Poppie and Me
My Teaching Angle
We human beings are social animals. We are also substantially self-aware, both individually and collectively.
Nonetheless, it seems we’re still muddling our way toward a truly sustainable maturity. And we seem to be doing so in a race against new, self-created dangers.
Don’t we have to get past these hazards — all of them — and soon?
Dumb luck almost surely won’t cut the mustard. On the contrary, we seem pressed more than ever by what the late, great sociologist C. Wright Mills called “the problem of freedom,” the dilemma of “how decisions about the future of human affairs are to be made and who is to make them.” It seems to me that we can’t for very much longer let the prevailing answer to this problem be “nobody.”
Meanwhile, in our desperate times, I think the whole of human history is our common treasury/cautionary tale. Learning from (and adding benefits to) this great repository is both nobody’s special privilege and everybody’s common challenge.
The trick, for you as an individual, is figuring how and where to look to make yourself capable of finding new answers to our era’s burning questions. To embrace this challenge is, ipso facto, to turn yourself into a lifelong learner, and to pursue a truly classical education.
And here’s some good news: Such a pursuit, demanding as it is, seems to be a key to living your best life.
Sociology can help you live such a life.
A Video Sample
Here is a 6-minute video clip of me talking about Sociology 204.
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