25 July 2013
Discussed Text: Marcel, The Mystery of Being
The Broken World is the text that I am able to relate to the most, so far. I found myself agreeing with many of the points which were mentioned in the article. Specific events came to mind while these points were being mentioned.
Point 1 (technocracy):
Our world today is a technocracy. In a technocracy, technical experts, like scientists and engineers, are looked up to and they greatly affect making decisions. These people are seen as more important than people in the arts and in the humanities. A person’s level of scientific expertise would be the basis of his rank in society.
I think that this was a very valid point. Personally, I chose my course because of its technical nature and because I also believe that becoming technocrat would be my way of being somebody important in society. Our society always looks up scientists and engineers. Aside from this, they are very important due to the fact that our lives in this technological age wouldn’t be the same without them. The negative effect of this fact is that people start to look down on the arts. Nobody encourages their children to become writers, painters, or musicians. Everyone wants to have an engineer or a doctor in the family. In turn, this causes conflict between the people who dream about the arts and the demands of society. It is a known fact that the science people are perceived as more financially stable because they normally earn a lot more money than the arts people. Also, greed becomes a great factor in career choice. Who doesn’t want to be rich?
This fact isn’t so bad for me because I am a student of science, but how should the students of the arts feel about their worth being downplayed?
Point 2 (lost sense of community):
People are not used to people anymore. Gone are the days when people had to get their hands dirty. In the present, getting out of anything has been reduced to a text. Confrontation has been reduced to something like this as well. Real relationships turned superficial.
I noticed that people do not keep their promises as much as they used to. When people plan to meet at a certain time, someone would usually cancel through text a few minutes before the meeting is supposed to takes place. This annoys me because the person could have at least called, which I think is a lot more personal than texting, instead of just sending a message, leaving me powerless to react to whatever valid or pathetic excuse he has for the change of plans.
I also noticed that people are living more online than in real life. Discussions are now possible without the discussers being present in one place. The interaction of these people is lessened because they only communicate through chat boxes. There is now harder to get to know people personally. The problem with this that the things some people say and do online greatly contrast what they see do in real life. Who are these people, really?
In the end, technology’s advancement may greatly limit human interaction and may further hinder any sense of community.
Point 3 (the world refuses to imagine):
Familiarity breeds contempt. People have this mindset wherein they tend to take for granted the people who are closest to them. In their minds, these people have always been there and they always will be there. They become less of a priority due to their constant presence. They stop caring about their relationships with the people closest to them. In the end, a lot of relationships are destroyed. I know a lot of families which are broken because the members no longer nurture their relationships. Besides the family, a lot of the people who we meet every day are taken for granted. It is only when they are absent that we realize their worth. People only appreciate the packers in the groceries when they aren’t there to pack their items for them. What if we were those people? How would we feel and how would we see ourselves and our job?
The problem is that people are not used to putting themselves in the shoes of others. When we do, we may find some realities that we don’t like and life-changing realizations during these contemplations are never easy to handle. After all, it is easier to be ignorant than to care. It is easy not to care about others.
Finale
While thinking about possible solutions to the broken world, I remembered what Dr. Garcia mentioned in class to summarize this topic. He said that we should ask ourselves what we can take of this broken world and what are we called to do about it. We ought to know when to consume and when to create. There is always a way to fix the broken.
In relation to the point of technocracy, we also experience this kind of problem when we choose a career which pays alot instead of our own passions. Instead of deciding for ourselves, what controls us is the demands of the materialistic world we are in. In this way, we not only lose our own sense of identity but also become dysfunctional individuals later on. And if this notion of technocracy would persist, dysfunctional individuals would later on lead to a dysfunctional world.
ReplyDeleteMar Tan (PH 101 - C)
This broken world that is caused by our loss of communication can be in a way fixed when we just open ourselves to the reality that we can never be alone and that we are in an interconnected world.
ReplyDeleteTrixia Tan (C)
It is sad to see that the world is broken. It is even sadder to see most are ignorant of its brokenness. In fact, in my chosen career, the brokenness is even more apparent. I may not know much about business, since I obviously lack the experience of being in there myself to claim such a thing. However, in interacting with the people in working in the business world, I can already glimpse of its brokenness. This brokenness is due to people treating other people as objects. In fact, resumes are a good example of this fascination with objectivity. Communication skills, grades, experience etc. are all treated as assets. Everything is like one big formula wherein you need this amount of communication skills etc. to get in this job. People are defined by their skills, which should not be, because there is more to someone than just his skills.
ReplyDeleteJohn Luciano A