Social conscience

A social conscience is "a sense of responsibility or concern for the problems and injustices of society".

While our conscience is related to our moral conduct in our day-to-day lives with respect to individuals, social conscience is concerned with the broader institutions of society and the gap that we may perceive between the sort of society that should exist and the real society that does exist.

The term social conscience has been used in conjunction with everything from investing, to art, antiques, and politics.

The social conscience of an individual can be related to George Herbert Mead's Generalized other. Instead of having an internalized expectation of what society expects of them, the individual possesses certain expectations of society. These expectations are generally tied to their moral values. Once the individual is impacted by an occurrence that defies or goes against what they consider to be right and wrong, they develop a social conscience towards that issue. The next step is deciding whether to act on that urge. If the individual chooses to act, they may choose to demonstrate their concern for that issue in a variety of ways, such as fighting back, protesting, or several other forms of rebelling against that realistic form of society.

The act of following one's social conscience is to take empathy and direct it in support of a cause. Protesting is a popular way of demonstrating one's ideologies towards a particular subject in the hopes of alternating the outcome to fit what is perceived to be the sort of society that should exist.

Protests can arise from the frustrations and grievances of someone or multiple people in response to a perceived problem that does not coincide with their ideal society.

According to social psychologist Albert Bandura, our expectation to be able to change the outcome of something by protesting is known as Self-efficacy. People tend to believe that problems can be solved with a group effort, which is why protesting is seen as a popular choice.

Protesting is not limited to being a group effort, and can be undertaken by a single individual following their social conscience.

These protests are usually targeted at groups with a higher status of power in the hopes of alternating the flow of power to another group that is perceived to be morally correct. This selection of groups is not limited to the powerless versus the powerful. The powerful can also protest against the powerless, and members of both groups can intermingle with one another to protest against another group.

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Wikipedia