Sociological Mindfulness

Michael Schwalbe defines sociological mindfulness as, "the practice of tuning-in to how the social world works." He discusses how few people in today's world are sociologically mindful for various reasons. I agree with nearly everything that Schwalbe has to say on this subject matter. People are often too busy to take the time and think about how their actions affect others and how everybody's lives are intertwined. In addition, from a very early age people learn to focus mainly on themselves and only worry about things they know they have control over. It seems as if people are almost trained to be blind to the outside world and not to take the time to think about others, or actually try to fix problems that may seem difficult to fix, but are surely fixable. Thus far in my life, there have many occasions where people, and usually even my friends, are completely ignorant to how their words and actions affect the people around them, and even affect me. Many of my friends make jokes that play on stereotypes, even if the jokes are related to a group of people, or people of a certain race, that are present at the time. I have heard many Jewish jokes being told not only in front of me, but to me. Since I'm Jewish and all of my friends are aware of this, I'm not too sure why they think it is a good idea to be making those jokes to me of all people. The jokes don't really bother me anymore because I know my friends accept my religion and are most likely only kidding, but there is no doubt in my mind that the jokes offend plenty of other people that hear them. I think that the world would be a much better place if everyone could start to think less about themselves and more about others and how those people are affected by their actions. If Schwalbe's lessons could be taught to more people, there would be an epidemic of awareness that would only enlighten the minds of the somewhat ignorant humans that are living among us today.