The progress of civilization over the last few centuries is tremendous and overshadows much of what humanity has been able to accomplish prior. Nonetheless, with innovation arise dilemmas and confusion increases as an attempt to cope with such new advances. In Leslie Bell’s “Selections from Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the paradox of Sexual Freedom”, she illustrates through the social sciences the negative affect that cultural and societal ideologies have on modern women and their sexuality by perpetuating more confusion. Meanwhile, Barbara Fredrickson attempts to redefine love through pathophysiology and the ways humans develop ‘positivity resonance’ in her book “Selections from Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become ”.…show more content… All three selections from the authors (Bell, Fredrickson, and Sacks) share a common theme of social structure versus individual agency where social structure is the recurrent factors that constrict and influence choices and available opportunities, while, individual agency is the ability of individuals to independently make their own choices. As humanity advances through technology and culture evolves, ideas about human individuality become more complex and confusing as the sciences and the social sciences convey paradox messages to the reader about human individuality, in which, the authors of the humanities assume that everyone has individual agency, yet, their opinions prove otherwise by illustrating the more dominant impact that societal influences such as the media and science have on the way humans make interactions and
