What it all has to do with us

In this chapter Johnson talks a lot about myths and social construction. He states early on that our society places a strong emphasis on the individual which is more often than not a strong disadvantage because it distorts our view of reality. He also concludes that think only about the individual causes us to play the blame game, always blaming everything in the world on someone else.

Johnson also discusses the idea behind everyone’s personal identity and how that relates to our social systems as a whole rather than the individualistic model. In order to understand what happens in the world you need to know how our social systems behave and interact with individuals, not how individuals act alone.

Another interesting theory that he discusses is the theory of the path of least resistance. After reading about the theory it made perfect sense but it was never something that I realized or identified with before being told about it. As individuals we do what is normally accepted by our social systems and is the easiest for us to do. This concepts just reinforces that its individuals acting within social systems that creates our society.

Once again I do believe that Johnson does a great job of further explaining privilege and oppression in our society today, however, I completely disagree with his statement that, “A University, for example, is a social system, and people participate in it. But the people aren’t the university and the university isn’t the people.” While I think that his intentions are good with this statement I do think that this would be very confusing to many readers. I understand the concept behind what he is saying in regards to individuals and social systems but there is a fine line distinguishing the two. I do believe that a university is the people and that the people are the university. What would a university be without the people behind it? The university is a social system but social systems are nothing without the individuals collectively supporting, creating and nurturing them. If people were not here to support the university what would the university be? If we were not here how different would the university be? If the professors were all different what would our values be? What would our mission statement be if we had a different President?

All of these questions, I think, show how collectively individuals do create the social systems such as Universities.