In The Lorax, trees are symbolic interactionism as they mean different things as to Ted, they mean a chance of getting Audrey to like him; to the Once-ler, they mean a means to success; to Mr. O'Hare, they mean competition and a threat to his wealth. The town of Thneedville and Mr. O'Hare exhibit the conflict theory of sociology has Mr. O'Hare has power and control over everything that happens. Due to the citizens heavy reliance on clean air, Mr. O'Hare is also able to become extremely wealthy over the money he makes off of the citizen. Whereas in the land of the trees, the animals all exhibit structural functionalism as they all work together and wish for the best of each and every member of their "society." In both of these different societies, they have different perceptions of the social imagination of trees. To the citizens of Thneedville, real, natural trees are nonexistent as all of them in their area have been chopped down before their time. Instead, they view trees as plastic, inflatable structures used solely for decor and can also manipulate it's style and structure. On the other hand, the animals in the land of the Lorax view trees as a natural part of their life that they need to live in and respect/value, especially the Lorax as he "speaks for the trees." An example of the social construction of reality is the fact that the people of Thneedville initially viewed trees as pointless unnecessary when they already had plastic trees that were cleaner and more easier to have as they didn't require any care like real trees. So in their minds, these trees were "real" in the sense that they didn't see the importane or value in real ones because they believed they weren't necessary until the end of the movie. The movie also exhibited sociological mindfulness as the Once-ler didn't realize what the trees really meant to the animals and didn't see how much it was hurting his friends and their home until it was too late. If he was more sociologically mindful, he would've been less selfish about his own needs and realize that trees meant more and were actual necessities to the animals than to the people who bought his thneeds. Overall, by watching the movie, I realized that I needed to be more mindful about the world around me. Even though I may be comfortable with something, I'm not fully aware of how my actions and the things I have affect the world outside of my community. And this makes me think about just how much I don't know and be more conscientious of my actions and the choices I make.

It was interesting to learn about the difference between micro and macro persepectives in regards to sociology. Whenever I drive to areas that I'm not familiar with, I'm always naturally interested and curious about the lifestyles there. Especially when they're areas that are far are a lot different from what I'm used to. At the same time, whenever I see actual people within those towns, it's interesting to see that they have their own seperate agendas, and that I most likely won't ever see them again. And I was also able to relate to the airplane example we had in regards to the macro theory because I remembered just a couple months ago while I was going to the Dominican Republic, it was interesting to see how my city connected with the neighboring areas from afar, and how even within the same country, our country had so many different towns and areas. Especially when we got to the DR and started to land, it was even more of an eye opener to see how it was even more different there. I was discouraged at first that there were so many parts to the DR that we wouldn't be able to help out, but I'm glad that I was able to at least experience the micro aspect of DR when I got to meet and work with the people who were a part of the mission base that we were working at. It helped me to become more sociologically mindful to live and serve with these people as I was opened up to the happiness they had in the seemingly small things, and that they didn't take the smallest things for granted, but that they all worked hard and really lived like a strong, happy community that cared about each other.

This week something that really stuck out to me was the topic of sociological mindfulness. It's not necessarily that the topic is anything completely new to me, but reading about it and applying real life examples to it opened up new perspectives of it to me. Since I'm pretty religious, sociological mindfulness relates a lot to how I'm taught to live according to my religious beliefs as I don't want to be ignorant to the world around me and the problems of the world, nor do I want to be purposely or even accidentally offend anyone because of lack of better judgment of my words and actions. As we read in the article about sociological mindfulness, I agree with the fact that we can't only be focused on ourselves, and I strongly believe and agree with the author's comment about how the more mindful we are, the more we know and can make a greater impact on the things that we may want to try to change in the world. On another note, I also realized that being sociologically mindful doesn't have to be about huge world problems either, but even in the small things, like realizing that a world-renowned violinist is playing for free in the middle of a public subway. It made me think about how much we miss because we're too busy and caught up in our own thoughts and schedules, regardless of if we actually recognize the violinist or not, because even if we did recognize him, our busy schedules don't always allow us to stop and enjoy the music. And I could relate that I base a lot of my judgments by the labels that something may have-like how the people probably thought how the violinist did sound good, but didn't take the effort to stop and watch because they didn't realize he was a famous violinist-because I already have certain expectations for certain things.