves from a third party perspective and going outside of our normal routines and seeing if our daily norms or actions are potential causes from the society in which we live.

People are constantly trying to relate their experiences and everyday life to all of the things going on in today's society and it is affecting the way they live. Sociologist C. Wright Mills, who created the concept and wrote the definitive book about it, defined the sociological imagination as ?the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.' Our values, actions of others, and situations we involve ourselves in are shaped by the things we do.

Throughout Mills writing he says something along the lines that we believe in our eyes that we are the only ones facing our problems thT we encounter, but in reality there are tons of others out there that are probably facing the same exact problem. In Sociological Imagination he talks about personal troubles and public issues. There are certain differences between the two but they both are intervened with one another.

Personal troubles are something that we blame ourselves for. We tend to blame ourselves for all the problems we are facing whether big or small, some that we have no control over. But regardless if we know the cause of the personal trouble we are facing we still tend to blame ourselves for being put in that situation. Public issues are problems in society that effect experiences we face as an individual that is beyond our control. For example, prices going on up on food or prices going up on anything in general it eventually gets expensive to the point where we can?t afford it and we don?t have a way of controlling that.

Personal troubles relate to public issues any many ways, here are some examples that I gathered. One example is a college student who is struggling, a student who is doing all they can to do good by themselves and get the education they need. Being a college student takes on many responsibilities such as taking the proper time outside of your social life to study and get all the college work done and also many college students have jobs outside of school to try and provide for themselves. On top of college being expensive and a student being on their own without any financial assistance puts a huge strain on yourself. Trying to juggle a full time job and in college full time is extremely stressful on an individual and sometimes we second guess ourselves if we are good enough to put all this work in.

This also brings up the issue of housing costs, college students who are living off campus have to deal with the expense of housing along with their college expenses. That is when public issues come in, the expense of housing and college prices put a huge impact on the student and cause them to have personal troubles. More examples of personal troubles that could relate to public issues could be an illness or health problem causing that individual to no longer be able to work and provide for themselves. Having an illness or poor health leads to hospital visits, doctors visits, and medication costs and those bills add up quickly. Due to that person?s health and no longer be able to work out a huge strain on that person?s life and that could lead to even worse health conditions.

Understanding sociological imagination can help us interpret situations in society to situations in one?s life. It helps individuals understand that they are not the only ones facing their troubles and there are others out there that face the same and a lot of troubles we face deal with the society we live in and all the public issues that are involved. Sociological Imagination is when we see things differently than we normally do it helps us see things socially and how they perceive others and how it influences our lives. Thinking from a different view other than our own helps us view our own lives in a different perspective.