Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic, for all of its horrors, has taught us that there is something desperately wrong with our way of life. Here is a positive spin on what we are all experiencing: Given the existence of fundamental problems in society, we require a deep sense of purpose to solve them. As the sociologist Lawrence Busch has written, “The crisis is the catalyst that makes the new image of the future meaningful as an alternative.” In order to make full use of this “silver lining” of the coronavirus cloud, we require at least three things: (1) a description of basic problems in society, such as increasing inequality along with patterns of aggression; (2) a vision of an alternative society that promises to make progress on those problems; and (3) actions that enable us to actually move toward those solutions. I follow an ancient Japanese proverb: “A vision without action is a daydream, and action without a vision is a nightmare.” Developing these ideas, I will draw on material in Creating Life Before Death: Discover Your Amazing Self (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois: Common Ground Research Networks, 2020), written by myself as a sociologist-scholar, a preacher-cop, a social psychologist, an economist and a medical social scientist. Our ideas are outlined on theamazingself.com. I will also make use of two recent invited essays of mine that have been published in Contemporary Sociology (“Sociology’s Next Steps?”, July, 2019; and “Sociology’s Next Steps? Fiftieth Anniversary of Gouldner’s Vision and Sixtieth Anniversary of Mills’s Vision,” May, 2020).