SOCI200-D01_Discussion Thread: Sociological Pioneers

Discussion Thread: Sociological Pioneers

Part A:

I had always wanted to study more on Marxism and the ideologies behind the impress of communist governance. This is what would lead me to choose socialist pioneer Karl Marx, respectively. The dangers and more so the preservation for this seemingly obvious and universal understanding that communist regulation creates more conflict and disparity amongst its people just continues to greatly inflict its incessant rash of an annoyance upon our global comprehension. If knowingly, such as Marx and his followers did, to be both understood and thus would create a movement where every outcome would highly impact the result in significant sociological conflict upon nearly every occasion, why would one continue to proceed such governing if not for the sake of themselves and for power to dictate the lives of others? One would have to have such barricaded insights and no regard for the likes of their people. These characteristics are undoubtedly unjust, ungodly, and seeks to employ the ridiculous pride of man’s greedy heart in pursuit of absolute power and control.

Part B:

I enjoyed stumbling upon these verses of the Scripture that can closely represent being motivated and possessed by power and control. Thus, it gives in short that this ideal governing is destined to downfall.

¹⁸ “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. ¹⁹ Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud. ²⁰ He that handled a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he” (Proverbs 16.18-20, KJV).

While new work ethics and social movements can be a progressive steer towards better living as a society, or so we may think, it still will always hold along with it its downfalls and errors in the process. The more components or regulatory processes that are integrated into a system, the more room there is for error. I have come to notice this more and more while growing as a young adult during my time with the U.S. Air Force. This is why there must be and is truly only one way, the Way, to assimilate our ways of living. It is with the likelihood of the instruction from our Creator and through the love and path of Jesus. By no man’s ways can we ultimately achieve knowledge, love, and peace except through Him.

In this laconic example of how impactful self-interpreted “enlightenment” can impress on the forthcoming of newly integrated and sociological processes can take shape by the ego of man is forthrightly revealed in this one statement from Knox:

“They wanted a new religious system to reign in their enlightened world, so many leaders discarded the Judeo-Christian model that had been in power for thousands of years, replacing it with a new brand of “religion,” which replaced “Yahweh” with “Human,” as seen in the religiosity of Comte, Jefferson, and Marx” (Knox 23).

This is what happens when relying on our own understanding and is why humanity is always seeking towards something “new.” Man is always trying to get the better of something or another. Nothing is ever entirely new nor is it going to be entirely old. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best by stating, “Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural” (Emerson 10). No matter what we try to attempt to change, there is always some form of the old at play. There is a good and imperative reason why things of old bear such value even to this day and some of which are not to be discredited especially from that of our Lord. One of my favorited classic authors, apart from Emerson of course, is American essayist Hamilton Wright Mabie. In his book Short Studies in Literature, he emphasizes the necessity for the “reports of the past” as he puts it. “The mind has taken a new start and resolved to see things for itself,” Mabie noted (Mabie 117). He explains the behavior and consequences of man’s push for progress and advancement with newly developed ideas whilst removing things of the past from their agenda and more importantly the things associated with God, hence the name for this chapter in his book An Age of Expansion. This is where so-called new ideas, systems, governments, religions, etc. stem from or rather many of which are a reformation. It is man’s interpretation and the use of his imagination cultivating change in the making of human history. The inclusion of God is typical forgotten or dismissed even intentionally because we rely on ourselves for the advancement in new systems, societal management, and technology.

Works Cited

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “History.” Self-Reliance and Other Essays. Dover Publications, 1993,

p. 10.

Knox, Robert. Sociology Is Rude!: A Conversation on Sociological Theory and Thought. Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2023.

Mabie, Hamilton Wright. “An age of Expansion.” Short Studies in Literature, Dodd, Meade and Company, 1891, p. 117.