Wright Mills was an American sociologist in the 20th century that gave his definition of sociological imagination as “The vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society.” My personal opinion of what the definition of sociological imagination means is closely related to that of Mills. Not all aspects of our lives are controlled fully by our individual decisions; we see some aspects of our lives as uncontrollable. Also, we see that we are crafted into individuals by our society’s meaning; we behave differently based on our sex, location, and race. In this paper, I will be explaining how my life as a whole is not fully controlled by my decisions and how being raised in Eastern Kentucky has affected me differently than if I was born in New York …show more content…
I think my generation is looked down upon a lot by other generations because of how we were raised and what we were raised around. We are considered to be the generation that has never experienced much of anything besides the fast growing technology. This may be true because even though we have witnessed or heard a lot of terroristic events or gun violence, we never had to experience any wars that directly affected us and most of us never had to worry about saving our paycheck like the other generations had to. This effects how we are raised because our parents were raised in another generation that was the opposite of ours now. My generation is constantly wondering when something is going to happen rather than how something is going to happen. The chart says that my generation “grew up more sheltered than any other generation as parents strived to protect them from the evils of the world” (Generational Differences Chart, 1) I think this is because of the media and how it portrays the world as having so much hate and the exposure we have of this is right at our fingertips. I think my generations parents’ are so focused on sheltering us from the terrible hate and events in the world but my generation is so focused on optimism, new ideas, and compromise like the chart discusses. This is when generations start to