Enlightenment Age

            I decided to write about this article even though it does not specifically talk about social change because it talks about how we can be in the age of Enlightenment due to society’s understanding and new ideas to overcome those issues our society is facing today. It is fascinating to know that people are becoming intellectual and interested on tackling those thousands of issues that we as a society are facing and have been facing for a while. In this article they give the example of Fixes (which explores solutions to major social problems) (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/fixes/). Fixes asks questions in order to see what people think we can do about the issues we have out there, and they are very impressed by the way people have responded to these questions. Now, we do believe that even those intractable issues/problems can be fixed and/or changed.  It was shocking for me to believe that today, we are more alert as society and more willing to make a change.

According to this article, we tend to let our emotions, group identities, and unconscious drives guide our behavior. Therefore, we tend to think and solve problems unconsciously just for the fact that we understand and are capable of feeling and letting our inner behavior take over. Changing the context of something can definitely increase our chances of making a change because our behavior would react in an unconscious way; that means, we will do what our “inner instinct” wants us to do which most of the time leads to compassion and the need of helping others. Another factor that can be what’s making a difference and putting us in the “Enlightenment age” is the fact that we have the resources to do so. All the information and technology we can gather nowadays allows us to be more alert and more connected to the world.

            Like David Bornstein stated on this article “The upshot is that we’re now in a better position to recognize what works and what doesn’t in a variety of areas — like which methods to reduce child abuse and prevent unwanted teen pregnancies appear most effective, or what studies tell us about how to improve the teaching of math or writing, or which police tactics are most effective at reducing crime”. We as individuals and as a society, as difficult as it can be to believe, are increasing the chances of having a better society, a better world, and even better citizens.

The link to the article is here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/social-changes-age-of-enlightenment/