The Promise - Hopelessly Helpless

"The sociological imagination is seeing how unique historical circumstances of a particular society affect people and, at the same time, seeing how people affect history."

     - C. Wright Mills

In The Sociological Imagination C. Wright Mills details the place that each man holds in the course of his own events. We are shown how man sees the world happening to him, how his actions are futile. According to Mills, this is the result of "continent-wide societies" in which a man is consolidated into a small cog of the industrial machine. However, we often fail to notice how our immediate situation is affected by the larger going-ons of the world, and how  we shape history with our seemingly meaningless actions. Despite the stacked odds, Mill's shows the reader how, through the understanding of the sociological imagination, each man can find his niche, and improve his own situation through this augmented perspective.

In today's society this aforementioned mindset is nearly impossible to avoid, for we are constantly saturated with media input. Almost everything we see is a result of mass media, this leads to feelings of displacement within our own lives, for we cannot help but to only see what we are shown. Also, this constant stream of images leads us to be so preoccupied with the current world situation, that we neglect our own world. This can be seen in people's obsession with celebrities. I feel this is due to our perspective, for in our own lives we are never certain of much, and we are forced to speculate on nearly everything. However, when we read about celebrities we feel as if we get the entire story, and that we can feel secure because we do know everything that is going on, even though that story may not contain any true information or exact details.

If one is to find their own place in society, we must first find our place within our own lives. This, for many, can be a difficult task in today's world of distractions and media saturation, but it is a skill that will help one to find their place in history. The confidence given by this particular realization can inspire an individual into history making, but one must first have confidence in themselves.